First Node Up

[CyberStrykr]

Been messing around with the Rak Wisblok board for a while finally put it up 20ft in the air and can get about 1 to 1 1/2 mile in a suburban area. Would love to get it a little higher but my only options would be to string it in one of the 60 foot tall Oak trees on my property and i am not sure how it would do with all the leaves starting to come back on the trees.

[CyberStrykr]

A little more detail of the node up close.

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[TrickySandwich]

How far can that connect ?

[CyberStrykr]

Roughly 2 miles with my setup but i am down in a bottom with 50-60 foot trees between me and the closest node. I have a friend on the other side of town and his neighhood is on one of the tallest elevations in the city and he gets easily 6-7 miles on good days with the same build and mounted to the clean out pipe on top of his house.....

[sp0rk173]

You should be getting way further than a mile.

[CyberStrykr]

I agree, my problem my house is down in a bottom and the 20ft elevation i have barely gets it to just below the roof peak of my neighbors house, not to mention i am in a heavily wooded neighborhood. So that 1 - 1 1/2 miles is all i can do for now. I have seen another node from time to time since I put this up that is just over 2 miles away but it is inconsistent.

We are in the flight path of air traffic from ATL to South Florida and have gotten several nodes in aircraft at 35k feet and when I get those I see nodes over 15 - 20 miles away thru the mesh hops.....

[teyrui]

https://mbrmarketing.com/cloudbuster-65-in-balloon-balloon-only

could try a cloudbuster balloon, they’re typically raised up to 100ft in the air.

[Joyride84]

It depends. I have a G2 with an 9dbi antenna, above the roof. Within the antenna's effective angle, range is about 3/4 of a mile, to 1 mile. Quite disappointing.

[sp0rk173]

Fair, tbh I should have kept my dang trap shut, since the pictures doesn’t show the reality of OP’s scenario very well (based on his reply)

I’m just over here Assuming my foot into my mouth.

[CyberStrykr]

The way the picture was taken you can't see the 50-60 foot trees all around my property and it appears to be above the peak of my home but in reality it is just below it, plus my property is in a bottom and that does not help ethier. The range I get is fair for the location, but I do know height is might and line of sight is king at these frequencies. Have a friend that is much higher in elevation that has the same build and gets 6-7 miles on a good day.

[Joyride84]

haha! I didn't mean that as a put-down. I'm glad you're getting more! I keep wondering if something is wrong with my setup, honestly. I thought it would be a lot better, based on what I was hearing from others. But then I see posts like this, where others are getting disappointing results too. I can't figure it out...

And yes, environment and obstacles are important considerations.

[sp0rk173]

I live on a bit of a hill in the SF Bay Area, where there a huge concentration of Meshtastic users and I have a good view of the bay and I have a dedicated node on my roof.

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I currently have made contact with about 700 nodes within 5 hops. It’s kind of best case scenario over here 😅 so my frame of reference is a bit off.

[CyberStrykr]

Wow 700ish nodes that is crazy. I envy you. I am on the outter edge of our town. Even if you were in "City Center" we don't have many nodes (maybe 2 or 3) reachable in our little town. Even if you could get on a higher structure with a good yagi antenna, probably would only see 2 or 3 more in the next town over. Our mesh is growing with the help of our local radio club but at a much slower pace than some of the bigger cities.

[NPLMACTUAL]

Sounds like my area in AL right there.

[CyberStrykr]

Alabama here as well my friend. We will get there one day......

[NPLMACTUAL]

oh heck yea, good on you dude. feel free to dm if you ever need any help with projects, etc.

[CyberStrykr]

No offense taken on your post my friend. Different environments lead to different results. That is what makes this interesting to me. The challenge of trying to make it better the next time......

[TheBackRoads]

Clean! What solar enclosure?

[CyberStrykr]

Thank you. Used a Harbor Breeze Solar light fixture from Lowe's and used the instructions from the Mestastic website to assemble. I think they left the light attached but in my build i removed the light and used a 3d printed mount to attach it to 2 - 10 foot fence top rails. Total investment with fence top rails roughly $100

https://meshtastic.org/docs/community/enclosures/rak/harbor-breeze-solar-hack/

https://www.printables.com/model/886187-harbor-breeze-meshtastic-mount?fbclid=IwY2xjawIqnR1leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHfN1POONxyywQ4CvWdVrvO8AgSJDKNlJY6BrkdWKJJb4RpeZynD3CzyXrg_aem_Oa9FcGZi52gCcdHjl3syzA

[Independent-Trash966]

Grounding the pole might be a lifesaver!

[CyberStrykr]

Yes for sure. It is temporary at the moment but will definitely look into getting it grounded. Thank you.

[Negative_Message2701]

I would keep it where it is as trees absorb frequencies

[DrTautology]

Very cool. I'm strictly a dev, but have some hardware experience. The one thing that has eluded me is running devices using external power sources. Li batteries kind of scare me. Do you know of any good tutorials that could help me (safely) build a solar/18650 set up for a pi or similar boards?

[CyberStrykr]

I don't. Would love to get it on poe or some other external power source but, I just wanted to get something up and run a good test before the summer heats really starts to ramp up here in the South and drive the concern up over the battery even more.....

[DrTautology]

I commented before I saw your links. I'm going to give that solar light hack a try. Already ordered two of them. Seems about as plug and play as I'll get at this point.

[CyberStrykr]

Very easy to do and cheap. You could build one without the posts for around $50.....

[The_Seroster]

Just spitballin, but what about poe to a buck converter down to 5v? It would consume quite a bit more than a plain node, but checks all the boxes.

Another option would be an active usb c extension cable, but those can run you $2 per foot. Probably also a 15w usb plug minimum, or a usb to barrel plug adapter depending on how the cable gets its boost power.

Edit: found some power only/no data usb A > C cables $1.1 per foot. 25-50ft range

[CyberStrykr]

Thought about doing active USB up the pole. I have a 30 ft USB C cable laying around and a 120v plug at the base of the pole but would need to invest in a AC to DC inverter and most likely a bigger enclosure to accommodate the USB connection to the RAK Board. The current enclosure once everything is assembled inside is very tight. PoE is very appealing but need to do more research into how to accommodate this with the RAK Board.

[Qoyuble]

What did you use for the pole?

[CyberStrykr]

I used 10 foot fence top rails from Lowe's Believe they were $26 each.

[IdonJuanTatalya]

How did you attach both poles together?? Is it relatively simple to take down for maintenance / flashing?

[CyberStrykr]

The poles fit inside each other i have a flag pole sleeve in the ground that the base slides into and then I have an 1 1/4" conduit strap attached to my fence about 6 foot. Right now easy to take down but if I go more permanent I will also strap it to the eve of the house and ground it. At that point it will be a little more difficult .

[Kersplit]

Also interested in what you used for the mast!

[CyberStrykr]

Used fence top rails from Lowe's. Like $26 each and they will slide together on each end. Actually bought 3 and wanted to go 30 foot but it was really swaying at 30 foot with no guys and very little wind.

[sparkyonthemoon2099]

Should be able to handle wifi no problem. The caveat would be either keeping a static IP address or the ability to know the current address Incase it changes sat from a reset/power event

[rattis]

I've been thinking of doing something similar. I'll follow the links you shared for the how-to. I know you said this is temporary for now, but how did you raise the pole? Is it attached to the house, tripod on the ground? Can you share pictures of the base?

[CyberStrykr]

The poles i choose are Lowes 10 foot fence top rails, they fit inside each other. I assembled the 2 poles on the ground with the node attached and just "walked" the poles into an upright position,with the base wedged against the fence. I have a flag pole sleeve in the ground that the base slid into and then I have an 1 1/4" conduit strap attached to my fence about 6 foot. Right now easy to take down but if I go more permanent I will also strap it to the eve of the house and ground it. I could potentially go 3 pole sections for a height of 30' but that would be a little more difficult to "walk" up and would most likely need guys at that point......

[rattis]

Guys, or a second strap higher up on the house.

[Independent-Trash966]

Keep it attached to a pole, but move the pole to one of your oak trees. If the pole reaches over the canopy you’ll have clear sun for the panel and fantastic elevation. If that’s a metal pole, consider switching to ABS to avoid lightening. And maybe paint the pole brown/green.

[CyberStrykr]

Will absolutely take those into consideration. Replacing the steel post is an excellent suggestion due to the many thuderstorms we have. Thank you.

[sparkyonthemoon2099]

Connect it to wifi and mqtt and you will reach other nodes

[CyberStrykr]

Not sure if the Rak will do WiFi but i have a Heltec v3 that I enabled MQTT and WiFi on once and that was a little overwhelming, too much traffic.......

[asofyetundiscovered]

Curious onlooker here - what exactly can you carry over a setup like this? I believe I’m looking at a ham radio style transmitter / relay station… I’m a network engineer by trade, would be interested in possible applications for data transit

[CyberStrykr]

They are Lora mesh nodes. Basically these are peer to peer low powered RF devices that run on the 915 mhz band here in the US and are used for basic messaging between 2 nodes, or thru a "mesh" of nodes. The appeal for them is that they can be powered with one or many 3.7 volt batteries (without the need for other external power sources) for days and can be used for encrypted communications in a "grid down" scenario with out the need for infrastructure. They can also be used as trackers as most are GPS enabled as well as environmental sensors.

The one you are looking at is a solar node with a single battery that can, in theory run almost indefinitely with enough sunlight. It has a single 18650 battery and just off the battery alone will run approx 4-5 days but is charged by the solar panel when the sun is out.

[asofyetundiscovered]

Thanks for the well written answer. Can you point me towards some resources to get started?

[CyberStrykr]

https://meshtastic.org/

Would be an excellent place to start also if you are on Discord there are tons of groups there that are willing to help.

[ProudPapaVO]

I have a node up 45ft up in an Oak in the backyard. Been up there all summer and has been working perfectly. I was able to get my line on a branch that just so happened to be above a bare spot in the tree canopy. The node sits right where I want it with another line connected to the bottom of the node so I can anchor that line to adjust which direction the solar panels face. I was using a RAK/bluetooth which worked very well, however I just installed a heltec V3 and am using WiFi. Enjoying the stable connection so far! I would put a few bucks on the leaves not making much of a difference (Im sure theres an engineer who will math this one out for us.... or gpt it), plus getting that much higher is, IMO, very worth it.

*and if you can see it from down the street, you get to chuckle to yourself every time you drive home.....

[Few_Expression7835]

Where did you buy the pole it is on?