I finally joined the #meshtastic life. I assumed zero people in my town would have a node. Well, I was wrong 🤣 There's two devices that I can see. One is a mile away 👀
Discussion
What does Connected: 6 of 6 online mean? I only see 3 nodes. Each with one client listed.
I figured it out. I have 3 nodes within range that are unknown.
Love it! Meshstatic sounds very interesting.
It's cool, but I don't know how much I'd actually use it, at least right now.
Awesome. Man, believe it or not there are so many tower antennas attached to older houses all over up here. It’s on my list to get to…
Did you just make a friend?
Maybe.... I think he's an old ham radio guy. I sent him a DM.
I saw zero devices when I first started a few months ago but now we have a good community here and I’ve got over 100 nodes in my list (not all online at once though). If you can get some nodes up on hills/rooftops/towers it helps get a lot better coverage.
"Yo, that's dope! 🔥 How'd you get your first nodes up and running? Any tips for a noob trying to level up the coverage game? 🤔💡"
I initially started by buying parts of AliExpress to build a mobile node and a base station node at home. I discovered that there was someone else I had previously known through work that had a few nodes deployed and after talking to him we found a good location that would connect my house to his nodes.
We are lucky here that the city is surrounded by hills so putting a few nodes on the hills as routers gives good coverage (some of these are hidden nodes deployed in out of the way places where people hopefully don’t find them). HeyWhatsThat is a useful site for figuring out where to deploy nodes that have good line of sight and coverage:
The other thing that has helped is that the Meshtastic community here has a few people who have previously worked in wireless ISPs or are ham radio operators so there is some useful experience with planning and deploying wireless equipment.
#meshtastic is interesting to me, but not sure how useful it would be in a city environment, where I am. Are you going to link with other meshtastic operators for greater coverage?
We have a plan to install a node with a large antenna on a mountain to link up a lot of the central part of our state. We'll see how that goes.
Let us know how it goes. I want to learn what I can from those who are actually doing it.
Cities are where the nodes are! http://meshtastic.liamcottle.net
Just like AM radio, these work best at night. I had 16 nodes connected last night. And a random person said hello 😂
good for you!
I need to look into #meshtastic!
It's fun! We are still learning but let's build out that Network
do you have any links or anything where I can learn about it?
That's a good start I've been on YouTube looking at things about antennas and then I found out there are amplifiers but I don't know that much about them yet but I might need one
Can you see the devices around you before buying a device ?
sometimes. check meshmap.net. I think you need to opt in somehow to be shown on that map, but it might give you an idea anyway.
Out of ham radio for 20 years after being the boss. My friend added me to a telegram meshtastic channel. I should shroud off lazyness and start doing some hardware magic. Didn't realize it was so widespread
Ah man I’m jealous. I’m in a capital city and have yet to make any connections.
Fun to play with regardless, it’s really cool tech. Kind of a chicken-egg problem I guess.
Your radio must see the other radio. Like it is a true line of sight communicator. Some bushes are fine but not walls. Find a high place and you may get some nodes.
This is the true decentralised model. Every client is a node/relay. This is similar to the bittorrent architecture. The rest are highly centralised and attract censorship.
I need to go to bed 🤣 So, I moved my device to the second floor of my house and now I see 7 other devices. Some are pretty far away. And guessing by their name/labels, someone has been putting them on mountain fire towers/lookout towers. That's pretty damn cool. This is going to be fun nostr:nprofile1qqsptssu6n4pvsjxth30na0llrnpa4u8x52cv4jtke9j5uvm77ldvvspzamhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumn0wd68ytnzv9hxgtcdqu87c nostr:nprofile1qqs2wguqtndxwfg3j8y8sm6d5k8hjlnfwavzxqf4fw5wjx7tqdpde8qpp4mhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mqpr9mhxue69uhhqatjv9mxjerp9ehx7um5wghxcctwvsq3qamnwvaz7tmwdaehgu3wwa5kueglejxr7.
Awesome! Word is getting out.
Great! I am the only one in my area but the roof antenna will help me.
I heard about #meshtastic on a nostr:npub1hw4zdmnygyvyypgztfxn8aqqmenxtwdf3tuwrd44stjjeckpc37q6zlg0q episode last week. I think I'll join the ranks as well, probably after Thanksgiving.
I hope if they are on #nostr 🤔
