General radio ⁽¹⁰⁾

After having ditched Meshtastic, for now at least, I had a fiddle with two of the LoRa modules with a view to repurposing them. And there they are. The first is a LoRa APRS r/o iGate, listening on 439.9125MHz, and the second is a receiver for radiosondes listening around 400MHz. Nestled under a 70cm ground plane in the shack is, of course a good way to ensure nothing is ever received unless it is very close! However, it is destined for greater things... although at the end of the day it's just me fiddling. The LoRa APRS map is at https://lora.ham-radio-op.net/ The radiosonde one stands a better chance of actually receiving something, especially as it is currently connected to the 70cm big wheel antenna in the loft. See https://sondehub.org/ The plan is to connect these two along with the module running TinyGS to a common antenna currently in the loft. They will be connected using a Crosscountry Wireless multicoupler which is due to arrive in a day or so.

For me, and this is in no way intended to persuade people not to dabble, Meshtastic was the usual 'new shiny' that I like to fiddle with, but it was just that. A bit of radio fun for little outlay using devices I can redeploy. In our wider area it seems to have snowballed and become rather congested. While I can see the point, I have many other radio bits and bobs to play with and having yet two more antennas in the loft was rather overdoing things. I had to seriously think exactly what I had used it for and it came down to occasionally saying 'good morning', answering when people ask if anyone is receiving them, and... well, I am struggling to find anything else. Of course I stress that is what I had used it for, not taking away from what others are doing. It is a neat idea. So both nodes have been switched off.

Both my 868MHz and 433MHz nodes are being odd today. I had been looking into the data that arrives when '--noproto' is sent to the node and, typically there is a fairly constant stream of data. But today, despite both being power cycled there is no data at all. Odd, because when I ask the 868Mhz node for its nodelist it is being updated. Maybe it's something in the new firmware but for now I've been fiddling enough and it's time to take a step back. I have not had any successful traceroutes today, I responded to a couple of requests and got no reply. It's made worse by the fact that, having moved the nodes in the loft they are now out of BLE range. Both are connected to a Raspberry Pi via USB so I can access the nodes that way but for client use I use my mobile node assuming that the node in the loft will relay everything - maybe not. And for 433MHz I only have the one node anyway. Mind you, it is raining and I suspect that is making a fairly decent shield for 868MHz, and I have yet to see any activity…

After a lot of fiddling about writing code to look at mesh traffic I am on other projects (like, sorting the house out!)... so here is my current state of play... I have an 868MHz node in the loft directly connected to a collinear which is hanging off the rafters. This is powered by USB from one of the Pi systems in the shack. It is set to work over wifi, not BLE as it's just too far away. Its position coordinates are fixed. But I do not need to access it directly, see below. The useful thing here is I have installed the Python CLI on that Pi and can access the node's data stream directly. There is one 868MHz node in the shack with the supplied stubby little antenna. There is no way this can see any other nodes in the local area (I've tried) but can access the node in the loft. So this one has hops set to 4 as it uses one just to get upstairs. This node is set to read position data from the iPhone and can thus go mobile. Well, ok, it could go mobile anyway but at least this way it…

This Meshtastic business seems often very hit and miss. Locally there is an expectation that it will always work and if you can hit one node one day you should always be able to. Or at least that's what I glean from comments. Of course, just a few mW at 868MHz is not destined for long distance comms, and yet I can get 24 miles provided the path is line of sight. Not bad. But I can't manage 1.3km to my nearest neighbour who can get out all over the place. There is a hill to consider there, plus many houses, so not surprising really. Oh yes, and there is the small matter of the antenna still being in the loft so it has to punch through wood and concrete, often wet at that, before it gets to air. For now, at least locally traffic is mostly messages asking if one can be heard. There is a series side of course. Nodes can be placed in advantageous positions, run off battery and solar recharged, and left as area repeaters (or routers in Meshtastic parlance) forming a mesh with other similarly advantageously placed nodes. We have this locally to some extent.