Hey everyone, I hope this is ok to post here! I’ve been putting off getting into meshtastic for a while now but the time has come to play around with it. I have done some research but I always like to talk to real people if possible for real world advice and experience, not just youtube salesman and AI top ten lists. I have minimal experience with radio, but some.
As to meshtastic the research I’ve done has pointed me to a few LoRa boards, the heltec t114 v2, and the Lilygo t-beam, and also the Lilygo T-deck plus.
I really would love to have a phoneless standalone set up, but have seen some stuff about the T-deck lacking good firmware and so it isn’t “ready,” but then I’ve seen some people say to the contrary that some good firmware exists now. Are there other better phoneless devices for meshtastic? Is the t-deck good enough now that I could pick that up now and add some t114s later to expand the network? Or should I go with a couple t114s, and wait til phoneless matures a little?
As for the phone using set ups, are there other boards I should look at instead of the t114 and the t-beam? I do require either it to come with a case or have available .stl files to print one, I suck at CAD.
My final questions are to the antennas, is there an antenna manufacturer that is commonly recommended for meshtastics (915 khz), and am I looking for SMA female or SMA male connectors on the antenna, or does that depend on the board in question? I tried searching the product page for the heltec board and SMA isn’t mentioned anywhere according to ctrl+f. I see some kits with an antenna on amazon, but they don’t mention either and I’m sure I’ll want to upgrade the dinky rubber ducky it comes with.
Thanks for taking the time to read this, double thanks if you responded, triple thanks if you have answers or any helpful links! I’m excited to be getting into the hobby here soon, and glad there’s already a lemmy comm for it!
Just keep in mind that anything above 3 dBi is going to be directional. A 10 dBi is very directional, so unless it’s a fixed antenna and you have very little elevation change between stations I’d go with a 3 or 2.5 dBi omni antenna.
Ok cool thanks, I’ll do that then!
I was also thinking about trying to string up a unit in a tall tree in my neighborhood (technically HOA or city property, they’ll be fine) or convince someone with authority to place it on top of a nearby skyscraper thingy to act as sort of a repeater mostly to contact a guy SW of me for now since he’ll be my friend I get into it with, so the 10 might be good for that. Now I just need a weatherproof case with solar charging and a battery! Looks like we’ll be the only ones in my area so far according to “meshmap,” there’s one in a city 25mi from me and another in a different city 20mi from me, but that’s it and I don’t think I’ll reach them lol.
You might be surprised at how many nodes are in your area. The vast majority probably aren’t broadcasting their position to meshmap. It’s usually only routers or permanent clients that people publish there.
I’m doing something similar with outdoor nodes. This enclosure looks good and the top review used it as a meshtastic node. IP65 ABS Enclosure
Oh that’s perfect! Wire up a solar panel to charge it, paint a cable company logo on it, padlock, and screw em into a couple telephone poles, bam: guerilla network lol. Prob not the best idea but I had fun thinking it haha.
Good to know there may be more nodes around! I’ll just have to get a couple and find out then!
Yeah, I was surprised here as well, because there weren’t any on the map when I got my node. And yet, I commonly see six or seven nodes in my list. So there may very well be more than you expect.
Personally i went with the seeedstudio sensecap t1000e since i wanted something ready out the box and it works great with my local router 4 miles away.
Oh cool thanks, I saw those too but they were listed as “trackers” so for some reason I thought they could GPS but not do the comms, but as I type it that’s the dumbest thing I’ve said all week lol, of course they’d still be able to do the comms if they have the LoRa chip! I might be able to use one or two of these myself for some stuff, I plan to keep one in my car 24/7 (as a tracker lol) and this one may be good for that!
How long are you getting in battery life from that one?
About three or four days with the GPS turned off, although I’m not certain what it would be with the GPS turned on.
I also just turned down my transmit power from 1 watt to 0.5 watts by changing the value to 27 dBm, since I can connect to the router just fine with lower power, which should save me some battery, but I just did that so I don’t know what the results will be yet.
Three or four days is already pretty good, but I imagine I’ll need the gps to use it as a tracker so I’m sure it won’t be quite that.
Now that I think about it, who cares? It’d be cigarette lighter powered anyway! Man the possibilities with these are endless!
Depending on just how long you drive for on a daily basis, you might occasionally need to charge it from a wall outlet at home. But the cigarette lighter should definitely keep it mostly charged.
I’ve been doing a battery test on it and between its internal battery and a backup battery that you use to charge a cell phone. I’ve kept it running for 20 days now without plugging it into the wall.