Follow These 10 Tips To Be A Meshtastic Pro!

mesh tastic is growing at a massive rate we've got so many people on across Manchester and The Wider area now and lots of new people are getting into this hobby the great thing is is that most of them aren't radio amateurs they're new to it all and lots of them have many interesting and valid questions which I've been receiving over the past few weeks so I've put together a top 10 list of frequently asked questions and top tips to make you a mesh tastic Pro so the first point is activity I see so many people on social media complaining that there's nobody around they buy a node turn it on and don't see any other nodes and just give up you have to put the effort in if you set up a node don't think that sat at home you'll pick up dozens of people on the little pigtail antenna while you're watching television you'll need to invest in a better antenna and then promote your node on various Facebook groups and mesh tastic discussion boards this helps cultivate more activ activity there's plenty of mesh tastic Facebook groups now we have one for the Northwest and there are many others I have friends who were the first one on in their area and there was only me and one other guy on in Manchester last month and now I've logged over 200 nodes from home on just a Yari in The Loft secondly if you struggle to hit other nodes from home go out to high ground or open spaces and try again you may just hit a distant node and make a cont ta as activity increases those gaps may be filled by other nodes it's all about driving activity and coverage in your local area portable work is also a great way of seeing where your signal is getting and where the black spots are thirdly is kit people think that the more money they spend the more people will be able to reach a simple 18 to 20 htech v32 board is sufficient for those on a budget or those not wanting to break the bank while they test the waters don't be fooled by high price items that do exactly the same thing if you just want to try mesh tastic at a low cost then these little htech boards will do exactly what you want them to and really well fourthly is which band you should use and what about licensing well most of the action is on 868 MHz although there are 433 MHz users out there too as for a license you don't need one I see lots of people thinking they have to have an amateur radio license but this isn't true 868 MHz Laura Falls in a license exempt band and the 433 MHz allocation is also license exempt despite sitting within an amateur band that does require a license fifth is antennas and coax I've covered this in detail in my other videos but there's a couple of points we need to touch on the first is gain don't be folded by antennas that advertise 12 15 and even 20 DB of gain people think think that a higher gain antenna will give them the strongest signal and higher quality connection on mesh tastic this is true in some applications but in certain applications too much gain can be a bad thing just go for a resonant good quality antenna and get it as high as possible I use a 3db gain antenna and have made connections 80 km away the next part of this is coax if you have to use coax then you need something substantial I use LMR 400 as it's really low loss if you use long runs of poor coax like RG58 at these frequencies you'll end up losing most of your signal in the coax before it even reaches the antenna a really short run of something like LMR 400 can make all the difference an even better idea if possible is to just connect your antenna to the device using one of these ipex to SMA connectors this creates a really short feed from the device to the antenna therefore minimizing losses when it comes to radio height is might the higher the antenna the better your signal will radiate for more on antennas see my other videos link below the sixth point is pings in my original mesh tastic video I said that I set my nose to announce their presence every 60 seconds and while this is a good idea in areas of low activity and is great for range testing it's not a good thing when you start seeing more activity this just creates more traffic on what is already a small frequency allocation and can cause congestion it's a better idea to set your device to Ping every hour or so once a wide mesh network has been established like what we have here in the Northwest seventh is messaging this can be hit and miss for many reasons the low output power poor signal quality poor antennas congestion poor signal path the list goes on it's quite challenging sometimes to get a message from one place to the other for those already into radio treat it like a CQ call for those who aren't keep trying you have to take it that your message may not get through and if you don't receive a reply or a delivery confirmation keep trying sometimes messages take a while to send or they don't hit their target just send the message again you may see a node on your list that you want to contact but they may have hit your node with a low signal or poor signal to noise ratio keep messaging and you've got a better chance of getting through eighth is 3D Printing and protection you may have noticed I've been showing you some fancy 3D printed cases this is a great way of protecting those fragile electronic devices from dirt dust and damage there are online services that can 3D print things for you as well as online stores which are now selling cases specifically for these types of devices if you do have a printer there's plenty of files on the internet for free to give your devices some protection it also gives them a bit more of an ergonomic feel and will extend the life of your device massively ninth is mqtt mesh networks in different locations beyond the reach of Laura can be easily bridged together using mqtt for example our Manchester net could be linked to the guys in Sheffield across the penines mqtt isn't necessarily a good thing as it's basically internet linking it's not real radio and you might as well just download WhatsApp if you want to message someone hundreds of miles away on mesh tastic I know some people love this and they using it but personally I think it ruins things it takes the fun out of making longrange contacts over radio so if you want my opinion turn it off and last but not least your node name I've spoken about messages not always reaching because an RF connection between two nodes isn't always strong one thing that does tend to get across better is your node name so you can use this to send a message out for example if you want to let someone know you can see them you can convey this in your node name if the message doesn't get through the node title is more likely to this could be good for passing on a website a radio frequency to meet on or all sorts of things so bear this in mind you can change it as many times as you like too so I hope this answered a lot of questions I've been getting on the whole mesh tastic craze if you have more then let us know in the comments [Music] below [Music] [Music] oh [Music] a

Channel: Ringway Manchester

Views: 50,261

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Id: C7YAd5m6PkQ

Length: 8min 16sec (496 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 20 2024