Its a LILYGO T3S3 (a module focused on handheld use) stuck into a housing I modeled myself and 3d printed out of ASA plastic. It has some Chinese "high gain" 915MHz antenna inside the grain silo looking part, which is oversize to prevent too much signal reflection/distortion from the plastic being too close to the antenna. Its powered by 18ga alarm system wire that I draped down the roof to a 5v power supply on the deck. And since I'm renting, non permanent modifications only, thus the clamp to the vent pipe.

Its what I had, just to get started. Quickly realized I needed to be on my roof to get any good connections in my node-sparse area haha.

So far it's working well, I have 13 consistent mesh connections with 3 direct connections, when before I would previously only get spotty connections to the mesh at all from inside my house.

I'll buy some better base station hardware later, once I put one up at my girlfriend's house a few miles away....

Is it grounded in any way? That thing is screaming Thor's name in that pic.

Get a 1W RAK!

You got my uovote before I even read the post, just for "blackjack and hookers".

Party on Bender!

Considering! Are those booster modules us legal?

Not really? I guess the device is probably grounded via the negative wire but the casing is plastic and it's not remotely the tallest thing in the neighborhood. Hell it's not even the tallest thing on my roof. And there's a mountain right behind me.

Have you never seen Casshern, mountain tops are geographically directly above you, and some dramatic character can just drop a comic book lightning bolt straight down and hit you
It's Dark Souls 2 geography rules

My god, you're right, I will invest $500 in a full size lightning rod system asap

You should totally paint that thing to look like a little barn and grain solo 😆

ELIsysadmin?

You mention a node sparse neighborhood. Nodes of what platform?

Im gathering that there is a mesh network being slowly built? I have so many questions and concerns. What are we sharing and isn it bridged to the web and how are we isolating and securing.

A link further down the rabbit hole would be fine.

EDIT I'm an idiot and realized from the community name this is meshtastic. Rabbit hole here I come.

unironically I have red, white, black, and brown ASA available to me, and a multicolor Bambu printer... Hmmmm

Haha, you have stumbled right into the nerd trap. Guessing you're here from the All page.

This is a community (!meshtastic@mander.xyz) for the Meshtastic project, a short instant messaging system via a mesh network built on unlicensed LoRa embedded radio hardware. Designed for pure peer to peer mesh networks to run totally off grid and allow local communication even when regular infrastructure goes down. They are very low power and the hardware is very inexpensive (the actual device inside this station cost less than $30) meaning many nodes can be deployed for network resilience.

https://meshtastic.org/

Anything is a dildo if you're brave enough.

Just note that many countries and cities are moving away from meshtastic to meshcore (same hardware, better protocol) due to scaling issues inherent in meshtastic

Australia is pretty much entirely meshcore apart from some abandoned derelict meshtastic nodes

I did see meshcore before I got into this stuff, but my issue is meshcore seems less resilient in lower density areas where there may not be many people investing in well positioned base stations. Almost all my typical use cases are very rural, where every possible node contact matters, and I do not have the money or physical access to set up enough of my own good base stations.

hey not for nothing but the clamp to a vent pipe is clever and I'm gonna use it.

Yeah, it's very easy for anything lightweight or not too tall. Obvs these vent pipes are not anchored super well, but if you're using something strong like a fence pole and 2 clamps at a time, you could easily hold a 4ft aerial.

My design advice, make the clamp circle the exact size of the pipe you want to attach to. The fixed side (housing) should be an exact half circle. The moving side (clamp) should be less than a half circle such that there is about 1/8" or 3mm gap between the clamp face and the housing side face. That way you get a really nice compression by stretching the plastic when you tighten the screws and it will not slip.

US-legal yes. We use them in Canada as well but I haven't checked if they're legal here. They can be configured to tx at lower power. Their rx stage is also more sensitive so they're approx balanced with the 1W tx.

Never done meshtastic, but I do a little amateur radio. For a high gain antenna, do you just experiment with where it's pointing, or do you point towards something in particular?

Im not clear on what the network is used for

That's fun the part - it's used by nerds testing the network, sending "ping". And others replying and setting up BBS systems.

Meshcore nodes can all repeat messages now for the very circumstance you describe

This was a recent enhancement

Like…the old school BBS stuff? I thought there was texting and maybe email? Not sure as I am learning too. I’ve used BBSes in the past.

Meshtastic is basically just texting, but there are nodes people setup for BBS purposes.

Depends on the orientation of the gain. Most "high gain" antennas are still omnidirectional, they're just focusing the signal out into a horizontal ring, like so:

More dB, and you get a flatter donut with more horizontal reach at the expense of vertical reception. Low-gain antennas reception area starts to approach a sphere, so those don't need to pointed up for best signal as much as higher-gain omnidirectional antennas.

Directional antennas are the ones that need to be pointed at something specific, as they have more of a cone of effect depending on the dB:

Some inspiration: https://www.australiansiloarttrail.com/

Its messaging. Think SMS but local mesh. I'm going to use it for weather stations and being goofy with friends, but it's also resilient in case the internet goes down, I'll still be able to talk to other mesh users.

Its an omnidirectional "high gain" which is why it's in quotes.

You can use yagi or dish directionals, but they're a lot more difficult because 915mhz is fairly long wavelength and the antennas get big. I'd have to know the location of known good repeaters to know what to aim it at.

...interesting...
well, good thing it all uses the same hardware haha

I've been looking into Reticulum to build a resilient network that includes lora.

Hmm, very interesting. Being able to run true data over LoRa or any other radio/comm method is definitely cool but not really that useful to me I think, it's a little too flexible. I need more of a set-and-forget service that I realistically only use for text messages. The more complex the setup, the less likely me or any of my friends are to actually adopt it- and I'm not that crazy of a digital prepper lol.

Please do some proper cable management without duct tape. Especially on the roof, this is now very prone to be hit by a lightning.

Lol bit of a niche risk in most places.

However, if you are militant about open source, meshtastic is the only way to go, because for about a year, all the mesh core interface apps were closed source proprietary crapware, and some of the firmware for some of the devices is also proprietary.

Yes, they are. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission allows 1 watt EIRP on the ISM bands.

I enjoy that you mounted a butt plug to your poop vent.

Flared base and very girthy

Yeah that's also a good point. I am sort of half militant about open source, for something as independent as a mesh network I definitely prefer it. I'll stay on meshtastic for now I think.

Hey now, I forgot to bring zip ties. It's what I had.

Also, my lightning risk is very low here, there is a mountain behind me and there are taller houses around me. Hell, this device isn't even the tallest or least grounded thing on my own roof.

Its like a worse pager system. But it does not use the internet or anything centralized. It makes it look like texting on apps.

I hope at some point, both will do interop. Its causing a bit of a splintering of the community...which really doesnt need to happen (mostly on discord and reddit from what I have been seeing). We are so small to begin with. And its not the devs doing it, it seems to be the community themselves. Which is again unfortunate.

Do you have solar setup or is it direct connect within the house?

Direct connect, I have a 5v PSU plugged in under the eaves on the back deck. I was going to do solar but have no way to manage a battery without getting different hardware. Will do that later.

Yes, I'm digging the disconnected part, so I am interested. I am looking deeper at self-hosted processes and if they can be provided in a way other than the internet, all the better. Any recommendations on hardware? Looking for base station and portable when I am comfortable knowledge-wise. Any site better than another to source it? Can't/won't do amazon.

This is my primary interest an independent resilient internet sounds very interesting.

Meshtastic is messaging only, not really an internet replacement- someone else in this thread mentioned Reticulum as a true networking layer run over LoRa and other hardware layers, might be more your speed.

Honestly, I'm getting more and more militant about open source. The longer things go on and I see the crazy shit that companies are trying to do.

For example, I've been running LineageOS on my phone without Google Play services since 2018, because I don't want anything to do with the Google Play Store. But the fact that Google is now trying to keep all Google certified devices from installing third-party applications, what's to stop them from bringing that to AOSP in the future? So now I'm seriously looking into getting a Linux smartphone, even if it's not quite ready for daily driving yet.

I've been perfectly happy with lineage, but now I'm seriously looking into PostmarketOS. I'm perfectly aware that it's going to be rough for a while, but somebody has to take the plunge and be willing to smooth out some of the rough edges for others.

Yeah, I'd say the only good thing is the fact that the radios can be flashed to either one of them very easily, so you're not locked into one or the other.

Very true!

HAWT