• Re: The Idiots Guide to Meshtastic

    From Ricky DeLuco@432:1/100 to N2QFD on Mon Feb 19 12:32:55 2024

    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.


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  • From paulie420@432:1/100 to N2QFD on Mon Feb 19 18:46:41 2024
    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.........

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  • From Warpslide@432:1/100 to All on Tue Feb 20 11:14:28 2024
    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?
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  • From deon@432:1/100 to Warpslide on Wed Feb 21 10:54:35 2024
    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...)


    ...лоеп
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  • From Warpslide@432:1/100 to deon on Wed Feb 21 09:10:54 2024
    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

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  • From Warpslide@432:1/100 to N2QFD on Fri Mar 8 16:20:44 2024
    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
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  • From N2QFD@432:1/100 to Warpslide on Sat Mar 9 11:42:31 2024
    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

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