How did you go about setting it up on the highest ridge in your area? I’ve got a lot of hills/mountains in mine but most of it is owned by someone or public land like parks. I would love to do something like that, though.
I cheated. :-) After spending a lot of time trying to think about where I could mount it on my house I realized that my friend, who lives a block away, is at the very top of the highest ridge in the area. So we mounted in on her house instead. We immediately went from seeing the three radios we own to seeing more than twenty, most of the time. And we started seeing people one or two hops away.
Then someone a few miles away put up a repeater of their own. It’s well within range of ours, so now everyone who can get to either can communicate with everyone in the other area. There are other parts of town that have their own growing meshes. We hope those gaps can be closed to interconnect everything here.
I do still intend to talk with some of the local radio and tv stations. There are three huge broadcast antennas near us (because we’re near the top of a ridge). I’m hoping one of them might be willing to host a repeater, as a public service. Even if they don’t want it on their big masts, putting it on a small tower or on the roof of one of their buildings would get us above almost everything. I know that one of them is already hosting an Amateur Radio repeater.
It blows my mind how easy it is to build a completely self-sufficient repeater node. The one we have now can get a day’s worth of charge from just a few hours of daylight. And it’s under a fairly solid tree canopy. It can also operate for around a month without any additional charging, so even a week of terrible weather isn’t a problem.
It is also easy to configure a node to allow remote access directly through the radio mesh. So I don’t have to get within Bluetooth range if I need to change something in the configuration.
Have any links on getting one set up (the node with solar)? I have a use case for a mountain top with poor cellular signal but excellent line of sight to a very large area.
There is a section on the Meshtastic site about solar powered nodes, but it doesn’t really talk about anything beyond power consumption issues:
https://meshtastic.org/docs/solar-powered/
If you plan on buying a pre-built unit there is almost nothing you have to do beyond naming and installing it. Despite there being a Role called Repeater, the common wisdom is that you should leave the role as Client. The only trick is to set up your regular radio so it can act as a remote admin for the repeater. Go into Radio Configuration -> Security and look for the “Add” button under Admin Key. Put the public key of your regular radio in there and save it. That will give you access to the repeater without needing to be within Bluetooth range.
If you’re going to built your own node, you’re already beyond me. :-) The one I got uses a WisBlock chipset for maximum power efficiency. It has two 21700 batteries and two 1-Watt solar cells. I think the WisBlock already know how to handle the solar and batteries. If not, you could look at the Heltec T114, which I know can do that and has separate power inputs for each.
I would be happy to answer any questions you have. Just be aware that I’m pretty new to this too.
How did you go about setting it up on the highest ridge in your area? I’ve got a lot of hills/mountains in mine but most of it is owned by someone or public land like parks. I would love to do something like that, though.
I cheated. :-) After spending a lot of time trying to think about where I could mount it on my house I realized that my friend, who lives a block away, is at the very top of the highest ridge in the area. So we mounted in on her house instead. We immediately went from seeing the three radios we own to seeing more than twenty, most of the time. And we started seeing people one or two hops away.
Then someone a few miles away put up a repeater of their own. It’s well within range of ours, so now everyone who can get to either can communicate with everyone in the other area. There are other parts of town that have their own growing meshes. We hope those gaps can be closed to interconnect everything here.
I do still intend to talk with some of the local radio and tv stations. There are three huge broadcast antennas near us (because we’re near the top of a ridge). I’m hoping one of them might be willing to host a repeater, as a public service. Even if they don’t want it on their big masts, putting it on a small tower or on the roof of one of their buildings would get us above almost everything. I know that one of them is already hosting an Amateur Radio repeater.
It blows my mind how easy it is to build a completely self-sufficient repeater node. The one we have now can get a day’s worth of charge from just a few hours of daylight. And it’s under a fairly solid tree canopy. It can also operate for around a month without any additional charging, so even a week of terrible weather isn’t a problem.
It is also easy to configure a node to allow remote access directly through the radio mesh. So I don’t have to get within Bluetooth range if I need to change something in the configuration.
Have any links on getting one set up (the node with solar)? I have a use case for a mountain top with poor cellular signal but excellent line of sight to a very large area.
There is a section on the Meshtastic site about solar powered nodes, but it doesn’t really talk about anything beyond power consumption issues: https://meshtastic.org/docs/solar-powered/
The unit I bought was the Ultimate Meshtastic Solar Radio Node from PeakMesh on Etsy. I couldn’t be happier with it.
If you plan on buying a pre-built unit there is almost nothing you have to do beyond naming and installing it. Despite there being a Role called Repeater, the common wisdom is that you should leave the role as Client. The only trick is to set up your regular radio so it can act as a remote admin for the repeater. Go into Radio Configuration -> Security and look for the “Add” button under Admin Key. Put the public key of your regular radio in there and save it. That will give you access to the repeater without needing to be within Bluetooth range.
If you’re going to built your own node, you’re already beyond me. :-) The one I got uses a WisBlock chipset for maximum power efficiency. It has two 21700 batteries and two 1-Watt solar cells. I think the WisBlock already know how to handle the solar and batteries. If not, you could look at the Heltec T114, which I know can do that and has separate power inputs for each.
I would be happy to answer any questions you have. Just be aware that I’m pretty new to this too.