this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2025
21 points (100.0% liked)

Meshtastic

541 readers
6 users here now

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

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
21
Help getting started? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 4 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
27 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Hey everyone, I hope this is ok to post here! I've been putting off getting into meshtastic for a while now but the time has come to play around with it. I have done some research but I always like to talk to real people if possible for real world advice and experience, not just youtube salesman and AI top ten lists. I have minimal experience with radio, but some.

As to meshtastic the research I've done has pointed me to a few LoRa boards, the heltec t114 v2, and the Lilygo t-beam, and also the Lilygo T-deck plus.

I really would love to have a phoneless standalone set up, but have seen some stuff about the T-deck lacking good firmware and so it isn't "ready," but then I've seen some people say to the contrary that some good firmware exists now. Are there other better phoneless devices for meshtastic? Is the t-deck good enough now that I could pick that up now and add some t114s later to expand the network? Or should I go with a couple t114s, and wait til phoneless matures a little?

As for the phone using set ups, are there other boards I should look at instead of the t114 and the t-beam? I do require either it to come with a case or have available .stl files to print one, I suck at CAD.

My final questions are to the antennas, is there an antenna manufacturer that is commonly recommended for meshtastics (915 khz), and am I looking for SMA female or SMA male connectors on the antenna, or does that depend on the board in question? I tried searching the product page for the heltec board and SMA isn't mentioned anywhere according to ctrl+f. I see some kits with an antenna on amazon, but they don't mention either and I'm sure I'll want to upgrade the dinky rubber ducky it comes with.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, double thanks if you responded, triple thanks if you have answers or any helpful links! I'm excited to be getting into the hobby here soon, and glad there's already a lemmy comm for it!

top 27 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Welcome! I'm a n00b but I'm having fun so far, and I'm interested in the responses you get here as I'm learning as I go!

I am very keen on standalone devices that don't need a phone to function but haven't explored that functionality as yet. I got a bunch of T1000-E's for giving to local friends to test with and as an EDC, and a Station G2 as a home base station (haven't got a keyboard for it yet but with that it becomes standalone with the canned message module). The T1000-E is super easy to set up and good to demo to people who aren't too techy that might be interested. The station g2 needs more power but comes with a pretty good stock antenna. I've ordered a couple of the SenseCAP Indicators (currently backordered) as they look like they miiight be standalone(?) with the advanced firmware which doesn't have a release date yet, and look fun even if not.

We only have a small mesh of 3 in our little town but my two friends are both into radio and way more experienced than me, and I think they are both impressed with the ease of use, and one is super keen and going to get a Station G2 as he can use it for HAM stuff too as he is licensed.

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

Thanks for showing me the G2 and sensecap indicator, these things look pretty neat! I'll definitely be looking at those once I'm a bit more into it, for now I'm thinking about a t1000-e and maybe a couple t114 v2s (or maybe a couple t1000-es and one t114 v2, who knows! Lol). I do like how pocket sized the t1000-e is but I worry about the non-upgradable nature (antenna, battery), but then someone here said they hit a repeater with it 4mi away! I'm sure that repeater is up in a tower or something to get that range, but still, hitting it with an internal antenna like that is damn impressive, so it may be fine!

As for the indicator being standalone I'm not sure it's the one for me in that particular application, I'm basically looking for a blackberry or even nokia 3310 lol, with no SIM/CDMA radio and a LoRa radio instead (and GPS, full functionality of a meshtastic device ykwim), and I can use it to send/read messages directly like texting. A boy can dream!

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

For their size the T1000-E's are impressive, I think for many people they are the most practical EDC but folks will often have something else as a base station on their roof.

It would be very cool if someone were to release a mobile phone with LoRa built in.

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

I ordered one of those and a t114v2 for now. I'll probably get something else too in time, maybe a base station, maybe just turn the t114 solar and use that, maybe string it up in a huge tree across the way from me on city property where it's likely to go unnoticed since it's easily replaceable, who knows!

If you have any ideas of good devices/cases for the outside solar base station I'd love to hear them!

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

For your antenna question, if the board doesn't have a normal sma connector then it'll probably have a U.FL connector on the pcb that you can connect an sma pigtail, which you'll attach to the case (if the pigtail doesn't come with the board then a generic one works fine). Any normal SMA antenna for 915MHz will work, so just pick one based on the DB rating while keeping in mind that the higher DB rating ones are usually bigger. I got a RAK and it came with a tiny U.FL Lora antenna so I replaced it with a pigtail and a 10dBi antenna.

As for male/female, antennas are usually sma male and the pigtails will be sma female, some antennas come with a U.FL pigtail so it's hard to go wrong with those.

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

Thanks! The LoRa boards I was looking at (not tdeck ofc) seem to have the pigtail set up and a 2 dBi antenna, so I'll pick up a 10dBi with whatever I order!

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

Just keep in mind that anything above 3 dBi is going to be directional. A 10 dBi is very directional, so unless it's a fixed antenna and you have very little elevation change between stations I'd go with a 3 or 2.5 dBi omni antenna.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Ok cool thanks, I'll do that then!

I was also thinking about trying to string up a unit in a tall tree in my neighborhood (technically HOA or city property, they'll be fine) or convince someone with authority to place it on top of a nearby skyscraper thingy to act as sort of a repeater mostly to contact a guy SW of me for now since he'll be my friend I get into it with, so the 10 might be good for that. Now I just need a weatherproof case with solar charging and a battery! Looks like we'll be the only ones in my area so far according to "meshmap," there's one in a city 25mi from me and another in a different city 20mi from me, but that's it and I don't think I'll reach them lol.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

You might be surprised at how many nodes are in your area. The vast majority probably aren't broadcasting their position to meshmap. It's usually only routers or permanent clients that people publish there.

I'm doing something similar with outdoor nodes. This enclosure looks good and the top review used it as a meshtastic node. IP65 ABS Enclosure

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

Oh that's perfect! Wire up a solar panel to charge it, paint a cable company logo on it, padlock, and screw em into a couple telephone poles, bam: guerilla network lol. Prob not the best idea but I had fun thinking it haha.

Good to know there may be more nodes around! I'll just have to get a couple and find out then!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, I was surprised here as well, because there weren't any on the map when I got my node. And yet, I commonly see six or seven nodes in my list. So there may very well be more than you expect.

Personally i went with the seeedstudio sensecap t1000e since i wanted something ready out the box and it works great with my local router 4 miles away.

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

Oh cool thanks, I saw those too but they were listed as "trackers" so for some reason I thought they could GPS but not do the comms, but as I type it that's the dumbest thing I've said all week lol, of course they'd still be able to do the comms if they have the LoRa chip! I might be able to use one or two of these myself for some stuff, I plan to keep one in my car 24/7 (as a tracker lol) and this one may be good for that!

How long are you getting in battery life from that one?

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

About three or four days with the GPS turned off, although I'm not certain what it would be with the GPS turned on.

I also just turned down my transmit power from 1 watt to 0.5 watts by changing the value to 27 dBm, since I can connect to the router just fine with lower power, which should save me some battery, but I just did that so I don't know what the results will be yet.

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

Three or four days is already pretty good, but I imagine I'll need the gps to use it as a tracker so I'm sure it won't be quite that.

Now that I think about it, who cares? It'd be cigarette lighter powered anyway! Man the possibilities with these are endless!

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

Depending on just how long you drive for on a daily basis, you might occasionally need to charge it from a wall outlet at home. But the cigarette lighter should definitely keep it mostly charged.

I've been doing a battery test on it and between its internal battery and a backup battery that you use to charge a cell phone. I've kept it running for 20 days now without plugging it into the wall.

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

I do drive at least 1h daily, 30 in the am and 30 otw home, might mostly cover me! There's also wall outlets about too and I intend to look into those solar foldable thingys since if the power goes out I'll still need it. I do also have one of those backup battery things collecting dust somewhere, I'll have to find it that's a good idea!

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

Okay, in that case you should be fine. I've just noticed that with the 5V 1A chargers that it takes about 3 hours to fully charge from completely dead to completely full. Which is why I said that it would depend on how far you drive per day.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Hey I hate to come back and sorta necro this thread lol but I'd feel worse starting a new thread two days in a row haha. I had a quick question for you though if that's ok!

So I was looking at this t1000e, and I want one as they look like a slick little package to get started with. However it has come to my attention that they are unable to rx from SX1276 radios (like the lilygo t-beam) due to a bug when syncword 0x2b is used. The bug seems to be being worked on but it seems "Word on discord is we got a new contact with Semtech and are discussing this." (Dec 14 2024).

With that in mind, would you say wait until the bug is fixed or go for it today? What are the more popular chips, would I be locking myself out of a significant portion of the existing community (assuming there is one nearby) or are most people still using the SX1262 which works fine with the L1110 both ways? I'm assuming the bug will be fixed soon enough, but who knows when that is. I suppose a temporary workaround could be to get one of these and then one of the t114v2s with an SX1262, and then as long as I have both nearby the messages will get forwarded from the 1276 to the 1262 to the L1110, right?

Thanks again for all your help!

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

To be completely honest, I had no idea that bug even existed until you just mentioned it. So I guess I've been missing out on a few devices and didn't even know about it.

I'd say go ahead and get it and then when the bug is fixed you'll just get more devices than you otherwise would have.

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

Cool thanks, I think I'll try the combo of that and the t114, I think that'll get me everything, but if not then hopefully it'll be fixed soon. Plus there may not even be any near me, and if I can get people who aren't nerds like me into this it'll be with the t1000e probably, not the t-beam, and that's more important than strangers.

Alright I'm sold, placing the order now, thanks again!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

Glad I can help.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

Cool yeah so if I don't go anywhere for a weekend or so I'll probably need to give it a little extra juice just to top it off on monday while I'm at work, but with the impressive battery life it'd hold mostly, that I can do! I'll probably pick up 3 devices, at least one of these and at least one t114 v2 (two of one, one of the other, which is which is undecided lol).

That's just to start though! I'm keeping my eye on the t-deck and I'm sure more like it will come out too!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

Hello! I have a T-deck so I can share some of my experiences with it as far as it being ready or not for primary use. First, the fancy UI is currently in an experimental state and it's not easily flashable like other hardware is. There is a precompiled build on the net somewhere but it is ~5 months old at this point and crashes a lot. When it is working it works well enough, some things aren't implemented yet like the map though.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

MUI is what they're talking about. The plans for official public release are to drop it alongside the new next-hop routing protocol. This should be pretty soon, likely 2.6

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

Thanks for the answers! I know there's at least two firmwares for the T-deck that you can choose when you order, the meshtastic firmware and the lilygo factory firmware, and then one on github by "seanpm2001," which one are you referring to here as fancy, seanpm2001?

I have some experience flashing stuff to things and could compile something from github (maybe with a little instructions lol) but I think with the missing features I'm leaning towards going with a phone-using option at first and coming back to the phoneless after some development, thanks for the advice!

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

I'm talking about the tft-gui-work branch of the meshtastic firmware repository.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

Ah gotcha thanks, just found a fork by that name! I'll keep an eye on it for sure.