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ArjinFerman  Tinfoil Gigachad  1mo ago (text post)   636 thread views

Tinker Tuesday for October 15, 2024

This thread is for anyone working on personal projects to share their progress, and hold themselves somewhat accountable to a group of peers.

Post your project, your progress from last week, and what you hope to accomplish this week.

If you want to be pinged with a reminder asking about your project, let me know, and I'll harass you each week until you cancel the service.

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I recently bought a Meshtastic board, a Heltec v3. For those who aren't familiar, this is a license-free low-bandwidth LoRA (long range-radio) device that can reach out very long distances on minimal power. The Meshtastic platform is a peer-to-peer network that supports text and data communication, the most notable part being that each device on the network is a node that receives and re-transmits messages to other nodes around them. In areas with good coverage, it means that you can potentially send messages to someone several hundred miles away from a board the size of a pack of gum.

I'm in a metropolitan area but at the base of a hill and don't have a very good connection to the rest of the nodes in my area. If I had the space, I would make a solar node (enclosure, solar panel, charge controller, battery, Meshtastic board, and antenna) and mount it on the roof, but unfortunately I live in an apartment and can't quite do that. However, if I find a good spot in the future, I might perform a guerilla installation somewhere nearby. Ideally it would be somewhere I frequent, since I would need Wifi or Bluetooth to connect to the node with my phone.

You can find a Meshtastic kit on Aliexpress for maybe $35 shipped, I would highly encourage anyone with even a passing interest in radio to pick one up and play around with it for a weekend.

The Heltec v3s are really nice boards, whether you want to use them in a Meshtastic setup or just for direct Arduino programming. The API for the latter is a little rough, but unfortunately pretty much every LoRA board is like that given the underlying chips. Only big complaint is that the external antenna cable placement sucks: there's no good way to just zip tie some strain relief in place, so if you end up wanting to use the external antenna (and you should!), either use some potting compound (if permanent), silicone rubber (if semi-permanent) or hot glue (otherwise) the thing into place or it will inevitably work its way loose.

A number of the Heltec CubeCell boards have a built-in solar charge circuit. I'm most familiar with the AB02S, but I think you can get displayless and GPS-less versions with the same capability with options like the AB01. Much more annoying to develop with, given the lack of display, though.

If you're interested in guerilla installs, I'd also look at the LilyGo T-Beams. Including both an 18650 battery slot out of the box is really convenient and a lot more robust than those tiny JST-SH battery leads on Heltec boards (and most competitors like Adafruit offerings). And you can get the simpler version cheap. Avoid other LilyGo equipment, though; the LilyGo TTGO boards are famously bad for batteries.

Very nice!

I've idly wondered before how hard something like Meshtastic would be, so this has definitely got me interested.

How did you choose the Heltec v3 over the many other options?

Are "guerilla installations" common in the Meshtastic community?

It's not difficult at all to get a board connected to your phone (via bluetooth) or home wifi network. About an hour or two of tinkering should get you up and running. If your home is located at a good vantage point and in a populated area, you should be able to connect to other folks quite easily, otherwise you might have to try going up a hill, or mounting the device outside. I use a portable USB battery pack to power it up on the go.

This was a month or two already, but when I was searching around online it seemed like the Heltec v3 was the cheapest and most popular product available that came with a case and antenna, so I figured to jump on the bandwagon. Worst case you'd be $20 in the hole. Make sure you get the one with the correct frequency for your country.

Not sure how many guerilla Meshtastic installations there are out there! If you ever run into any issues you might have to take it down so it needs to be at least somewhat accessible.

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