I have a Heltec V3 in my loft of my bungalow, attached to a dipole anttena, I am about ten miles inland from Skegness, my set name is QTH and I got a signal from AH03 (AH TEcho 03) and he is 351 miles from me in Luxemburg on a single hop.
I think Meshtastic is now starting to encounter what APRS went through in the 90s. Large meshes will probably have to implement similar “short packet life” like the APRS WIDE2-1, and filter MQTT-sourced packets from repeating/rebroadcasting.
@@JD_fpv It's really a holdover from the IoT genesis of all these LoRA devices. I think it'll be fin ein the long run, APRS-IS gives us a ton of fantastic functionality, but we'll have to implement some fairly strict routing standards.
Hi Dave. The case is just one of my own creations. The BME is the 5v version. I've got 4x of these now fitted across a few different LoRa boards, and they all work flawlessly.
Question - you showed the BME280 that requires 5V for power. However, the Heltec v3 is powered by 3.3v (max 4.1v). Is there any loss of accuracy since the BME280 isn’t running at the 5V it’s expecting?
What is that Facebook group, and would I be able to join? Im in the US, and I would like to get a network setup here. I figure I could listen in to your group to see what works and doesnt. I currently have 3 T-beams, and 1 T-deck.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but default is 3 hops, max is 7... I mean there's even a feature in code that corrects you if it's more than 7 and it's been a standard since quite a while and I couldn't reproduce that 5 hops thing on any release... Don't want to be rude, but 5 sounds a bit unreasonable to me. But the bedroom lamp analogy is well done :)
You're not wrong. Max is certainly 7. Default is 3. But I can hand on heart say when I went through the defaults after a full chip erase FW upgrade, the hop limit was set to 5 as I mentioned in the clip. I have no explanation for that.
@@JD_fpv At 5:41 in your video, you change the config to 5 and state that it was changed in 2.2.21. It wasn't, it's been 3 for four years according to the firmware code on GitHub.
@@JD_fpv It has been 3 by default since the beginning. It has never been set to 5. From the code: /// We normally just use max 3 hops for sending reliable messages #define HOP_RELIABLE 3 It has always been that. Not a big deal but wanted to mention it in case someone thinks it is 5. I flashed 2.2.21 onto a heltec V3 and it is still 3.
Well, y'knos what even with the line of sight thing in mind, i cant get a single km between two v3. Will try as soon as i can placing repeaters in peaks, but still, just between two nodes each at the opposite of a street, the max i could do was 250m (woth elevation).
Hey Jim, nice video, just to add some detail that you may not be aware of. Down south of Wales is a tall node with a big antenna in Pontypool (south). This is set to repeater mode when you were testing, which will not show in your traceroutes (or node list). The route you would certainly have taken would be through this node to all our Wales and West mesh, which is connecting up cardiff, Cheltenham, Bristol, Taunton, and some parts of Devon. We regularly see 100km+ connections, and unfortunately dramatically reduces the mesh performance down here because of this! I've seen you in the nodes list, I'll say hello next time I see you on! :)
Ah ok, thanks for the info. I regularly connect to Bristol and Newport with ease. But never Taunton until I went to the Malverns. (25 miles south of where I usually operate) so that might explain why I saw Taunton. I didn't see any additional Welsh nodes though, which I would have expected through the pontypool repeater?
There are also pliers with a small handle on the base you can pull out - this will spin around the wires while grabbed into the jaws As for twisting helping - apparently yes! I was going to debate that these aren't differential signals but apparently it doesn't matter. These circuits still benefit from using twists to make the noise common mode over Signal and Ground just the same as Signal+ / Signal-
So the BME is inside the case, but the case itself is not airtight. The push button underneath is not waterproof/airtight and allows atmospheric change within the case. The button is recessed in a mount which prevents water ingress. Unless submerged, water is not getting in.
This is great, I wonder what other applications tying sensors into the mesh could have. If air quality monitors could be used in place of barometers then I can imagine this being used by grassroots groups to deploy area-wide pollution monitoring across a town. Moisture sensors could make an off-grid early warning system for a flood-prone community. There's so much potential.
Your link is for the 5v board, but these devices have a logic level of 3.3v right? It would be unwise to overload them with 5v, they may not all tolerate the overvoltage. But besides that absolutely great video thank you! :-D
I was just thinking about this - the boards I can see have 2 models a 3V and 5V - I am using 3V for a gps module, so I guess using the clear 5V pin would be simple
@@recom273 There's a 5v power pin as well as a 3.3v power pin, it's there so the board can share it's 5v input power with other devices, but the logic level inputs on the ESP32 expect 3.3v, so that's what I'd stick with 😃
Nice vid! Can you give us a breakdown of your handheld 3D printed case. I know what it's modeled after, just not with the window for the heltec and such. Possibly post the STL from the model? Thanks and keep up the great information and range testing!!
Thank you for the video, just ordered one I'm going to give this a go, once we have the UK covered imagine harvisting that data to a database would be one amazing weather app!!
Thanks for an interesting video. I ordered a Heltec VSP32 LoRa yesterday, so I a total novice. I am guessing that a node remains in a permanent place and constantly transmits (or retransmits?) a signal. Is the Maidenhead locator system used? My amateur call sign is M0BOB. Cheers.
Nice going. I see you have similar hobbies. I do a bit of 3d printing and RC flying. I also have the dancing wings eagle. Waiting on my devices to arrive from the far East.
What I should have done was used my NanoVNA before I went out. Aerial was stamped 868 but tuned for 915. Also can't help but wonder if I should have done the Wrekin again
Well done to you & Chris for getting up on the malverns. It was great fun to be part of the day in pretty dire weather conditions for the most part. Onwards to the next adventure. 👍
In my experiments on UHF (446) + 70 CMS I've found moving feet sometimes CMS lol can make all the difference..even in the house..topography is king along with height...I can only imagine the 800 megs is strange along with (if)any propagation ...summer should interesting on your band
