Getting Started with Meshtastic - WisBlock

what's up everyone and welcome back to the comps channel in today's video for the getting started with mesh tastic series we're going to cover my favorite device and that is the whiz block from rack Wireless we'll cover putting it together installing various different modules and sensors and flashing the mesh tastic firmware to the device join me as we dig into itard I'll be back in seconds we're approaching a restricted area area is 1 mile West today's video is sponsored by Rockland Technologies with free shipping in the US and a great selection of iot and mesh tastic capable devices they've been my go-to shop for these and I highly recommend them if you've watched some my other videos you've likely heard me mention this device we have here called the whis block from rack Wireless like I mentioned in my previous video covering devices The Whiz block is my favorite device due to its lower power consumption compared to the devices that have an ESP 32 microcontroller like the popular t-beam another feature that sets it apart is its modularity for example if you want to add a GPS capability to your wiiz block for use as maybe a mobile setup or maybe you have devices on your network that you need to provide time for using GPS you can simply pop a GPS into your wiiz block and you're all set M tastic supports a number of other sensors and interfaces as well and one of those is this temperature and humidity sensor sent to me by this video sponsor Rockin Technologies who sent this sensor to me for free so I could discuss it in this video to use a sensor you simply pop this into place and you'll be able to view the temperature and humidity at the location of your device over your mesh Network there's even sensors like this 3 GHz radar sensor that enable you to turn your device into a remote motion sensor and receive alerts when motion is detected but before we can play around with the sensors we need to go through putting the device together and go through the initial flashing and setup since the wiiz block is modular there are two main components that you need to use the device with mesh tastic the first part is the baseboard like this rack 197 that we have here and this is sort of like a motherboard that has USB and power connectivity that we'll be adding the sensors and modules to the next main component is the core like this rack 4631 this is the part that contains the Bluetooth and lower radios and this is also what the mesh tastic firmware gets flashed onto now this part does have different frequency options for different locations like we discussed in the devices video earlier in this series so you want to make sure that you get the correct one for your location another thing to be mindful of is the different versions of this core you may see a rui3 version version with a-r on the end of the model number mesh tastic requires the Arduino bootloader and the- R models have the rui3 bootloader so you want to avoid getting this model and if you already have one of these all hope is not lost and there's a way to convert the Bootloader for use with mesh tastic and they have instructions on their website for the set out include in the video description rack Wireless makes things easy and also makes a mesh tastic starter kit that comes with the base and the core that you'll need it also has the mesh tastic firmware already loaded on it it's likely going to be outdated by the time you receive it however so you're likely going to want to flash the latest firmware onto it that process is easy and we'll be going over that shortly but before we do that though let's go over installing the core to the board itself if you look at the board you'll see a slot labeled CPU slot this is where your core module is going to go so go and grab your core and carry carefully install it so you don't damage your core or base carefully place the pins for the core above the pins for the CPU slot on the base and keep the core level with the baseboard while installing and snapping it into place once that's in place we can go and secure it to the board with the four screws the core also includes two antennas one's going to be for Bluetooth and one for Laura be sure these are installed before providing power to the device don't burn up the radio or if you have an upgraded antenna that you plan to use instead of the included antennas be sure that they're connected before powering the device this isn't required but for my inhome setup I'm using this clear enclosure that rack Wireless offers that can also be purchased from Rockland which I'll include a affiliate link to this if you're interested in one as well now that we have the device put together we're ready to flash the mesh tastic firmware to it the Flash ing process is simple and first we'll head over to the mesh tastic website and download the latest firmware so go to mesh tasc.com loads and then scroll down to the bottom section that says firmware then we'll click on download stable to download the latest stable firmware now this will download a zip file to your computer so we'll locate this ZIP file and unzip it and then open up the folder with the file contents in this folder you'll see firmware for all of the supported devices scroll through and you'll see a firmware file named firmware dasra 4631 Dash and then the current firmware number take note of this files location as we'll need it for the next step now all we need to do is connect the The Whiz block to the computer using the provided USB cable once that's connected if you look beside the USB port on The Whiz block you'll notice that there's a button push this button two times quickly and then the whiz block will appear as a drive on the computer and to install the firmware all you need to do is drag the firmware file we found earlier from that folder over to this new whiz block drive that appeared once that's dropped on there the device will reboot and install the mesh tastic firmware you should now have the mesh tastic firmware loaded one thing to note is that some previous versions have stale data and updating only using this drag and drop method does not delete the previous stale data so if you install the firmware and encounter your device getting stuck in a crash Loop during booting you'll need to do a factory reset of the device and then install the latest firmware after doing that I won't get into that process in this this video as I've already covered this process in another video that you can watch if you run into any issues that video is the last video in the DIY solar whiz Block series of videos I did and I'll include a link to that specific video in this video's description below if you need it the final thing I want to go over for the wiiz block is going to be an example of installing some of the different sensors and interfaces and using them in mesh tastic for this example we're going to in all the temperature and humidity sensor that Rockland provided me for this video this sensor's model number is rack 1901 and I'll include a affiliate link to Rockland's website for the sensor in the video description below if you want one I'm not sure if this is required but I like airing on the side of caution and disconnecting all possible power sources from the device before adding a sensor to it installing this sensor is easy and if you look at the baseboard you'll see a slot label B slot a which is where the sensor will be installed simply line up the pins on the sensor with the pins for slot a on the baseboard and keep it level and carefully push it into place and secure it with the screw with that on we can now add the power sources back to the device and connect back to it in the mesh tastic app next thing we'll have to do is enable the sensor in the app and we do that by clicking on the three dot menu on the top right of the app then select radio configuration then scroll down to the module configuration section then you'll see Telemetry and select that then from this screen here turn on the switch for environment metrics module enabled and this will go and enable the sensor the other options can be enabled as well if wanted and the update intervals can be changed to fit your needs so with that enabled you should now see the current temperature and humidity that the sensor is currently seeing and that's all there is to installing a sensor to the device there are other sensors and interfaces that can be installed that I won't cover in this video as I'm planning on going over them in future videos one of those future videos will be on the 3 GHz radar sensor that I have and that can be used for detecting motion and sending alerts to the network another add-on for the wiiz block that I'll be covering in a future video is this ethernet interface and that'll give the device network connectivity and that's useful for things like mqtt which is a topic that I'll be covering in the advanced mesh tastic usage series that series will be coming very soon as we're approaching the end of this getting started with mesh tastic Series so be sure to subscribe if you haven't already done so so you don't miss out on that but that'll do it for this video and I hope you found it useful if you did please be sure to give this video a thumbs up and then subscribe if you haven't already done so and join me for the rest of this series thank you all and have a good one

Channel: The Comms Channel

Views: 39,704

Keywords:

Id: 0WhLP8BHAAs

Length: 10min 24sec (624 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 29 2023