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Right, I was more thinking a mesh network solar operated to let people report their location and status across rough terrain. I may try making a few of these ov

Right, I was more thinking a mesh network solar operated to let people report their location and status across rough terrain. I may try making a few of these over the year for next hunting season, and place them in a mile or so radius from basecamp for the duration of my trip, anyways. That way we could split up but still maintain contact, get help if we shoot an elk, etc. We're definitely outside direct walkie-talkie range, and I'm in the only one in the group with a HAM, so this could be pretty useful.

bigiain 6y ago
A few points you might be interested in... The project (mostly) assumes one device per person. Each user carries a tBeam (or one of the other available boards) and Bluetooth connects it to an android phone. The devices mesh with each other, and the phone is used as the interface, with a map view and a messaging view. Meshtastic automatically sends each nodes location (at a fairly low default update rate, but you can configure that). There’s a “repeater node” functionality, so a node at base camp or on the highest local terrain can improve the connect ability of the mesh. There’s also a group of people on the forum experimenting with solar power solutions for these nodes, so there’s a fair bit of reported experimental data on solar panel size vs battery capacity vs device runtime (which is all trickier that almost everybody assumes before they’ve tried to do that in real life. “Specs” for solar panels, battery charging controllers, batteries, and even Meshtastic device power consumptions all have way way bigger error bars that most people expects...)
- cozzyd 6y ago
  A repeater would have to handle all possible LoRa channels someone might use, right? Most likely it would have more complex hardware (e.g. something like this: https://www.adafruit.com/product/4284 https://www.adafruit.com/product/4284)
  - bigiain 6y ago
    I haven't looks deeply into Meshtastic's repeater mode, but it runs on the same hardware as regular nodes. (None of my current personal experimental use cases call for repeaters.) What I do recall is it can "repeat" encrypted "channels" by just replaying the encrypted packets without having any keys to read them (I think there's some very minor metadata in the unencrypted part of the packets, perhaps just a hop count?) Also note that "channels" in Meshtastic are not frequencies like in typical UHF terminology - but pre shared encryption keys. I _vaguely_ recall maybe they get used to seed freq hopping algorithms (but I might be misremembering that). I think the big difference between "repeater nodes" and regular nodes is that the repeater settings shut down the GPS because its unnecessary power draw (on the assumption you know where you installed a repeater node), and participate in the mesh in a "hidden" way, so they don't show up as members you could communicate with.

bigiain 6y ago

A few points you might be interested in... The project (mostly) assumes one device per person. Each user carries a tBeam (or one of the other available boards) and Bluetooth connects it to an android phone. The devices mesh with each other, and the phone is used as the interface, with a map view and a messaging view. Meshtastic automatically sends each nodes location (at a fairly low default update rate, but you can configure that). There’s a “repeater node” functionality, so a node at base camp or on the highest local terrain can improve the connect ability of the mesh. There’s also a group of people on the forum experimenting with solar power solutions for these nodes, so there’s a fair bit of reported experimental data on solar panel size vs battery capacity vs device runtime (which is all trickier that almost everybody assumes before they’ve tried to do that in real life. “Specs” for solar panels, battery charging controllers, batteries, and even Meshtastic device power consumptions all have way way bigger error bars that most people expects...)

cozzyd 6y ago
A repeater would have to handle all possible LoRa channels someone might use, right? Most likely it would have more complex hardware (e.g. something like this: https://www.adafruit.com/product/4284 https://www.adafruit.com/product/4284)
- bigiain 6y ago
  I haven't looks deeply into Meshtastic's repeater mode, but it runs on the same hardware as regular nodes. (None of my current personal experimental use cases call for repeaters.) What I do recall is it can "repeat" encrypted "channels" by just replaying the encrypted packets without having any keys to read them (I think there's some very minor metadata in the unencrypted part of the packets, perhaps just a hop count?) Also note that "channels" in Meshtastic are not frequencies like in typical UHF terminology - but pre shared encryption keys. I _vaguely_ recall maybe they get used to seed freq hopping algorithms (but I might be misremembering that). I think the big difference between "repeater nodes" and regular nodes is that the repeater settings shut down the GPS because its unnecessary power draw (on the assumption you know where you installed a repeater node), and participate in the mesh in a "hidden" way, so they don't show up as members you could communicate with.