EMERGENCY MESH NETWORKING USING DRONES!!! 

Its so light why not attach it to a small, tethered helium balloon. Should remain aloft for quite a while. Three spaced guys would help it stay in position quite well, and back each other up in case one broke.

You could attach a Moxon antenna (directional) and orient it toward the front of the drone. That way you could point-and-shoot your signal with some gain in a particular direction. The good thing about the Moxon is that while it is directional, it's not extremely directional (so there is some omni possible).

It would be really interesting to see the mesh range between two drones at 100m. 🎉

meshtastic on a kite...

It be cool to experiment with a weather balloon I don’t think there’s a height restriction for one of those, but I might be wrong

Use a balloon with 100 mts of string.. no noise from motors and will stay up far longer than any drone... 👍🏻

In the emergency idea multiple people popping up drones in a given cataclysm would probably work very well.

I envision a drone built with the radio hardware built in. It would be designed as a tethered drone so it wouldn't need batteries or the directional control radio components. The base anchor would be it's battery to anchor it and provide endless power. The base would also have a solar panel to charge the battery during the day. If enough days without sunshine occured these radio drones would land until their battery was charged again from the sun. With an array of these we could have a semi permanent network established and it could function much as the Internet does today. Servers could also be built into these anchor bases to provide more functionality than simply radio alone.

I've been doing similar experiments but with more expensive Mesh capable radios. The filtering on these are night and day difference compared to these Lora boards. I expect if you put a fairly sharp filter before the antenna you'd get better results. There is a lot of electrical noise on these drones, especially when you're sandwiched between 4 motors. Maybe try again with the Lora radio dangling a couple of meters below on some string.

Hi Andy, I'm a VE, and have several meshtastics, and on the ground in a suburb could not get over 600 meters if I was lucky. But at height, its another story. I'm in Aviation and I'm looking at getting some operators to mount one inside their aircraft with an external antenna. Several of these in a remote area flying around would behave like satelite passes. Maybe we can chat sometime Great vido Thankyou

Hi Andy, you and your mate (Ringway Manchester) got me hooked. Bought a kit last week. A bit disappointed to find that very few users near me. (Rhymney, near Merthyr Tydfil) However, I did get ONE contact, from 38 miles away, with no other node involved. Sounds unbelievable, but it was a channel called SPD3, and info I got was MAN to Porto Ryan Air FR117. explains his message that he was at 35000 feet over Bridgwater. So, Height really does matter !!!!! :-)

would be a great use for a helium ballon to give longer endurance

A few years ago, there was an earthquake that heavily effected and area (forget where it was). They were trying to clear out a collapsed building and find survivors but couldn't put up a light tower because the terrain was in bad shape. So the brought up a huge drone that had flood lights on it and a long, large cable to supply power to it and sent it up to act as a light source in the middle of the night while crews worked. Put some networking capabilities in there and I can see it being FANTASTIC to maybe have people trapped under rubble be able to send out messages (if they're aware and their phones are okay) to let workers zero in on them.

This reminds me of Spiderman 2, where they built an entire network using drones. It also makes me think of ClusterDuck from the OWL project. It'd be cool to attach a meshtastic device, an intermediary battery, and a small solar panel on a mid-sized drone and instantly have them build a network.

Love this idea. reminds me of an emergency mesh network for hurricanes I seen a while back. they were little floating mesh nodes.

I built a heltec into a 2m wingspan plane, the issues were mostly interference related because of all the other broadcast on the drone. So the fix was a larger aircraft to separate out antennas and frequencies. I’m still testing range, using the “known only” on long fast, I got about five miles until it started raining so I think this works well to provide temporary coverage to a specific area but to make it work you really need a long range plane that can stay airborne for a few hours.

Love your experiments and toys... living the dream Andy!

Great video again mate. This is definitely a first experiment on RU-vid. By the way, got the Potensic on your recommendation and absolutely love it

Fantastic way of having more secure comms in times of unrest.

Could also just do a large helium balloon on a tether

Either the frame rate or the shutter speed you have set in the video settings for the camera you use when sat down indoors, makes your videos look laggy. Thought it was worth mentioning for you to sort out. Love the vids Andy, can't believe you make the music at the end of the vids too ! Keep em coming man!

Thank You! From Frisco, TX

Great to see you see u still having fun mate. And a drone back on the channel 😉😁

I also raised my node t-echo to a height of about 50m. it helped to contact a friend at a distance of 15 km

In my thinking a balloon wouldn’t have any electrical interference as a drone might have. A balloon could stay up for extended periods of time as well. A weather type balloon tethered with a winch line would provide some control and make for easy retrieval. Sure gets the imagination going in terms of possible applications.

Fantastic!

Very cool Andy... I always wondered if you could put a ham repeater up on a drone or on a helium balloon... I have also wondered if it would be possible to put a ham repeater up one of those power windmill things? Or would the electronics interfere with it?

INVENTIVE & DYNAMIC VERY INTERESTING EXPERIMENTATION ... THX ANDY

Oh I'm definitely trying this

I'd like to think my comment the other week inspired this ;-)

Good stuff Andy, I'll check out those drones, love the music by the way too. There was one a while back (think it was during some range test on the ebike?) which I loved and played on repeat for a bit but can't remember what it was called now!

Hmm, good idea. I have mine talking to each other they work great so far, but I haven't seen others yet. I may try this as I have only the stock antennas on my heltec v3s

Nice video.

Do an overhead wired power (tethered) drone setup with one!!! I have some elevation obstructions with getting my mesh network to reach family 3 miles away. Was just thinking last night of doing this with my power tethered DJI drone, which is wired from my 25’ high roof peak to 30’ over the that and is currently fitted with 2 analog video camera as well as the dji digital camera video. I got one low light RunCam Night Eagle 3 fpv camera that has great night vision. AND SECOND!!!!…. an analog 256x192 25hz thermal camera! With video signal fed to a Flytron fpv video multiplexer which can configure up to 4 analog video signals into 1 output which then goes to the transmitter so I can view both video feeds on one monitor and adjust each videos placement on the monitor or switch between them (like old picture-in-picture TV’s). So if needed I can have a monitor on the table next to me with a live aerial view of my house and yard and any creature or person would stick out like a sore thumb. Or if an emergency and I ever needed to hunt for survival I can drive the backroads, throw up the thermal drone, and quickly spot some deer. Actually maybe using the DJI follow me function I could drive around with a giant drone antenna off my truck LOL.

Hey Andy! Great video. I actually am in the process of creating a high loiter time efficient drone that I hope will be able to replicate your project while using a fixed wing platform!

I would wonder if the video signal from the drone might desensitize the mesh receiver you taped to it. It would transmit fine but chances are that its receive performance would not be too flash.

I bet on the top 12mtr carp pole would be good, or helium balloons on string perhaps? (Loving the Euphoric Trance btw x)

ISM devices - a great way to experiment with airborne use, which is not (yet) allowed on any amateur band regardless of licence grade.

Attack of the drones

I can see something like this working out better on a fixed wing craft, something that can loiter for hours on end in the air.

Andy you should do a video on Pwnagotchi ,that would be interesting

And I thought I was being smart by making a standalone device with a small external antenna and sticking up one of the local hills for a few days. Problem is the trees are big boys so I'd only get 180 degrees, but I should be able to use it as a repeater to home?

😎 cool video

I did the drone test over the weekend using a Heltec under the drone trailing the antenna. @250’ Bluetooth stopped working, used another Heltec on the ground to beacon to the drone at 400’ but only got “Implicent ACK from another node” - My wife who was ~6 miles away never received the message.

I wonder if you fly the drone away from you so its not directly above you. The motors gotta be making all kinds of magnetic noise that might be blocking. Or if you could attach the node to the underside of the drone by a string to get it away from the motors and get better line of sight. to the drone node and there for bounce to you distant node.

Balloons m8 balloons or a kite cheers

Our partners are very tolerant 😅

hi Andy, im only near the beginning of your video, but i would give it a try with the Meshtastic device mounted on the underside of the drone, I know this means you would need to hand launch it but i feel you will notice a difference, cool video i wonder if you could pick up a little dish antenna for that frequency, like how you can get the little gps dish antenna's. regards Richard 2E0DVK P.s i got my Twizy because of what your videos where you did things with yours i love it its great... I have some ideas on the horizon for the Twizy would love to speak to you about them sometime, thanks Andy

How about launching a Pico Balloon? You might mesh the globe, BEFORE ITS SHOT DOWN!

How hard is it to connect to the drone node with your local device? Since the signal is stronger perpendicular to the antenna, would there be issue trying to connect from directly below the drone? I would definitely orient my ground device on its side, but the drone one, you would want vertical for range, right? Is communication between them an issue at all then? I have no experience trying to connect to a node above me, though I am intrigued to try this. A great idea for trying out.

BTW, those stock antennas are very often shit for SWR. Sometimes, they aren't even tuned for the right bands.

Fimware is a thing yer gov asked for. Updates no-go zones before takeoff.

try hanging it from the drone, the motors and ESCs are probably very RF noisy

Wonder how small you could scale a Loon ( googles balloon project) to act as a meshstatic node ????

Instead of a drone, how about a tethered helium balloon? It doesn't have to be a large weather baloon, just something large enough to lift a node. Hmm, makes me think... 73, Jan M7HNK

Could they be solar charged in a high spot with a solar panel from one or two cheap led lights.or panel..lol....

Would be interesting to create a “from drone to drone” link and test the range that way. Also food for thoughts Andy. 😊 73 de Kevin, VK4KK P.S. it seems like you are not afraid of 138. 🎵

Looks like its throwing out some EMI, QRM When your mesh network is active is it noisy on hf/vhf/uhf etc? Play with some filtering maybe

I was going to ask I’ve got a kite that I used for Kite aerial photography , it would be interesting to put one of these on It can go hundreds of feet in the air

With the beanie on I thought you were the northern hardman Rich Horsley😂😂

Hi! Very nice video, I've got one question however. How well does meshtastic deal with time air time restrictions in the ISM band? I believe in Europe we've got maximum of 10% duty cycle on 869.4mhz and it's even lower with other frequencies. Have you ever been "rate limited"? I recall watching other youtube video where someone said in Europe, meshtastic app will limit transmission time for every hour. Apparently there are no such restrictions in the USA on 915mhz.

This is on the list of things to do as well, great video mate.

Interesting video thanks very much ! I think you decided on the 868MHz for your nodes. Question... Did you consider the 433MHz band too? Of course, that's one of the "problems" of setting up a general network in that there are two viable ISM frequencies in the UK.

What about a couple of balloons to send 1 up bro! 😎

Funny idea. Did I understand correctly that the drone flew about 50m high? Don't you have to connect via bluetooth, which is limited to like 10-20 meters?

What drone are you using?

what model drone was that?

getting my kites out :) iv put small wifi kit on kites before de m6pnp

Tethered hydrogen or helium balloon. Just saying cheap easy.

hear me out… tethered balloon

I had best results with lora tbeam in 433 MHz with upgraded fpv dipole antenna on a 6in feed ,really isnt fcc legal on that band i believe. At 400 ft i was able to transmit alot further than i could receive, but still good results.

Drones at both ends?

Is that coffee or tea?

KITES :)

And here’s you and me chatting about the flying bug not that long ago…. I’m have to bug you for the deets of that lil wuadX

be careful, drone + node weight will take you out of the sub-250g category.

I'm sure somebody already asked, but... "Might it work better better hanging under the drone?"

Two words: Tethered Drone.

Just use a kite or balloon. Can stay up longer.

try a helium balloon

Cmon! Tell us the battery life!

Height + Antenna + Line of Sight (no hills and mountains)

Im sure distance records could be broken by putting a device on a weather balloon and sending it to space

Dude...c'mon. You can't figure this out? I fly a DJI that I haven't had to update in several years because...wait for it...I keep the tablet in airplane mode. 🙄 But that's because I use a drone that has its own RC tx/rx freq and not on wifi. Been skipping firmware updates for at least 3 years. LOL

I was just thinking ( yeah...I know lol ), what's to stop anyone from attaching a mesh to a kite ? Has anyone actually tried it ?

Isn't your drones transmitter sending video on 2.4g as well....?....That would screw up your mesh device for sure...😳😳🇬🇧

Make a separate music channel.

Not mesh question could it be possible to use a drone to raise antenna say for example CB radio to improve. Distance of a handheld CB radio

The video started, and we began a rave. Then it stopped immediately and we were sad.

👍👍👍👍👍👍🫶👍👍👍👍👍👍

Almost all drones are Chinese

Dumb idea unless a drone can stay up thier for days at a time.