The Idiots Guide To Meshtastic - Long Range Comms!

https://youtu.be/N3FXej9fqIk?si=AlOt2zAhn5gaouM3


I was wondering if anyone has been playing with these out there in there wild? T
hey look like a pretty super EMCOM tool but just generally fun stuff. It's one o
f those moments where I think we need to not be held back by our license. I of SEEN-BY: 1/100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 SEEN-BY: 1/117 118 119 120 121 122 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 134 135 136 SEEN-BY: 1/137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 152 153 155 SEEN-BY: 1/156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 166 169 171 172 173 174 175 176 SEEN-BY: 1/177 178 180 181 182 183 184 185 187 188 189 190 191 194 195 197 198 SEEN-BY: 1/199 200 201 202 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 216 217 SEEN-BY: 1/218 219 220 221 223 224 226 227 229 231 232 233 236 237 238 616 995 SEEN-BY: 2/100 1202 3/100 4/10 100 106 5/100

The Idiots Guide To Meshtastic - Long Range Comms!

https://youtu.be/N3FXej9fqIk?si=AlOt2zAhn5gaouM3

I was wondering if anyone has been playing with these out there in there wild? T
hey look like a pretty super EMCOM tool but just generally fun stuff.
It's one o
f those moments where I think we need to not be held back by our
license. I of

Been building out an ARDEN System with BPQ32 Packet and Winlink. Working like a champ

N4TDX BBS - Telnet: n4tdx.ddns.net:2323
FSXnet: 21:1/136 * Fidonet 1:135/383 * Micronet 618:250/35
Titusville, FL.


--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Windows/32)
* Origin: N4TDX BBS (21:1/136)

The Idiots Guide To Meshtastic - Long Range Comms! https://youtu.be/N3FXej9fqIk?si=AlOt2zAhn5gaouM3

Thanks for the link, I'll take a look!

I was wondering if anyone has been playing with these out there in there wild? They look like a pretty super EMCOM tool but just generally fun N2> stuff.

While I haven't completed any projects, I'm super interested in meshtastic; and other LoRa projects, too. Recently I've seen some nice Meshtastic 'packages' where you build two small devices...

It's not in my todo, but I certainly love hearing and learning about what folks are doing here...



|07p|15AULIE|1142|07o
|08.........

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
* Origin: 2o fOr beeRS bbs>>>20ForBeers.com:1337 (21:2/150)

On Monday February 19 2024, paulie420 said the following...

The Idiots Guide To Meshtastic - Long Range Comms!
https://youtu.be/N3FXej9fqIk?si=AlOt2zAhn5gaouM3

Thanks for the link, I'll take a look!

I was wondering if anyone has been playing with these out there
in there wild? They look like a pretty super EMCOM tool but just
generally fun N2> stuff.

While I haven't completed any projects, I'm super interested in meshtastic; and other LoRa projects, too. Recently I've seen some nice Meshtastic 'packages' where you build two small devices...

It's not in my todo, but I certainly love hearing and learning about
what folks are doing here...

I was playing with LoRa awhile back with two Pi Zeroes and was able to get some packets exchanged with Mystic directory tossing.

I'm impressed how quickly the packets transfer over the air at close range (within the same house). It would be interesting to see the speeds over a longer distance, though I don't really have anyone else in range to try this out with.


Jay

... Do ghosts sit in the light and tell people stories?
--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20240209
* Origin: Northern Realms (21:3/110)

Re: Re: The Idiots Guide to Meshtastic
By: Warpslide to All on Tue Feb 20 2024 11:14 am

I was playing with LoRa awhile back with two Pi Zeroes and was able to get some packets exchanged with Mystic directory tossing.

I'm impressed how quickly the packets transfer over the air at close range (within the same house). It would be interesting to see the speeds over a longer distance, though I don't really have anyone else in range to try this out with.

Do you have any details on your setup?

I have some LoRA stuff here, that I was playing with last year. I was wanting to learn how it all worked, I did get messages being sent to devices at each end of my house, with chirpstack, but didnt get beyond that.

I'd be happy to set it up again - getting messages sent between systems, but alas with a internet link in the middle... (I dont know anybody close by either...)


...δεσ∩
--- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
* Origin: I'm playing with ANSI+videotex - wanna play too? (21:2/116)

On 21 Feb 2024, deon said the following...

Do you have any details on your setup?

I have some LoRA stuff here, that I was playing with last year. I was wanting to learn how it all worked, I did get messages being sent to devices at each end of my house, with chirpstack, but didnt get beyond that.

I'd be happy to set it up again - getting messages sent between systems, but alas with a internet link in the middle... (I dont know anybody
close by either...)

I was playing with having the two radios talk directly with each other. I thought about trying to put a pi at my in-laws house which is ~9.2km away but would require towers and directional antennas, too much money/effort for a "huh, that's neat" kind of project.

I bought two "Adafruit LoRa Radio Bonnet with OLED - RFM95W @ 915MHz" to use with two Pi's I have here.

It uses Python scripts to send/receive messages, the examples for this board are here:

https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-radio-bonnets/sending-data-using-a-lora-rad io

I found this example for converting a JPG image into base64 and then breaking it up into chunks to send over a LoRa radio:

https://lowpowerlab.com/forum/general-topics/transmitting-images-with-raspberry -pi/#msg22549

And modified/combined it with some bash scripts so that if it found a .PKT
file in a directory, to send it over the LoRa radio to the other side which
is always listening.

One interesting thing I noticed with the receiving node is that it would pickup a lot of chatter from things nearby, I'm not sure if they were even LoRa radios, they might have just been other things on 900MHz. I was able to get around this by having it only accept packets from a specific node.

Here are the scripts I frankenstein'ed together:
https://nrbbs.net/lora.zip

(I'm not a programmer, don't judge me too harshly...) ;)

I didn't use the base64 encoding as it made the data to send ~35% larger, so opted to send the raw .zip'ed packet instead. This is fine as long as the packet is .zip'ed. I use various stings for certain things (e.g. !FILENAME!d5f46106.pkt or !ROK!) which if appearing in message text would mess things up. Maybe something like yenc (or more obscure strings)
would work better.

It works under ideal conditions, but is certainly not ready for primetime. It does have some error correction and integrity checking built-in but won't always restart/resend files that have failed. It also sometimes hangs if certain LoRa packets aren't acknowledged. I was able to get some ftn packets to flow automagically (with Mystic's directory tossing) which was good enough for me.


Jay

... Shout out to my fingers. I can count on all of them

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A49 2023/04/30 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Northern Realms (21:3/110)

On Sunday February 18 2024, N2QFD said the following...

The Idiots Guide To Meshtastic - Long Range Comms!

https://youtu.be/N3FXej9fqIk?si=AlOt2zAhn5gaouM3

I was wondering if anyone has been playing with these out there in
there wild? T hey look like a pretty super EMCOM tool but just
generally fun stuff. It's one o f those moments where I think we need
to not be held back by our license. I of

I watched this video when you posted & then a couple of his follow-up videos. I might have "accidentally" bought one of these Heltec WiFi LoRa 32 thingies from heltec.org after watching.

It arrived from China yesterday and I spent a bit playing with it. There isn't anyone in range of my house (at least with the included antenna), so I drove to the top of the escarpment this afternoon and was pleased to pick up a bunch of nodes. At first I was surprised by the number of nodes I was seeing, then I noticed a lot of these are marked "Via MQTT".

It looks like there's a HAM in downtown Hamilton (VE3BNW) who has a node setup that I was able to see and most of this was coming from him. Ignoring the MQTT nodes I see a few from Toronto as well, none of the trace routes I did answered in time before I had to leave, but it was neat this tiny antenna & device can do.

I wonder if a yagi pointed in his direction from my house could reach him, it's about 14km as-the-crow-flies but there's a lot between us, and he's quite a bit lower (down the escarpment). If I had to put a tower up it wouldn't be worth it.heltec.org


Jay

... What's the best smelling insect? A deodor-ant
--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20240306
* Origin: Northern Realms (21:3/110)

WOW!

Thanks for the report on it. I haven't circled back yet myself but intend to. My dad's a ham N2NRA but my brother isn't and I might be a nice "freeband" option for him to play radio some. I think we need to think a little outside of part 97 and see what radio is doing all over the place. I read some CB guys were using JS8CALL even to make that 4 watts on 11m really soar for them.

Thanks again for the report.

Today's mission has been trying to re-boot my BBS. QueenCityBBS It's hardly necessary, very few people around here seem remotely interested but I wanted to make it work after a poor start with a Raspberry Pi and some less than stable performance.

best 73 to you de N2QFD

... Live every day as though it were your last. One day, you'll be right

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/32)
* Origin: Queen City BBS (21:1/154)