What are some good resources for learning how to create nodes. Say I want to get creative and make a solar powered node that I can stick on my car’s roof rack. How do I even go about learning how to do that?
meahtastic has a local groups section. your area may have one thats not in that list, most of the big US meshes arent. if you’re in the US chicago, austin, msp and san fran all seem to have active communities of varying sizes. those websites and discord/signals/whatever will have great resources for meshing in your area. a node for someplace like austin isnt going to have the same design concerns as say minneapolis or toronto.
The Comms Channel on YouTube is a good start. However, you might want to consider just running a node off the car battery instead of solar. The node will need very little current and won’t bother the battery unless you leave your car parked without running for quite a long time.
Quite a few guides for solar nodes on YouTube.
I think I’m not savy enough to follow along with most of them. I get a “rest of the fucking owl” feeling from a lot of them
Don’t sell yourself short. Watch a few different videos and you’ll see it’s the same pattern. Solar panel, battery, antenna, radio, enclosure. You can use Wago clips in places to skip soldering.