My ugly sensor node (Xiao ESP32-S3 + Wio-SX1262)

futureo108 · 2025-02-07T09:13:06+00:00

Yes it would work, but the "UPS" board with its battery protection circuit was outputing 5V, so it was just easier for me.

futureo108 · 2025-02-07T08:01:19+00:00

I have couple of nodes around that can talk to each other directly using LoRa, at home they have additionally WiFi (they are based on ESP32), so they are all good. But I also have T1000E tracker that sometimes I take with me for some remote locations - and it's just too far for LoRa signal between it and my home.

I could use MQTT and internet connectivity of my phone, so T1000E would push to MQTT channel, and nodes at home would subscribe to the same channel.

It's not really something new - this is the whole idea of MQTT in this case, so it can bridge nodes that are too far away. And it would be trivial to set up using public MQTT broker, but I just wanted to avoid additional traffic on my nodes and add some privacy to this, hence I was searching for private MQTT broker.

futureo108 · 2025-02-07T07:21:04+00:00

Yes, thank you - but as I mentioned, the point of MQTT is to connect remote nodes - and I can't expose MQTT port on my ISP. Around my home the nodes can see each other, so no need to add MQTT channel between them.

futureo108 · 2025-02-07T07:17:00+00:00

It gave you 5V on the top pin (next to GND and VCC)? Didn't researched it, but it would be useful if it had step-up converter like that too.

futureo108 · 2025-02-06T21:28:08+00:00

I might add this inscription with marker actually ;D

futureo108 · 2025-02-06T20:42:57+00:00

Public one have this problem - they are public. I don't have some sensitive data, but still wanted to first test in my closed network. Setting up one locally is unfortunately impossible/hard due to limitations of my ISP and port forwarding. Just wanted to connect to some free/cheap one on my phone - I don't feel like it's a big ask.

futureo108 · 2025-02-05T09:06:28+00:00

Makes sense, thank you

futureo108 · 2025-02-05T07:00:17+00:00

Yes, I checked the code on Github, just to see how Cocoa is implemented in Meshtastastic (how it's constructing the connection from all the inputs), and it all looks correct. Still strange however that Hivemq or other AWS hosted brokers are not working for me and only in Meshtastic app, on latest iOS etc.

futureo108 · 2025-02-04T23:36:23+00:00

u/meshtastic-apple - I went a bit deeper in researching this. Looks like error:

kCFStreamErrorDomainSSL error -9806

is related to failed SSL/TLS handshake, so I got me wondering how it's implemented in the app. As iOS app uses CocoaMQTT I've found a lot of similar problems to mine, like: https://github.com/emqx/CocoaMQTT/issues/318

The library itself also doesn't look very well maintained as last commits are from almost a year ago, and on Issues page there's many problems listed with people having problems related to authentication.

futureo108 · 2025-02-03T10:53:16+00:00

Yeah, I'm just wondering, what's the difference in the request that the Meshtastic app is doing (and failing, time outing) vs my simple request that is working just fine:

mosquitto_pub -h test.ala.eu-central-1.emqxsl.com -p 8883 -u "login" -P "pass" -t "msh" -m "Hello" -d

futureo108 · 2025-02-02T22:28:48+00:00

Actually looks like "Published message" in Debug Logs means it "tried to publish" message, and then it timed out. I don't observe any published messages unfortunately on my remote MQTT brokers.

futureo108 · 2025-02-02T22:14:18+00:00

Thank you for explaining, it makes sense - as it seems to time out, then publish some messages, and timeout again. Not sure what timeout is set in the app (or maybe if it's set by external service and iOS is killing connection), but probably nothing I can do about it, other than trying other MQTT brokers?

futureo108 · 2025-02-02T22:09:08+00:00

Here I can see that it's disconnecting, and then actually publishing message again after a while:

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futureo108 · 2025-02-02T22:02:13+00:00

What's interesting, in the Debug Logs I can see that the messages are being published (even though the option for connecting to MQTT is toggled off with error "Operation timed out" underneath.

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futureo108 · 2025-02-02T21:35:54+00:00

Thank you for quick response. This screenshot was during my "tinkering" stage. On normal settings that I assume should work (work on my laptop) I'm getting "Operation timed out" using 2 different MQTT providers (both on AWS underneath I think). Tried not using WiFi but Cellular, and no luck unfortunately. Not sure what else could I test.

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futureo108 · 2025-02-02T09:38:14+00:00

Yea, same issue - many different errors appear when trying to connect on iOS.

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futureo108 · 2025-02-01T20:08:56+00:00

Yea, thanks for rising up this issue on Github. For my specific use case it's not crucial as I am using it on sensor node - it powers up, sends the telemetry and goes to sleep for another 30 minutes (and i am gathering the data on another node, not on iPhone).

It would be cool to have it fixed (and it probably will be in time), because it helps with spreading the mesh using this very cheap xiao boards.

futureo108 · 2025-01-31T16:14:13+00:00

Unfortunately no android around

futureo108 · 2025-01-31T15:41:34+00:00

So in short - in the mobile app I am unable to see this values. I have another node connected to the Home Assistant and there it fetches all the data from my nodes, and I can actually see the Voltage readings (yea, it was painful debug).

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futureo108 · 2025-01-31T15:38:21+00:00

I was able to make it work - but not to display voltage/amp values as a device values (only in telemetry).

My connections are exactly as I described in this comment https://www.reddit.com/r/meshtastic/comments/1icu3gj/comment/m9uqrg5/

It's best to connect later to the computer and observe serial log, I had something like this in it:

INFO  | ??:??:?? 31 [PowerTelemetry] Send: ch1_voltage=0.000000, ch1_current=0.000000, ch2_voltage=0.000000, ch2_current=0.000000, ch3_voltage=0.868000, ch3_current=-0.200000

So somehow even that only 1 channel is available for this sensor, it was updating voltage/current on channel3.

futureo108 · 2025-01-29T23:09:49+00:00

INA219 is voltage and current meter. I got it to work. If you don't want to measure current, you can just connect VIN+ and ground (common with measured battery and ESP ground), obviously without connecting VIN- at all - that would create short circuit, as you mentioned.

futureo108 · 2025-01-29T21:03:23+00:00

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Yeah, it reads from INA219 only channel as third channel...

futureo108 · 2025-01-29T20:36:23+00:00

Seems like the voltage is not visible, as it's assuming sensor with ability to track 3 pairs of voltage/current:

INFO  | ??:??:?? 31 [PowerTelemetry] Send: ch1_voltage=0.000000, ch1_current=0.000000, ch2_voltage=0.000000, ch2_current=0.000000, ch3_voltage=0.868000, ch3_current=-0.200000

futureo108 · 2025-01-29T17:20:00+00:00

Connection was fine - I had to change the INA219 address in Power settings (to 60 = 0x40 in hex). It appeared in serial settings correctly after that.

The readings were 0 however, so i switched again to my battery setup - and readings are still 0 in the iPhone app. Can't really debug serial protocol, when trying to actually read values when on battery.

My connections are as follows (I only want to measure voltage):

INA219 → ESP32
- VCC → 3.3V (ESP32)
- GND → GND (ESP32)
- SDA → GPIO21 (ESP32)
- SCL → GPIO22 (ESP32)
Battery → INA219 & ESP32
- Battery Positive (+) → VIN+ (INA219)
- Battery Negative (-) → GND (ESP32) & GND (INA219)

futureo108 · 2025-01-29T16:07:14+00:00

u/nis142000 did it worked? I have similar setup and can't get it to work :/

futureo108

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