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I love that the files for the case are sold so the designer can be compensated for his work and people can print their own cases without waiting for shipping, customs, etc. If not already available, I think I'll CAD an enclosure for a pole mounted case that uses a homemade vertical dipole antenna, a solar panel and an 18650 battery, and upload it to Thingiverse and Printables. I've been looking for an off grid comms system that my non-ham friends and family can use and Meshtastic has advanced to that point.
@@fierceseaman - No upload to Printables and Thingiverse yet. It's RAK's fault. 😛 I ordered my WisBlocks on 13FEB24 and it's nine days later and they haven't shipped yet. The first few days were the extended New Year celebration in China but I was expecting my order to ship on the 18th or 19th. I sent them an email asking when my order would ship but they haven't responded in two days. I check the order status online and it's still "Thank you for paying us, we'll email when your order ships, and please earn a bonus by telling everyone to buy from us". I have all of the other parts, including the PVC pipe for the masts. I'm guessing it'll be a couple of weeks for the RAK order to arrive. The CAD is mostly finished but I want to test the enclosures as fully assembled and working nodes to avoid uploading vaporware. Rokland shipped the antennas the next day, the quality looks great and the prices were reasonable. Unfortunately, they were back ordered on the WisBlocks. I revised the design from my earlier post. I'm using an 8.5 dBi antenna with an N connector but the 5 dBi antenna would work, or a smaller antenna with a base flage that mounts an SMA connector in an N sized panel hole. I'm using four 18650 batteries but any number up to four will work. I'm using a fairly large 6 watt solar panel. I think it's going to be very nice. The enclosure should print on any printer with a standard 200x200 mm bed or larger.
Since most of the omnidirectional setups are vertically polarized, those using yagis, quagis, and other directional antennae should mount them for vertical for best results.
Ordered a Heltec board from AliExpress with a bunch of IPEX to SMA connectors and different antennas to mess about with. I may slap a repeater in the loft if required also. Asked to join the group seeing as I too am in NW UK!
Nice? They ought to be free. Once upon a time, people did not only create things for profit, but because they wanted to contribute to society and do good in the world. How far people have fallen that we praise someone for putting a price on something so simple...
@BearDemocracy did you ever stop to consider how expensive a decent printer costs? Not only that but also the supplies and hours it takes to design and test before being happy with your design... so much invested into it! If a person has the money, why not help a person out a little so that they can continue coming up with good designs? I totally understand what you're saying about sharing without charge just to help the overall project, but don't take advantage of someone and go all entitled about it. Do your part to support the project and help those who are putting their own money into it. This enables faster growth of any project.
@@MicahFunk That should be donation-based. I would be far more likely to support a creator after I have actually been able to try out the creation - otherwise, I'm handing someone money for virtual files that may or may not work as intended or shown. If we stop demanding money for everything, people won't have to beg for it just to survive.
Awesome vid and I love those cases. Might have to buy that design file and print with a local vendor since I'm sure international shipping isn't cheap. I've got a couple of boards on order right now, thinking set up one at the office and one at home. I've got an ADSB receiver in the attic already and I think I can run another USB adapter off the power strip that is already up there. Hope I can some decent range.
Just an FYI, those ultrafire cells have very fake specs on them, you could get a lot longer life with a more reputable cell. Really interesting little board though, might have to give one a try!
I'm just getting into Meshtastic in the last couple of months and it's a lot of fun! I just wish I lived in an area where more people were doing it. I'm in a semi-rural area with some nearby larger towns and so far I've only seen a handful of other Meshtastic nodes, and none of them anywhere near my house. I have a node in my attic and may deploy a solar-powered node on a nearby mountain ridge soon.
Great video as usual, not sure about the ultrafire cells. Maybe things have changed but back in my torch collecting days they didn't have the best rep. Consider some samsungs or Panasonics when you next stock up. 👍
T-Beam have an SMA connector soldered to the board, so perhaps a little bit less loss versus a pigtail and then SMA connector! Every little helps at this low power :)
Interesting you mentioned Repeater... Been reading all the Meshtastic Docs Default config is "Client Device" There is also a "Repeater" Config, and that's all it does, "Repeat" whatever it receives These would be good in some High Locations.
UltraFire has a reputation for disassembling recycled (bad) laptop batteries, cutting them apart, testing the cells, and selling the ones that haven't quite failed yet. Spend 30% more and buy a new battery from a reputable manufacturer.
So im in the US and these are plentiful, but i just folloi your link in the ukt and everything is sold out wow these are hot in the UK!! Going to grab two and start building. Great video!
I live in the West Ga. Area, and was wondering how well these would work for our club members to create a net work. I am interested to see how it goes!
Not just your video, but yes, a couple of boards are due to be delivered over the next couple of days :) I have also just seen those cases in another video, and they will be on order too.
I live in the mountains in canada and this is interesting, thinking i should try a repeater for my commute because i dont even het cell signal in some locations
same here- i trying to figure out what i need.. some say get it off amazon, other say aliexpress- dont matter- i feel ali be cheaper but take longer- i just want everything- dont want to order twice and miss out..
I removed the Hi-Rose connector on my Heltec board and soldered on a proper edge mount RP SMA, 1.7mm width, to avoid using a flimsy pigtail. I'm sure I also gained 0.5dB both ways like that. Backside is all ground plane so all 4 legs of the SMA connector can be soldered.
@@WhenIWasAKitten It was an aliexpress thing. Board is 1.6mm thickness, so when I saw a listing for a 1.7mm spacing one, I decided it was close enough and got one for 30 Cents. (I tried posting the link, even without the aliexpress.... first, but YT refuses me to post anything that looks like a link) It fits snugly, also when the solder mask on the backside is removed. The center pin simply rests on top of the 0 Ohm resistor so easy to solder the center pin. The item listing title is "RP-SMA-KE SMA Female PCB Solder Edge Vertical Mount RF Coaxial Connector 180 Degree Antenna Socket Thru Hole Plug Socket" The listing had more versions to choose from, I chose no.4, the one specifying 1.7mm.
I've got a 20Watt amp that will work on 868MHz and live on a hill with views to Manchester and Wales and beyond, so it will be interesting to also run a preamp and see how many people i can contact. I will be using a home made Slim Jim type antenna to keep the radiation angle low. Many 1/4 and 5/8wave designs tend to fire upwards which is of no use for distance. They might have more gain, but less blanket coverage.
Got two on the way, to be coupled to a Supaerials 868mhz 8dBi omni-directional antenna on the roof, and another for on my car dash with a small Paradar 868mhz whip. Can’t wait for them to arrive.
good move on ditching the ultrafire. you should also swap to "tab" based 18650 holders. I built a couple solar powered nodes for a friend, used waterproof boxes like you would use for a phone while kayaking. had plenty of room so I used a 4x 18650 holder and (actual) 2500mah cells. overkill probably, but I had them on hand.
I tried one of those directional yagi antennas shown at the 2:12 mark. It didn't do the SNR any favors, and i accidentally discovered the fact it worked better at a right angle to the stations and and horizontal - exactly opposite you would expect. I think it's because the yagi increased the noise floor more than it helped bring in the signal I was after.
I've been looking into LoRa for a project that I would like to do at our 7.5" Scale Train Club. My idea is I would like for each train to have a LoRa outfitted with GPS and a screen. The screen would show speed and indicate if the train is going to fast, to slow, or just right. The Speed, GPS data would be transmited back to our trainstation where I would like to display a Google map of the railroad layout as well as the GPS locations of the trains and their ETA back to the strain station. Additionaly would be nice to be able to signal from a train if there was trouble and they needed assistance. Our club is in a wooded park so there are lots of trees but I think LoRa might work great for this. I'm just not sure how to get started on something like this. I and solder and write code I do have those skills.
I've been thinking about a directional antenna since I can't actually pick anything else up where I am most of the time. I was just wondering if you'd considered setting up a Nodemcu board with a stepper motor so you can rotate it over LAN rather than going up into the loft if you want to try different directions? Should be quite easy to set it to rotate a bit every 15 minutes (or however long you have your beacon interval set) to do an automatic scan for nodes in different directions as well I suppose. Would be a lot easier to set up if you have a 3D printer of course. I'm not quite ready to spend £60 on an antenna to do that myself yet, but I might try in future
I think I just picked up your base station node, I’ve got a heltec v3 - no idea what time doing! I was stood at the trig point on Halkyn Mountain, north wales, which according to the mesh map is about 75km away!
@@RingwayManchester I tried, I first sent “test” followed by “on halkyn mountain”, “on halkyn mountain” - it was cold up there so we didn’t hang about long. I’ve just put a video up now, when we got back to the car, I tried again as it was showing 50% signal strength! Mrs wanted to go home though, so headed back.
MIND BLOWN MIND BLOWN MIND BLOWN MIND BLOWN MIND BLOWN MIND BLOWN MIND BLOWN MIND BLOWN MIND BLOWN MIND BLOWN MIND BLOWN MIND BLOWN MIND BLOWN MIND BLOWN MIND BLOWN MIND BLOWN MIND BLOWN MIND BLOWN. Can't believe, thought maybe a few people would want one, I'm getting emotional lol Thanks so much for the shout out bud really appreciate it. Thanks to everyone who has ordered too, I'm in shock! 🤣
I love the idea on lora but I have no use for sending text and I am not interested in to text analysis to get data from it. I am sure there are ways to send other data types but I havent found a good reference yet
New subscriber here! a great video.. I'll be sure to check out your previous video's... quick question.. when ordering which frequency should I choose? (noob). atb
Nice...! Have got one ordered up for use here in the Ribble Valley. What type is the supplied SMA connector Lewis...? Will make sure I've got the right adapter to hook up to my antennas, thanks 👍🏼
@@RingwayManchester Cheers Lewis. Looking at the video it looks female SMA like you say. The male SMA has the threaded collar on it and the pin. Conversely, RP-SMA swaps the pins so the pin is on the female and the male (with the threaded collar) has the hole.
Lewis, Do you have a link to the 868MHz 'wifi style' antennas you're using? I've bought a few supposed 868Mhz but found they're nothing of the kind having plugged it into a VNA. Generally they're 2.4GHz, adverrised as 868MHz - Good old Amazon! G7DMQ
I honestly don't get the heltec + custom 3d printed case vs LiliGo t-echo? Heltec costs $53.21 for one heltec lora32 v3 with shipping to the UK/EU. The Liligo which comes with a fabricated case and included a lithium battery pack as well, lands at 77,31 USD with everything included. I know it's more expensive but the t-echo uses less power due to being powered by the NRF52840 MCU as well as using an eink display. So it's pretty much superior in every way that matters. What am I missing here? 😊
That's not really a fair comparison, though. I've been active in both the Helium and Meshtastic communities and there are ways to do Helium mapping that just aren't being done in the Meshtastic world right now (I have a device for doing Helium mapping and have done quite a bit of it myself). Also, every Helium node asserts its location and that's all public info whereas Meshtastic nodes don't have any sort of central database and don't have to report anything they don't want to. And Helium is dying and nodes are dropping off the network constantly (I took down my node months ago since I couldn't reach any other nodes and the cryptocurrency side of things got too complicated and all the apps are hopelessly broken).
Is there anyway these devices could be made to generate their own 2.4ghz WiFi bubble so that other WiFi iot devices could connect to it and transmit data back to a server? The use case is for notifications from CCTV and alarm kit
How long is the battery life? One of the older models I bought only lasted 8 hours on a giant 18650 battery which is terrible for battery life for a device just sitting in standby
So the location data is strictly dependent on what the user enters? I realize it's low power, but I'm still paranoid about DF. Especially in a SHTF situation, which is when I'd probably use it most
You can configure a fixed GPS location, use live GPS data from an attached GPS if your device has one (like the Lilygo T-BEAM), or it can get the device location from your phone (if you're using a phone with that node). If you don't want to reveal your location your best bet is to turn off phone location sharing in the app and put in a fake location in the fixed-location configuration option. There doesn't seem to be a way to completely turn off location sharing, at least not yet.
this tech would be great for bicycle tracking so if your bike gets stolen you could know where it is. but i cant find small enough packages that could be hidden inside /on a bike without beeing seen or are too obvious
If I read correctly these heltac boards don't come with build in power circuit safety, right ? Some battery's do have build in protection. Now does the battery holder fit in that heltac case ? Cause battery's with added protection are slightly longer
