Meshtastic

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A community to discuss Meshtastic (https://meshtastic.org/docs/introduction)

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My little macgyver meshtastic node ^^ (feddit.org)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Held together without any solder ^^

Uses an old phone battery for power and is housed in the box that the heltec v3 hardware was shipped in. Unfortunately I had to bend a row of pins to fit it in the box with the battery, but this is only because on my model the two rows of pins are already soldered in. Normally they should be included extra I think.

I am seeing lots of other meshtastic devices, but haven't yet managed to send a message. Maybe I am not in a good location or I need a better antenna.

Kinda want to buy a second device just for messing around with two of these ^^

I highly recommend buying off of aliexpress directly.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Your post just made me learn about meshtastic/lora. Seems like pretty interesting stuff, what do you use it for?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

For now I use it mostly for exploring meshtastic and trying to send a single message to someone else in the network xD

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Check out mqtt until you get nodes around you, the main channel will bogg down a heltec v3 but you should be able to find one for your city/state/area.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (2 children)

But chatting through the internet kind of defeats the point imo.

Also I tried to connect to mqtt but it did nothing. Do you have instructions for dummies how to set it up? I used the meshtastic module config docs and it didn't work ^^

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You have to make sure uplink and downlink are enabled in the settings on your long fast channel, then enable mqtt in the mqtt settings and turn on "proxy to client enabled".

The main root topic in the mqtt settings is msh/US/ you should get plenty of nodes if you connect but if there are to many it will reboot your heltec after a while. I connect to my city's root topic at msh/US /IN/Evansville and only have 4 to 6 other nodes. You may want to try the main channel or my local just to make sure it's working then try and find your local mqtt root topic.

You usually can check meshmap.net to see what root topic people are on around you but it seems to be down right now. You could just try msh/US/State/City if you're in the us.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I am in Germany. I would like to find a root topic for Berlin :)

Thanks I'll search around.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Looks like a few in Berlin are on msh/EU_868/2/map/ from

https://meshmap.app/?lat=52.530216577830124&lng=373.37997436523443&zoom=12

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Thanks. Where did you get the channel from? "Show full details"?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Yup on the green ones.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Defeats the purpose a little bit, but MQTT can fill the gaps to ensure practical use until it’s unnecessary anymore. That’s the goal!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Hmm not sure I like that. Apparently the default channel has too much traffic to be handled well by the esp32 devices.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Nice. Where abouts are you. I would love to see more of this stuff available.

Isn't the mesh size limited?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

I am not sure if the mesh size is limited. They're doing "managed flood routing" which is like normal flood routing, but routers wait for a while to see if someone else is flooding the message already, then they don't send it out themselves if they see it flooded. I don't know how that behaves in different network topologies

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Could you recommend a beginner device or YouTube channel to learn?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

No I am a noob at this as well. The heltec v3 seems to be the most popular device though.