Its a LILYGO T3S3 (a module focused on handheld use) stuck into a housing I modeled myself and 3d printed out of ASA plastic. It has some Chinese “high gain” 915MHz antenna inside the grain silo looking part, which is oversize to prevent too much signal reflection/distortion from the plastic being too close to the antenna. Its powered by 18ga alarm system wire that I draped down the roof to a 5v power supply on the deck. And since I’m renting, non permanent modifications only, thus the clamp to the vent pipe.
Its what I had, just to get started. Quickly realized I needed to be on my roof to get any good connections in my node-sparse area haha.
So far it’s working well, I have 13 consistent mesh connections with 3 direct connections, when before I would previously only get spotty connections to the mesh at all from inside my house.
I’ll buy some better base station hardware later, once I put one up at my girlfriend’s house a few miles away…
hey not for nothing but the clamp to a vent pipe is clever and I’m gonna use it.
Get a 1W RAK!
Considering! Are those booster modules us legal?
Yes, they are. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission allows 1 watt EIRP on the ISM bands.
HAWT
The only issue you may have with the 1W is that they will be able to send to nodes that will probably not be able to contact you back. Because they are lower power.
So while you may be able to send really well, receiving may be a bit more difficult.
Ive heard of people saying that the 1W will muddy up the radio space since its basically one node “screaming” over others. Im not 100% buying it as 1W is still pretty quiet compared to other electronics in other spectrum. But thought I would mention it.
You should totally paint that thing to look like a little barn and grain solo 😆
unironically I have red, white, black, and brown ASA available to me, and a multicolor Bambu printer… Hmmmm
Some inspiration: https://www.australiansiloarttrail.com/
ELIsysadmin?
You mention a node sparse neighborhood. Nodes of what platform?
Im gathering that there is a mesh network being slowly built? I have so many questions and concerns. What are we sharing and isn it bridged to the web and how are we isolating and securing.
A link further down the rabbit hole would be fine.
EDIT I’m an idiot and realized from the community name this is meshtastic. Rabbit hole here I come.
Just note that many countries and cities are moving away from meshtastic to meshcore (same hardware, better protocol) due to scaling issues inherent in meshtastic
Australia is pretty much entirely meshcore apart from some abandoned derelict meshtastic nodes
I did see meshcore before I got into this stuff, but my issue is meshcore seems less resilient in lower density areas where there may not be many people investing in well positioned base stations. Almost all my typical use cases are very rural, where every possible node contact matters, and I do not have the money or physical access to set up enough of my own good base stations.
Meshcore nodes can all repeat messages now for the very circumstance you describe
This was a recent enhancement
…interesting… well, good thing it all uses the same hardware haha
However, if you are militant about open source, meshtastic is the only way to go, because for about a year, all the mesh core interface apps were closed source proprietary crapware, and some of the firmware for some of the devices is also proprietary.
Yeah that’s also a good point. I am sort of half militant about open source, for something as independent as a mesh network I definitely prefer it. I’ll stay on meshtastic for now I think.
Honestly, I’m getting more and more militant about open source. The longer things go on and I see the crazy shit that companies are trying to do.
For example, I’ve been running LineageOS on my phone without Google Play services since 2018, because I don’t want anything to do with the Google Play Store. But the fact that Google is now trying to keep all Google certified devices from installing third-party applications, what’s to stop them from bringing that to AOSP in the future? So now I’m seriously looking into getting a Linux smartphone, even if it’s not quite ready for daily driving yet.
I’ve been perfectly happy with lineage, but now I’m seriously looking into PostmarketOS. I’m perfectly aware that it’s going to be rough for a while, but somebody has to take the plunge and be willing to smooth out some of the rough edges for others.
Haha, you have stumbled right into the nerd trap. Guessing you’re here from the All page.
This is a community (!meshtastic@mander.xyz) for the Meshtastic project, a short instant messaging system via a mesh network built on unlicensed LoRa embedded radio hardware. Designed for pure peer to peer mesh networks to run totally off grid and allow local communication even when regular infrastructure goes down. They are very low power and the hardware is very inexpensive (the actual device inside this station cost less than $30) meaning many nodes can be deployed for network resilience.
Im not clear on what the network is used for
That’s fun the part - it’s used by nerds testing the network, sending “ping”. And others replying and setting up BBS systems.
Its messaging. Think SMS but local mesh. I’m going to use it for weather stations and being goofy with friends, but it’s also resilient in case the internet goes down, I’ll still be able to talk to other mesh users.
I’ll still be able to talk to other mesh users.
But you have to have other friends that you know who are mesh users, correct? It’s not like you can just go on and find people who you can communicate with, right? Or wrong? I want to use this and I want it to be a thing, but I don’t have one person I know who would be interested in doing this with me! lol
I live in a US city of half a million people, is there a use case for this or do you think it’s mostly for rural use?
There is a public channel that you can use to broadcast to everyone on the local mesh. My area mostly uses it for a pinboard to talk about hardware deployments but it’s gaining speed.
It actually works better in metros with denser mesh nets with lots of nodes, transmitting between nodes is more reliable that way.
Its main use is in direct messaging other nodes held by friends. Those nodes can also send telemetry back to the mesh like live GPS tracking, weather info, signal quality, etc. Nodes can also be set up like terminals or BBS systems that you message like a primitive internet thats more persistent than the IM system.
The big key is meshtastic uses commercial LoRa radio gear that is supported by other projects, like MeshCore or Reticulum. So you are not locked in to any one mesh system if you buy a LoRa radio kit.
Thank you!
