@@GeerlingEngineering Simple question...If your dad would design a shtf-comm system...how would he design it???.... for example a pi that transmits data on the CB-band (rtty?)(lower but free frequency)? Would he have demands on the software, for example a system with a phonebook so you would not get spammed with url's etc etc. A nice thought experiment but could be a life-saver!
For anybody who noticed the 500 feet comment, normally you can only fly a drone up to 400 feet. If you’re a part 107 pilot you can fly higher if you’re within 400 feet of a structure. Since he works at a radio station the power is higher.
Thanks for the info. Our local emergency communications group is looking into supplementing GMRS and ham build-outs with Meshtastic. In addition to being concerned about 900MHz signal attenuation due to rain, we are also considering the effect that smoke particles may have on propagation, as wildfire is one of our biggest disaster concerns here in Sonoma County, California.
Most Meshtastic users in our area have not noticed any signal degradation, only thing I have noticed is that during the big solar storm we got some really far distance propagation.
One thing the mestastic group (or any of the companies making devices) needs is to make a prefabbed per-configured solar repeater (i know you can already setup nodes as a repeater). so that you can have a device you just buy , place somewhere and turn it on to boost coverage in an area. And by solar I mean solar charging with a internal LiFe battery and a small mppt controller , the Meshtastic radio , and an enclosure that's water resistant.
I have about 20 of these kinds of sites. I've been considering how to power and shelter them. It's fairly easy to run something indoors but in a lot of cases it would be better just to have a unit that can mount on a pole or nail to a tree. A solar panel and a 7Ah 12V battery can run them forever, but this is a bit of overkill. I'd love to have the smallest solar panel possible (which probably means a bit of overkill for winter days) that manages a lithium battery with the radio. A quick design off the top of my head would have two small panels one each facing SE/SW or NE/NW for us in the underverse. 1000mAh lithium battery, the ESP does the battery management and by default it should have I/O configured or a software menu to select the function of I/O pins for some hardware like wind sensors. But just being able to remotely sense or trigger and I/O line by default is extremely handy. The case for these, I'd make them integrate the solar with the panels about a default 45deg slope. flat bottom so they could just be placed and sat on something like a ledge in an urban environment and a flat or concave back with screw hole wings so they could be secured to a wall or just cable tied to a pole. One might imagine your urban guerilla climbing some forbidden structure and only taking a few seconds to secure the payload in position and making a quick getaway. If the units can be made cheap, then people might for example crowdfund repeaters. You buy one, turn it on, drop it in a location. Next person comes along, picks it up and moves it to a better location nearby, like onto the roof of a nearby building. I can see a game of meshtastic capture the flag or traveling garden gnomes become a shitload of fun, all the while improving the coverage of the area.
My college physics prof was a ham radio operator. He was into antenna design. When I took quantum mechanics from him I learned that the equations for designing antennas are the same partial differential equations as quantum mechanics.
I built a solar powered unit with an 8db omni antenna. I threw a rope over a tree branch about 50' above ground and hoisted the radio to the branch. I also adjusted the settings for maximum range and I can consistently connect to my other radio at 6 miles. Lots of details left out but that's what is possible with meshtastic.
I got the T-deck plus and a Heltec V3. I managed to control Home Assistant with mine. I hope you cover that radio station interference story with your dad! I tagged you of Mastodon.
We hope to; though we've been a bit busy and between work and family obligations, haven't had a chance to get in the studio and record anything. It's an interesting situation, and my Dad has some good stories that back up some of the wild claims in the story :)
@@GeerlingEngineering I knew your father would have something interesting to say on the topic. Can't wait to hear some of his stories but obviously take care of family first. Have a great day!
Recently got into Meshtastic! It's been fun. I live in a really hilly part of Indiana and there aren't many other nodes nearby. But I'm excited to keep learning and play with my own nodes around my area. It's definitely not perfect by any means. But it's still a heck of a lotta fun.
What a timely video. I live in Swannanoa, NC, which was devastated by Helene. I'm also a ham and in our rural, remote community, we were cut off for days due to both our bridge and a significant section of our road being washed out. Fortunately, I had several VHF handy talkies and, since it was an emergency, I distributed them to neighbors and we used it to communicate when we had no other connection to the outside world. As things are starting to normalize a bit now--meaning, things are improving and we're getting used to the new "normal"--I'm exploring a more permanent off-grid radio solutions for our community of about 40 households on a two mile stretch of road that includes 1,000 feet of elevation change. I'm leaning towards GMRS or, even more likely, a PLMRS system because both allow for the possibility of repeater use (should we decide to install one). Many of my readers have suggested Meshtastic as well. I've been a Meshtastic user for about 5 months and my hesitancy could be summed up by your theme here: it's cool tech, pretty effective, but feels very Beta still. We have a wide variety of people on our road, but few electronics/radio/software hobbyists. I fear promoting Meshtastic as a solution might only lead to frustrations in the long run. My hope is that someone will make a Meshtastic device that's intuitive, reliable, and stable. Something much more plug-and-play for the average human. Again, thank you for the video--I love your channel. If you're interested in reading about my post-Helene experiences (with a focus on radio), check out this archive of my updates: qrper.com/tag/helene-aftermath/ Thank you, Thomas (K4SWL)
The problem that I see, whether they are using 2m/70cm, a pi or some other device that communicates via line of sight propagation, would be in areas that have mountainous terrain, like the Smokey Mountains is problematic. 2m VHF does travels somewhat further than 70cm UHF signals and the 900 MHz band is going to travel even less distance then either of these 2 bands. Unless someone can get a repeater to the top of a mountain, the line sight becomes an issue. Using a POTA setup could be one possible solution to this, but you still have to climb the hill and based on the devastation that NC, SC and N,GA had, this could be somewhat difficult, even then you still have to rely solely on battery power, or solar power. AUXCOM and ARES are still operating on several bands in the NC,SC, TN and GA. I am still only receiving information on 2m 146.330. I am about 150 miles south of Ashville, this setup is more than likely a temporarily linked repeater system for emergency ops only, similar to cross-band ops.
We are using LoRA as part of many student projects at the university I work for. Sending data messages for various monitoring stations including road infrastructure, agricultural systems - frost-detection, robotics and such. Interesting that you had similar issues as what we had with all the different pieces of equipment out there! Look forward to more videos about this radio network.
A HAM technician license is not a heavy lift - APRS is very similar to how this works and you can transmit and receive over much greater distances with significantly more power - including the ISS! There's a lot more people using it too.
Great video!! also, I'd recommend taking a look at the Heltxt Standalone build, it's cheaper to build with more features than buying the Tdeck. And a much easier standalone experience that lasts longer. Got a 4000mAh battery to last 6 days with Bluetooth off which is done by pressing key Fn+b combo.
I've not heard of this before, excellent project. Gonna get me one and start adding to the "community". Thanks Jeff and Jeff's Dad (sorry, I forget your name).
Just bought 4 of the seeed stufio sensecap cards. I've only done bench testing so far but I'm happy with them so far. Im hoping they will help my group stay in contact when camping.
The RAK wireless nodes are the go at the moment. They do it all, have good BT and Wifi range due to having dedicated antennas, as well as they can be solar charged, so you can set up a node on your roof, in a box with a panel and just use that as a hop for the nodes you use inside.
Distance will vary on where you are located. I have used it here in Florida for several years, and in the past hurricane season. Using a drone to pop up to increase distance. Did short text bursts to make sure family were ok the day after. I have standardized on the hardware, so no delays and all are updated once a quarter with the latest alpha
Short tests will usually fail to see lurking nodes because of how infrequently nodes beacon their info by default. So drone tests are more useful when you know your receiving end it out there, less for trolling for contacts in a short window.
if you are in a remote lolcation where you seem to be the only node, you should consider a repeater (not router) up as high as you can get, and connect with client or client mute devices locally. also, make a separate channel with your own key, for private comms. these private channels will use devices with the default long_fast to retransmit your messages. if you want to confirm your antennas are good, get a NanoVNA for about $65 to test the SWR.
I’ve had 3 nodes. I live in a heavily wooded area but near a major highway. I’ve driven around with it. I haven’t had any organic connections. I think if it’s organized…. Like you handing them out to neighbors…. Putting one in a weatherproof case with a solar panel and putting it up in a tree etc…. It can be useful. But right now it’s just a development tinker toy.
Hey Jeff! This is so fascinating. But I’ve watched quite a few videos about meshtastic but none of them have adequately explained just how they work. I still have no idea. You may have done this, but could you make a video that’s a primer? Like, explain it from the very ground up?
RAK is the only way to go. I have a RAK solar node on a mast in my backyard (using a Rokland 8dBi for the LoRa antenna, if anyone is curious), and I can easily connect to it via Bluetooth. It's about 60-80 feet away, depending on where I'm at in the house.
I got on the mesh after seeing your first video on it. I have one of the Muziworks H1 nodes. When it's working, it works well. But it has a habit of forgetting its configuration when its battery hits 0%. Some type of NVRAM corruption, possibly. That said, I've received messages relayed from over 10 miles away, so far.
I like the concept and have a couple of nodes for me and my wife to communicate, but had issues and haven't messed with it again since around May. I had more hardware issues than anything, and blew out what I assume is a zener diode when I plugged in the microscopic battery plug backwards, as it will still work but I can't charge it anymore. When I get some time after getting completely moved I do plan on getting setup better with it. I'll put up a repeater on the other side of the property that is 50' higher than the house and getting the kids one each with keyboards. We are moving to a very rural area and it is hilly so I know range won't be great but if I'm hoping for a 5 mile area with a 40' tower on the highest part of the property. Hopefully some of the points in here, especially with timestamping, get cleared up by that point.
The southern part of the Kansas City Metro has a lot of meshtastic nodes and to date I've counted over 100 received by my own node alone just sitting near the window. A few of them are set in client mode and put up on ham radio towers since this is a heavy amateur radio area. They have a weekly chat net every Friday at noon. There's even one up high somewhere in the downtown KC area. Sure would be nice to slap a solar-powered node on the top of 1102 Grand in downtown KC as that would probably cover most of the metro.
The comment about directional antennas got me thinking... is there a reasonable way to run multiple nodes with complementary directional antennas and have them mesh in a sane way (I assume they won't look like one node and that's fine). Maybe 3 120 degree antennas. If they could avoid interference and mesh in a way that made sense, that could make for a cool setup.
My friend here has done some testing on this but on 430 MHz and we are hams so that's legit. And 430 has better range than 900, so there's a good advantage and easier to find high gain antennas also.
Lots of remote controls works with frequencies around 430 MHz (specially car keys). Does those affect the connection or the quality of the signal in any way? It should be interesting to test that in an environment where multiple of those operate imo, specially if its range is improved
The concept is great, but in rural areas the major problem with this is the "high" frequency that limits range. If they were able to use a chanel in the CB band this problem would have been solved. End to end encryption messages that could be forwarded through other mesh nodes would be great. Kinda like a wireless TOR network for sinple communication
funny just before I see this video - I had just pulled the Heltec off my shelf where it has been sitting since springtime when I got it. I just haven't had time to play with it this summer. I would like to see you test those stock antennas if you have something that goes up that high in frequency .
My roof node is a wisblock on a 10ft pole, no battery, powered by POE with MQTT reporting to a server a local guy is running. It's on one side of the house and I can get a BT connection nearly on the other side of the house to my tablet. It's great. I wish they would fix the web interface over the network for the RAK.
While I think this will improve over time, and could also maybe be improved by buying fancier hardware, one area I find tricky is that the node software and updates are not quite good enough that I feel confident putting a node in a location that isn't easy to access. Until I have a way to do remote updates reliably with saved configurations and there is a reasonable way for me to get back in if something fails or I do something stupid, I don't feel good about putting a node anywhere I can't run a USB cable to. I expect these limitations are a mix of software that hasn't gotten to things yet and hardware limitations - especially on the less expensive setups, but hopefully both improve.
got few nodes recently, but sadly did not find anyone else with node in my hometown.. according to meshtastic map there are few nodes in the city where I live so may get to actually chat with someone there. technology looks promising, but the "beta" description is very fitting.. looking forward to seeing future developments
I was watching a Brit guy, Andy I think his name is, who has a popular YT channel. He mentioned that in the UK the network had become almost unusable because of the way Meshtastic devices communicate.
I live up high over looking the city where I live. About 180m up and see about 80% of the city. I'm trying out a 120 deg 10 dbi sector antenna with a downtilt that prefactly covers the city. Once I get it mounted that is.
Interesting. Even the Camper/RV Solar Panels and setting up 2 of them for 240w charging capacity, is probably JUST enough for some kind of remote operation providing no cloud cover and no snow cover. I was pondering what it would cost/take to make a remote location network of these things with a really small LiFePo4 battery. And it's like 9 1/2 hours of sunlight just for that when discharging 50%. That's tricky and it is really bulky to boot. Not sure it's a great way to make an emergency network but... maybe? 100aH battery just for reference. So I mean, if the panels are that big, you can afford to have a larger capacity battery I guess. But I was trying to just use a really small battery, but find out how big the solar cell grid would need to be to support it longer-term.
It would be interesting if you and your dad could take apart one of the cheap nodes and see if you could improve it to with properly engineered components
I have a wisblock device on a rooftop mast here in the San Francisco Bay Area. In the Meshtastic app there are 438 visible nodes. But none are very close to me, and I can't send messages to the public channel. I find the disparity between how many other nodes my node can "see" and how many it can actually communicate with (zero) to be quite frustrating. Ham radio offers a lot more potential and variety. Lately I've been playing with APRS and will replace the Meshtastic device on my mast with an internet/RF gateway (APRS iGate).
I was under the impression this system was developed to facilitate remote monitoring of agricultural and Industrial processes wirelessly. I have a couple of greenhouses in which I monitor temperature, humidity and CO2 levels. My hydroponic system also has telemetry coming back for salinity, pH and tank levels. Years ago when wardriving and freqing was the thing, I had a whole van set up. I had a yagi antenna, a laptop, GPS and was running this wonderful program called netstumbler. I was originally doing site surveys for large industrial campuses. This was prior to existing mesh networks that we have today. I got a question by the way: If I run a length of coax through metal conduit from my antenna to my module will it reduce the amount of induced noise? Only asking because I'm too cheap to go out and buy the good coax and I already have conduit. My experience with Meshtastic so far has been pretty good, but I must say, I'm a bit annoyed with the changes and functionality between PC, tablet and phone
I know this is asking a lot since it is 1 hour+ long, but if you are *serious* about LoRa, then you need to watch the video by Matt Knight entitled "Decoding the LoRa PHY (33c3)". There's also a transcript, but Matt is pretty engaging. (He attended that small college in New Hampshire.)
Something needs to be truly off grid (no internet interactions) and popular enough that you have somebody to talk to in an emergency. For these reasons the only sane choice of radio gear is what we've already been using for decades.
I don't think we should ignore another potential tool, scalability matters too. Solar/Wind powered nodes on existing towers using a different spectrum could be useful in redundancy cases. That's why I still support AM as a EBS.
I have some people in a 2 mile radius that i'm looking at getting these for, so that we can check in with each other during a storm or other issue. It would be nice if i could get the mesh expanded here in Orlando.
I wonder how much of a challenge it would be to get a Pi {maybe a zero or CM for cost reasons} to connect with a LORA module and join in the meshtastic game?
There are LoRa pi Hat avaialble. Note, that LoRa is not only for meshtastic, but also LoraWAN, APRS, P2P, LoRa-SAT and can be also used for lower frequencies to extend range. Requires license, though, which is not hard thing to earn if you're willing to learn.
@@pawelstankiewicz5284 I am aware of that hardware and many of the potential uses for lora. And iI have some of the appropriate hardware. What I lack is the software and configuration knowledge/skill.
Have you setup a BBS on a pi with a lora hat to run on meshtastic yet? Pretty cool, there's a mail system to store messages that can be accessed when in range of the BBS. Also, wisblock and T114 are the way to go. V3's are just too battery hungry.
I had Motorola UHF business Walkie Talkies, which could use a repeater 30 miles away with a center loaded whip. Narrow Band FM with 5W of RF out. ~$3,300 40 years ago. This seems like a perfect "business opportunity" for the 'ol 27 MHz CB Linear Amplifier type of accessory. Most truckers had 80W-120W Linear amps while some home base units went to 500 W! Mucho miles range, even with omni whips. Maybe a 5W "booster amp" the size of a pack of cigarettes will get you talking to each other over that hill. What do you think of Starlink's direct to cellphone from satellite stuff?
I really want to try out Meshtastic but there's simply no nodes near me. I know I'm part of the problem by not jumping in, but as your dad says it's very "beta" for now. I think it has a future, but until the hardware and software is a bit more fleshed out, I'll have to continue keeping an eye on it. I'm in a bit of a valley and in an apartment so that really doesn't help my case either. Hopefully once I have a place that's not in a valley and I can pop up an external antenna, things will be a bit ore fleshed out.
I bought a node. But I live in a glacial formed valley, so we have high rock walls on either side of town, it's not great for RF in general. I've had one RF contact, I think it was a rock climber visiting. The only way I see a bunch of nodes is if I connect via MQTT over the internet.
Are there any commercial towers/providers would have/or would put a node on their towers to widen the reach? This would be great in times like now where the East coast could use something. Even on a bent/leaning tower it could be better than at ground level.
I saw some handheld devices and the drone, then you mentioned differing antennas and a balloon and building a mast in the back yard, but you download an app and you have to point the directional antenna at a radio engineer that you know. Hey, what about demonstrating what the meshtactic actually does? Like, let’s suppose this is a useful device that does something worthwhile. WHAT is the thing that it does? Also: can you phrase your description in the form of WORDS that’d be great.
Jeff, Considering delving into this. How does one decide which frequency to start with? I don't know of anyone here (Houston) experimenting yet. Ed, N5EM
does it have wireless conflict countermeasures? does it retry to send the messages? does it broadcast the messages through nodes? is there an acknowledge mode? are these things supposed to be developed by the programmers or built into meshtastic?
Wait, even though you don't see any more than 3-4 peers, isn't this a peer-to-peer network so that whoever they are connected to, they should forward to that one? That should grew exponentially!
Heya Jeff, and Jeff's Dad, so, if one were interested in getting their foot in the proverbial door on Mesh, what would you guys suggest as a good starting point? I lean toward quality, rather than low price, but that said, I don't want to pay an arm and a leg for what is essentially something to mess with when I have time. Thanks in advance :)
I have a bunch of Meshtastic devices. I strongly endorse Seeed Studio T1000E as an everyday carry (EDC) device. I paid a little extra for the lanyard connector and I clip it to the belt ring on my jeans. This is probably the best engineered personal carry device. For a base station to put in a high window of your home, the “Station G2” is the gold standard right now.
I'm a HAM that got into Meshtastic a few weeks ago. I'm already very bored with it. It seems like it has improved a lot over time but it's practical use cases are a very narrow list in only the best conditions. It was fun to tinker with it.. the Heltec is buggy and not worth your time and the WisBlock is missing some important features like wifi. I'll keep the node up and running in case it helps someone else and see where it is in about a year or so.
