Meshtastic LORA nodes. Anyone playing?

[rogersmithiii]

Thinking of ordering a couple of these, and encouraging folks to put up some nodes. The technology sounds interesting, and best of all for hams, it's cheap.

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/2255800992363816.html?aff_fcid=cc1f9803ffbe414a934aff963005bdc6-1708120607279-08194-_9RmIP9&tt=CPS_NORMAL&aff_fsk=_9RmIP9&aff_platform=portals-tool&sk=_9RmIP9&aff_trace_key=cc1f9803ffbe414a934aff963005bdc6-1708120607279-08194-_9RmIP9&terminal_id=b9a8422044644602be48dd9b0f69bbf5&afSmartRedirect=y&gatewayAdapt=glo2usa4itemAdapt

Is anyone messing around with this?

 

[Admin]

I am waiting on some 1watt units to get made. I have a bunch a couple t-beam supremes, and a few of the wisblock versions. If I remember correctly the t-beam supremes have a little more power than the regular t-beam. Its like 100mw vs 160mw or something to that effect.. The wisblocks are great for repeaters because they use a lot less battery than the t-beams. Rokland is a pretty popular place to buy meshtastic devices, when they run out of stock they usually have more within a week or two.

The stock antennas they come with are usually crap. I got some from Mouser that have pretty decent swr.



I am going to attempt to build a network on my road and across 4 miles of woods to my bestie's house. We will see.

 

[natf]

I've got a few Lilygo T-Beam v1.1 but the stock antennas were so bad I haven't used them for my original purpose. I've got a small group of people in the Nashua area that are putting up their own meshtastic nodes so my interest has been peaked again.

 

[ToddDubya]

Knowing very little about this. Is there a public system you can be part of or are these all private/semi-private?

 

[Admin]

Knowing very little about this. Is there a public system you can be part of or are these all private/semi-private?

If you want to be on the public mesh you can, that uses internet. If you want it completely off grid and run encrypted channels to your mesh radios/repeaters you can do that too, 915mhz. I do the latter.

Here is a video explaining how the map works. It's pretty new and only displays radios with MQTT enabled so guys like me wont have their radios show up on this map. I know in Europe there are some decent networks in some cities. I dont have a need for that, I am using this as another backup communication method.

 

[rogersmithiii]

Seeing how 800 mhz police systems are horribly short range, I'm leery about doing anything on the 900 mhz band that seems to be the default in the US.

My interest is having a back up to the Internet and cell phone data world in case the SHTF. I think that would be a good ham radio project for our community.

 

[ToddDubya]

I checked out that Meshmap.net. Nobody anywhere near here.

I remember seeing the video he mentioned from a couple years ago. I thought it was cool then, but I've never come up with an application for it.

 

[Admin]

I checked out that Meshmap.net. Nobody anywhere near here.

I remember seeing the video he mentioned from a couple years ago. I thought it was cool then, but I've never come up with an application for it.

It was never intended to be hooked to the internet. That isn't its purpose. I honestly dont know why they used precious development time on it. I know a handful of people with these radios, nobody uses the internet/location/map feature.

Not sure why anyone would want to use bandwidth/battery on random public traffic anyways.

 

[ToddDubya]

I just watched this video from Radio Prepper. He shows a 25km contact point to point. That seems crazy, but maybe.

I'm not a fan of the Chinese ebays. Last time I bought from one I started getting fraudulent charges on my credit card. I don't have a use case for this at the moment, but if you can really get that kind of range, maybe.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFvK585guZw

 

[Admin]

I just watched this video from Radio Prepper. He shows a 25km contact point to point. That seems crazy, but maybe.

I'm not a fan of the Chinese ebays. Last time I bought from one I started getting fraudulent charges on my credit card. I don't have a use case for this at the moment, but if you can really get that kind of range, maybe.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFvK585guZw

Get them from Rokland, if they are out of stock they get them in quick. Authorized ALFA Network Distributor & Retailer of LoRa Solutions

 

[ToddDubya]

Get them from Rokland, if they are out of stock they get them in quick. Authorized ALFA Network Distributor & Retailer of LoRa Solutions

Yeah, I was checking them out. I gotta get familiar with the tech and what these various companies offer because right now a lot of it is word salad to me.

I'm interested in what you can get for range with repeaters. If you hoisted one way up in a tree would that help? I'd think yes and no, and maybe seasonal with leaves.

 

[Admin]

Yeah, I was checking them out. I gotta get familiar with the tech and what these various companies offer because right now a lot of it is word salad to me.

I'm interested in what you can get for range with repeaters. If you hoisted one way up in a tree would that help? I'd think yes and no, and maybe seasonal with leaves.

From what I've seen with other guys building their network in the woods as usual with radios, the higher the better. When I get to mounting my repeaters I'm going to try and mount them on the pines that have limb gaps at the top. Two repeaters pushing traffic between each other both mounted as high as you can get will have a much better chance, than one high and one low.

Once it warms up and we start setting up our network, I will post what works and what doesnt for us.

 

[ToddDubya]

Today would have been a good use for it if you lost service. Or even if you didn't just to test it out in an "event".

 

[Admin]

Today would have been a good use for it if you lost service. Or even if you didn't just to test it out in an "event".

From the meshtastic FB group.

 

[Xringer]

I'm on Meshtastic in West Woburn. I've seen a couple of nodes up around Northboro and Dracut. Intermittently. (12 to 14 miles).
Took a portable node up Horn Pond Hill to listen to Boston. Nothing heard.
I'm using T-Beams. 2 portable (CCI cases) and one on the hardline to a good antenna.

 

[Xringer]

I got message here this morning that I replied to. It's got so much good information for newbies, I'm reposting my reply here.

This site has a lot of information. Introduction | Meshtastic
The YouTube Comms Channel is where I started.
View: https://youtu.be/ZsIWyVzqJPM?si=uo34YnTD-wZSaWW3


I used the cheap T-beam nodes (But not the stock antennas). Got some from China for the portable nodes. Took 11 days.
https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804421300249.html

Some of the antennas on Amazon don't work on 915. I got my base station antenna from Rokland in Florida. It's great.
9 dBi Low Profile N-Male Omni Outdoor 915 MHz Antenna for Helium Sense

Because of the cell outage, a lot of hardware is out of stock.

I'm going to buy another Node that has more LoRa range, for my base station.
So far, there are not very many nodes running in MA or NH. But, there is so much interest, I'm sure there will be a lot more 'repeater' nodes on soon.
My antenna is block to the south, (big hill) so I can't hear anything from the Boston area. (MIT kids etc).
But new MA nodes are coming soon, per facebook. Log into Facebook
Here's the USA FB guys. Log into Facebook

 

[mcb]

Another video with some good info

View: https://youtu.be/40llxjrIG3w?si=8KMGRXxGc8VfDTdQ