MeshCore 2: Roof, Community, AliExpress

I have ordered parts from AliExpress, this is getting to become a thing…

In my previous post I was talking about how I ordered a solar-power node and was looking forward to setting that up on my roof to act as a repeater. Since then I've gotten that going, expanded my collection of gear, and learned some lessons.

Discord / Other Sites

People in the MeshCore public chat sent me an invite to the MeshCoreAus Discord. This is the social hub of enthusiasts from around Australia, and has people interested in all the parts of this network. Some people are into tracking the data on the Internet (via MQTT bridges), some people are into wardriving to map out signal reliability, some people are really into building the gear in the smallest way/lightest way/whatever restrictions they've given themselves. There is an extreme amount of knowledge there, and everyone I've seen chat is friendly. A rare thing in an online community.

The discord has a resources channel, which really opened my eyes to other information channels. Mainly:

So, the community feels extremely healthy. Watching the chatter on the network, I am just one of many that have joined recently and are helping it grow quickly.

The Repeater

Once my SenseCAP Solar Node P1 Pro arrived, I got to flashing it with OTAFIX and MeshCore right away. The process went smoothly, as expected. OTAFIX, I discovered, is a fix to the bootloader that allows you to update the firmware over the air; no more having to plug it into the laptop to give it updates. This is extremely handy when the device is on your roof and you don't like the roof (more on that later). The OTAFIX installed cleanly (I used the update-xiao_nrf52840_ble_bootloader version of the release) and then flashed MeshCore on it using the standard MeshCore flasher. It got the latest version of the firmware (1.14.1), and I also flashed my companion device at the same time.

My neighbour has an old flatbed ute backed onto the corner of my property, so I was able to get on the back of that and set the device on the roof to see how it performed, and the answer is: well! I was suddenly seeing more messages. Anywhere I went in the house, my companion device was giving me better coverage. I was able to compare what I saw via the companion device to what I saw on the discord version of the public/#ping/#test channels.

So, the next step was to get the repeater onto my TV aerial/antenna. I asked my neighbour to borrow his ladder, and he left a standard upsidedown-V shaped one out on the flatbed of the old truck for me. A couple days later it was nice and dry and I decided to get up there and get the thing mounted. This was a bad idea.

On the bed of the truck, I built the attached mounting gear that came with the SenseCAP. Then I opened the ladder and put it on the bed of the truck and started climbing. Due to the height I only had to go up it a bit over halfway up the ladder to then transition to the roof, but it was still took me a minute of working up the nerve. Eventually I did get up there, though, and I was able to slowly shuffle my way to my aerial. I started attaching the strap and gear to the aerial and I realised the strap thing they give in the kit was made for a much larger pole diameter than my aerial used. Someone long ago had welded some square shaped bracket things about halfway up the pole, though, so I figured I could make the strap as tight as possible by myself, then let it rest on the top of the bracket things, so they take the weight and if the strap isn't perfect, that's fine.

my neighbour catches me setting up the repeater

I got the repeater hooked up, took a quick glance at my phone and everything seemed OK.. so I started heading back towards the ladder. This is where the fear really set in. I made it to the very edge, but of course, getting back on the ladder is the hardest part. I was sitting up there, uncomfortably trying to shift my weight around and figure out how I was going to do this, when a familiar sensation came over me. I was sweating but cold.. my body was shaking.. I felt like I needed to spew. I was having a full blown panic attack! I had told no one I was doing this.. what happened if the ladder shifted when I tried to put my weight on it? Why did I set it up on the back of a ute that can move up and down too? This was a terrible idea, why did I even try this? What will I do? Should I call someone? Am I just trapped? Around and around my mind went, spiralling until I was about die. I am not made for roofs.

I have had panic attacks before, and have talked myself out of bad trips before, so I just tried to break the cycle.. I tried to think about the walk I did with my dog earlier in the day. I tried to admire the beautiful weather and view. I took notice of what cars were driving by on the road nearby. I focused on taking deep breaths. Anything to make my mind stop spiralling and let my body come down (emotion wise, not fall off the roof wise).

I don’t know how long I was up there on the edge.. 20 minutes maybe? I know it was a while, but finally my body started to come down. Eventually I could think about my situation and not spiral, and I came up with a plan on how I’d get back on the ladder. It worked. I made it. I got off the ladder and onto the back of the ute and just stood there letting the adrenaline finish coursing through my body. I made it. I went inside and drank a bunch of water. I came back out to clean up my stuff and… that’s when I spotted it. I had hooked up the repeater to the aerial, but as part of setting up the mounting gear, I had to detach and re-attach the antenna for the device. I forgot to re-attach it. Now, there are warnings everywhere about running your device without an antenna attached. Apparently you can fry the radio inside, making it “deaf”, but that wasn’t on my mind at the moment. I was just kicking myself that I set up a repeater that couldn’t talk to anything. There was no way in hell I was getting up on that roof again though.

I spoke to my neighbour (a builder and a firey with the cfa) and he had absolutely zero problems going up there and attaching the antenna to the device for me. He made it look so easy….

It was only after everything was re-attached that I remembered that “don’t run a device without an antenna” thing, and mine ran for 24h like that. Doing [some reading](https://old.reddit.com/r/meshcore/comments/1pggezm/have_i_been_really_stupid/), it seems like running the device without an antenna can push all the transmit power back into chips that don’t expect it. Symptoms will be the device being totally “deaf”, or slowly going deaf over time. My repeater isn’t totally deaf, so I guess I’ll just have to keep an eye on it and see if I start losing data. These transmissions are (I think) low watts.. so maybe my stuff will be OK? We will see. If I have to get up there and replace that thing, though.. ooooohhhh boy will that be something. Might have to buy the neighbour a 6-pack…..

More Devices!

In addition to my normal companion device, I got interested in two other things: something smaller to take with me, and an MQTT device. For both of these, I bought pre-made things so, like the repeater, I have something known good before I start trying to make my own things and have to debug stuff. I also looked at that Google Docs link above, the one with all the info (and aliexpress links) from VK3TWO. So I am also starting to get into the DIY side too. I’ll quickly cover what I got and issues/thoughts:

Tag

I was interested in a more mobile device than my WisMesh Pocket companion. The companion is good, but with the antenna on it, it’s kind of a pain to carry around. There looked to be two main options for this: A SenseCAP Card Tracker T1000-E for Meshtastic and a WisMesh Tag, The Pocket-Sized, Compact Meshtastic Tracker. These are both vaguely credit card-shaped devices with no screens, but bluetooth, gps, and the LoRa radio gear inside. The WisMesh Tag has a bigger battery, so I went with that. It works great. It’s able to get stuff from my repeater no worries — in fact it's become my primary device. My WisMesh Pocket is still around and talking, but I haven't switched to it in the last day. They are different devices on the network (nannou and nannou-tag), so it's not like they share one “account” or anything like that.

The tag doesn't do well when driving around, but that's expected I think. Once we stopped driving it was able to pick up local repeaters and send/receive some data.

MQTT Device

This one was disappointing. I just assumed everything that runs Meshtastic also had MeshCore firmware for it too, but not the WisMesh WiFi Gateway Wireless MQTT Gateway for Meshtastic. At least, not in the normal firmware flasher. I still need to search around.. I think I should be able to get this to work, it might just involve some manual firmware flashing and stuff, which is fine, because that’s the next aspect I want to get into anyway.

AliExpress Gear

One particularly popular brand in the MeshCore community is Heltec, but I've largely been playing with RAK wireless-based stuff. For something to play with, I got a couple Heltec v4 kits. One with GPS and one without. I also got a couple sx1262 modules and a bunch of antennas.

All arrived in good condition from AliExpress, but I haven't played with any of it yet.

Community

As I said before, the AusMeshCore seems healthy, and growing. There's people in the discord and in the Public chat talking about where they can put new repeaters to extend range. There's people that check in on the Vic chat from Tasmania (yes, the mesh extends across the Tasman!) and NSW. It's a fun time!

One thing that doesn't get mentioned much, although a user (Esh) in the chat has a copy/paste response for people that they're starting to use to help, is what channels are available on the mesh chat. There's the Public channel that most everyone is hooked up to, there's private channels (no idea if those actually get used), and then there's various other public hashtag based channels. From what I can tell, your device basically tags your message with the hashtag somehow, so other people following that hashtag are able to see it in a seperate channel, otherwise it gets ignored when it gets to another device.

Anyway, in the interest of helping people find new places to converse, here are some of the ones I've discovered, either from Esh or from other people mentioning them in the chat. Note this is specific to the Victorian mesh network, but I assume some of the common ones are on other networks too:

Testing/Debug:

General:

Location-based:

Those are the ones I’ve seen mentioned, but I imagine there are ones for other areas too.

Conclusion 2

I’m still loving this. I find in the evenings I’m checking the public chat similar to the way I’m looking at my discord or matrix chats. It’s a fun community.

The roof experience was bad. That’s one horse I don’t think I’m going to get back up on. Maybe if I had a better/proper ladder.. or maybe just a 10m long ramp so I can just easily walk up and down to get to the roof like normal 😉. After an hour, I was still shaking badly.. it wasn’t a fun time.. but I survived.

My next steps are to look at the MQTT gateway to see if I can get that working and reporting back to eastmesh, and to play with the AliExpress gear. I also need to get my 3d printer re-leveled and printing again so I can print some cases for the stuff I’m going to build.

Onwards!