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…
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.
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.
Like…the old school BBS stuff? I thought there was texting and maybe email? Not sure as I am learning too. I’ve used BBSes in the past.
Meshtastic is basically just texting, but there are nodes people setup for BBS purposes.
Its like a worse pager system. But it does not use the internet or anything centralized. It makes it look like texting on apps.
Yes, I’m digging the disconnected part, so I am interested. I am looking deeper at self-hosted processes and if they can be provided in a way other than the internet, all the better. Any recommendations on hardware? Looking for base station and portable when I am comfortable knowledge-wise. Any site better than another to source it? Can’t/won’t do amazon.
I usually direct people over to
helteks because they are cheap and you can get 2 of them in the same box. For more info you can check out the official meshtastic site.Or check out https://rootaccess.org/wiki/Meshtastic/rev447/#-quickstart
If you go with the defaults at least at first, you can see if its something you want to invest your time into. Worst case, you have a couple of these things you can give out to a couple of ham friends. You can go pretty deep with the hobby, but its fun (in my opinion).
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!
This is my primary interest an independent resilient internet sounds very interesting.
Meshtastic is messaging only, not really an internet replacement- someone else in this thread mentioned Reticulum as a true networking layer run over LoRa and other hardware layers, might be more your speed.
You got my uovote before I even read the post, just for “blackjack and hookers”.
Party on Bender!
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/
I enjoy that you mounted a butt plug to your poop vent.
Flared base and very girthy
I’ve been looking into Reticulum to build a resilient network that includes lora.
Hmm, very interesting. Being able to run true data over LoRa or any other radio/comm method is definitely cool but not really that useful to me I think, it’s a little too flexible. I need more of a set-and-forget service that I realistically only use for text messages. The more complex the setup, the less likely me or any of my friends are to actually adopt it- and I’m not that crazy of a digital prepper lol.
Never done meshtastic, but I do a little amateur radio. For a high gain antenna, do you just experiment with where it’s pointing, or do you point towards something in particular?
Depends on the orientation of the gain. Most “high gain” antennas are still omnidirectional, they’re just focusing the signal out into a horizontal ring, like so:
More dB, and you get a flatter donut with more horizontal reach at the expense of vertical reception. Low-gain antennas reception area starts to approach a sphere, so those don’t need to pointed up for best signal as much as higher-gain omnidirectional antennas.
Directional antennas are the ones that need to be pointed at something specific, as they have more of a cone of effect depending on the dB:
Its an omnidirectional “high gain” which is why it’s in quotes.
You can use yagi or dish directionals, but they’re a lot more difficult because 915mhz is fairly long wavelength and the antennas get big. I’d have to know the location of known good repeaters to know what to aim it at.
hey not for nothing but the clamp to a vent pipe is clever and I’m gonna use it.
Yeah, it’s very easy for anything lightweight or not too tall. Obvs these vent pipes are not anchored super well, but if you’re using something strong like a fence pole and 2 clamps at a time, you could easily hold a 4ft aerial.
My design advice, make the clamp circle the exact size of the pipe you want to attach to. The fixed side (housing) should be an exact half circle. The moving side (clamp) should be less than a half circle such that there is about 1/8" or 3mm gap between the clamp face and the housing side face. That way you get a really nice compression by stretching the plastic when you tighten the screws and it will not slip.
Is it grounded in any way? That thing is screaming Thor’s name in that pic.
Not really? I guess the device is probably grounded via the negative wire but the casing is plastic and it’s not remotely the tallest thing in the neighborhood. Hell it’s not even the tallest thing on my roof. And there’s a mountain right behind me.
Have you never seen Casshern, mountain tops are geographically directly above you, and some dramatic character can just drop a comic book lightning bolt straight down and hit you
It’s Dark Souls 2 geography rulesMy god, you’re right, I will invest $500 in a full size lightning rod system asap
Anything is a dildo if you’re brave enough.
Get a 1W RAK!
Considering! Are those booster modules us legal?
US-legal yes. We use them in Canada as well but I haven’t checked if they’re legal here. They can be configured to tx at lower power. Their rx stage is also more sensitive so they’re approx balanced with the 1W tx.
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.
Yeah, after thinking about it 1w will probably be overkill, since the two places I can run base stations right now are not very well located. If I get a chance to put one on a hilltop I might go 1w with a big antenna for receive performance, but not right now.
Please do some proper cable management without duct tape. Especially on the roof, this is now very prone to be hit by a lightning.
Lol bit of a niche risk in most places.
Hey now, I forgot to bring zip ties. It’s what I had.
Also, my lightning risk is very low here, there is a mountain behind me and there are taller houses around me. Hell, this device isn’t even the tallest or least grounded thing on my own roof.
Do you have solar setup or is it direct connect within the house?
Direct connect, I have a 5v PSU plugged in under the eaves on the back deck. I was going to do solar but have no way to manage a battery without getting different hardware. Will do that later.
