Meshtastic

I mean, your smartphone already knows how to talk on 600 megahertz, 700 megahertz, 800 megahertz, 1.7 gigahertz, 1.9 gigahertz, 2.1 gigahertz, 2.4 gigahertz, 3 gigahertz, 5 gigahertz, 6 gigahertz, etc. I see absolutely no reason it would be unable to talk on 915 megahertz.

I have been an amateur radio operator for quite a long time and am starting to look into meshtastic and the Lilygo T-Deck. However, their site asks me which version I would want. The 915 megahertz, the 860 megahertz, or the 433 megahertz. As an amateur radio person, the 433 MHz would be the lowest frequency and therefore should be the longest range, but is that the most popular model? Would I be missing out on nodes if I were to use 433 MHz instead of 860 or 915?

Supplemental video by the creator of the blog post: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ry-ck0fhfw

Received my first message from an airplane. Looking at it, there was a United Fight on it's way from Chicago to Cincinnati passing overhead when I got this.

Test, UA flight 808

I read through the Meshtastic firmware code and found the file variant.h for the Meshtastic-DIY-v1_1 build. Notice it’s not the DIY-v1. Instead v1_1. My understanding from that file is that I should be able to wire the following:

ESP32 WROOM-32 dev Pin,Core1262-868M Pin,Function

3V3,VCC,Power (3.3V)

GND,GND,Ground

18,SCK,SPI Clock

19,MISO,SPI Data In

23,MOSI,SPI Data Out

5,CS,SPI Chip Select

33,DIO1,LoRa IRQ

32,DIO2,LoRa BUSY

27,RESET,LoRa Reset

14,RXEN,RF switch RX control

13,TXEN,RF switch TX control

Unfortunately after building out the DIY_v1_1 firmware, wiring it up and flashing it I get thrown into a boot loop only after setting the region.

I will provide logs once I’m able to do so, just wanted to submit this while I had time. I’m curious if I was misunderstanding the compatibility with a Core1262-868M or if anyone has any tips. Thanks.

Update : I have it working

I recently bought 2 T-Echo Meshtastic devices directly from Lilygo.

Both devices on default settings seem to repeatedly corrupt their flashed firmware. Reflashing them will undo the brick for a couple days, and then it happens all over again.

I have yet to discover what exactly is causing this issue, but suspect it's beyond my expertise. For it to be happening on default settings, and simply by sitting on a desktop, seems pretty outrageous.

I don't want to share my location to the mesh. But I want the app to calculate how far other nodes are from my position. Is that possible? What options do I have to configure to make that happen?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.radio/post/4173930

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.radio/post/4173929

We'll walk you through adding a vibration motor module for notifications to your ESP32-based Meshtastic Node.

Sometimes when I go cycling I take a buddy or two and we sometimes get split, and i was thinking that having something to tell me how distant we were from each other would be cool. Yeah, there are apps that do that, but they arent foss, they send your location to who knows where, and they massively drain your battery. I saw that there are some varriants of lilygo devices with gps and a screen, but how practical are they really? How fast do they update? How is the battery? Is somewhere using them for a use case similar to this one?

Held together without any solder ^^

Uses an old phone battery for power and is housed in the box that the heltec v3 hardware was shipped in. Unfortunately I had to bend a row of pins to fit it in the box with the battery, but this is only because on my model the two rows of pins are already soldered in. Normally they should be included extra I think.

I am seeing lots of other meshtastic devices, but haven't yet managed to send a message. Maybe I am not in a good location or I need a better antenna.

Kinda want to buy a second device just for messing around with two of these ^^

I highly recommend buying off of aliexpress directly.

I got two T-Echo devices in the mail yesterday, and I've been configuring and playing with them nonstop.

I did notice some other nodes will pop up that have question marks (????) as their name, but they still can send messages. What typically causes a device to appear as unknown?

Is it possible to power the heltec v3 with NIMH batteries? Like maybe 4 in series (4.8v) or 3 in series (3.6v)?

Would it even charge them or is the charging only for li-ion battery packs like the 3.7v one that everyone suggests?

I don't want to buy it if I don't need it, I have old NIMH batteries in abundance and I'm not sure what my final setup should look like yet.

I’m now at a point where I can detect 152 nodes in my city. 25 are listed as “online.”

Yet the only contact I’ve gotten is the occasional “hello world” and once or twice a response to my own “hello world.”

It’s possible that nobody has anything to say, but I also suspect the network isn’t robust enough to maintain contact and facilitate a real conversation between random strangers.

Has anybody else here managed to actual chat with someone they don’t know?

Rak wireless module with battery/solar.

My question is…now what? I’m in Seattle, I can pick up 121 nodes, but there no traffic.

Is everybody using private channels? Or is nobody talking? I don’t see many messages and got one reply to a general CQ I sent out, but no response to the follow up.

I guess I was kind of hoping for what I get over ham radio, occasional chats, evening nets, etc.

Am I running into a technical limitation? Or is that the gist of Meshtastic?

As a follow-up, can I easily see if my router is handling other people’s traffic? I’d like to know if I’m helping.

The lilygo t deck is an all in one device that includes a LoRa antenna with a screen and keyboard for messaging people over long distances without any internet using the open source end to end encrypted software Meshtastic.

The video is way longer than it needs to be but you can see the device in action. There’s a growing community of people making meshnets using Meshtastic in different cities.

Looks like you are my first contact off mqtt.

No direct contracts yet but I have been playing with MQTT.

I've had difficulty finding them locally and there can be restrictions on purchasing them internationally.

image link

The cheaper v3 and more talk on youtube finally pushed me to order a LoRa board.