[TriLUG] anyone using Meshtastic?

Tue Jun 24 11:40:58 EDT 2025

I have been on Meshtastic since December.   Nodename is KA2DEW-Tadd
I am diagonally across the intersection from the BP near the Outback Steakhouse Creedmore Road/NCroute50 in north Raleigh. If you are at the Stonehenge-Market, you should be able to see my node.   I have it set to Longrange-Fast.   I just reloaded the firmware and my settings may not be perfect  yet.   This is the first time I’ve configured it.  I had help in December.  

At ground level, the range across the neighborhood is a little better than 2.4Ghz WiFi. 
From my 55’ tower and 10 element yagi, I can reach “The Villages” in downtown Raleigh some of the time.  That’s 6 miles.  Since my yagi is directional, I don’t have very good range other than south.  

The text messaging doesn’t give you a “Delivered” for the person you are trying to reach, but it does give you a Delivered if somebody receives it, else it gives an error. 

The units can send and receive traffic via the Internet as well and I’m not clear that it is obvious which network is being used. It is pretty easy to turn off the Internet connectivity.  If there is no smartphone involved in a station, it can’t do Internet.  

It seems that the best results have been had in dry areas with no thick trees, and where there can be elevated mesh nodes that are away from other high power radio sources.  Having stations in close proximity, i.e. at a convention, is also good.  

The bandwidth is pretty restricted and if there are multiple senders simultaneously, it goes badly. 

There are many tools for combining diagnostics, from various nodes, from Internet connected stations.  If running entirely off-the-grid, the diagnostic capability is practically zero.   

There are many advocates for Meshtastic that are fine with using Internet for communications.  I’m more interested in the Mesh-over-radio aspect.  

Caveat:  I have not made a big effort to learn about this stuff.  There may be tools out there I haven’t run into.   A few months ago I saw a web page that gave all of the fixed-stations and how many packets they’d repeated.  I don’t know where that site is.  
There is a site "https://meshtastic.liamcottle.net <https://meshtastic.liamcottle.net/>”   but none of the local nodes are listed.  I don’t know why. 

Tadd / KA2DEW  https://qrz.com/db/ka2dew
tadd at mac.com
Raleigh NC  FM05pv

North Carolina ham-radio chatRoom Network: https://ncpacket.net/north_carolina_packet_radio_network.html <http://ncpacket.net/north_carolina_packet_radio_network.html>
Packet networking over ham radio: https://tarpn.net/t/packet_radio_networking.html <http://tarpn.net/t/packet_radio_networking.html>
Local Raleigh ham radio info: http://torborg.com/a

> On Jun 24, 2025, at 07:12, Scott Blaydes via TriLUG <trilug at trilug.org> wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Jun 23, 2025 at 11:37:46AM +0000, Joseph Mack NA3T wrote:
>> On Mon, 23 Jun 2025, Scott Blaydes wrote:
>> 
>>> Currently playing with a node here at the house. Doesn't seem to be any
>>> nodes around here (Northgate area of Durham).
>>> 
>>> Connect to alot of things when I drive down to Raleigh, but not Durham.
>>> 
>>> What are you doing with yours?
>> 
>> I don't have anything. I wasn't going to launch off into buying new hardware
>> if there wasn't anyone around to connect to or to ask about problems.
>> 
>> What hardware did you buy? (I may as well buy something that someone else
>> has already got to work).
> 
> Heltec V3 with a battery pack and case.
>> 
>> What can you do with it? I assume you bought two LoRa's and have them
>> connecting between two cell phones. Do you just send "hello" between the two
>> cell phones?
> 
> No, just have one. 
> 
> I just say "hello" to people when it connects. Might be useful for
> emergency situation.
> 
>> 
>> When you connect in Raleigh, what happens? Does your LoRa give a green
>> light? I assume if you don't have an ID for anyone on the mesh, you can't
>> send a message.
> 
> I logs on the screen and lets my app know. 
> 
> There are "channels" that other are on, so can find communicate.
>> 
>> I'm in Hope Valley, Durham. There's a small chance we could connect.
> 
> Once my truck is out of the shop I will drive to that area to see with
> my node.
> 
> Kinda reminds me of the old war driving I would do. 
> 
> 
>> thanks for popping up.
>> 
>> Joe
>> 
>> -- 
>> Joseph Mack NA3T EME(B,D), FM05lw North Carolina
>> Don't upgrade a working machine - it won't work any
>> better - it could work worse; it may not work at all.
>> Homepage http://www.austintek.com/ It's GNU/Linux!
>> 
> 
>> 
> 
> Thank you,
> Scott Blaydes
> -- 
> This message was sent to: Tadd Torborg <tadd at mac.com>
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