I have mixed feelings about these 1W modules. They must be handy in small setups with compact antennas, however, building the mesh despite the strict limits and TX power is half the fun. When it turns into a screaming match, there is no way back.
Btw. what is the second antenna connector for?
In the GTA (Canada) we have a shit ton of nodes but due to the environment it’s very hard to get far before you run out of hops. This node allows many nodes in a 15km radius to talk to each other or bounce to downtown with 1 hop. It’s elevated on a balcony. Also this module has much more sensitive receive stage so the increase in signal strenght is similar in both rx and tx.
The second connector is an unused SMA. That said I was planning to do a 2-node setup with low and high gain antennas, on the opposite ends of the box. 🤭 Fortunately this 5dBi antenna performs well enough for near nodes to not need a low gain supplementation.
You guys might be interested in the fact that in the 2.7.15 firmware they have the ability so that you can set routers as favorites and each router that sets each other router as a favorite becomes one single hop. So all of the backbone transit from router to router is considered a single hop, and the only time hops will be consumed is at the end points.
Oh yes, I recently learned about that feature but there isn’t an obvious backbone to be formed yet. We’ll probably employ this in the future with well positioned nodes.
GTA (Canada)
For those outside the trannasphere, this is the Greater Toronto Area, a bunch of towns clustered in the center-east of the country. Think of it like greater London or the cluster near Hong Kong.
🙌
Nice! Looks good. Is it going to be a solar node?
Currently wired on the balcony because it’s built-in solar panel is too weak for the light on my balcony. That said I have a larger panel on order because I might want to replicate it without wired power on some other balconies. 🤭
Is that meant to be mounted… inside a wall?
Inside? No. It’s an enclosure for mounting outaide. There are various adapters, bolt to a wall, clamp on a pole, magnets, zip tie to something. The lid of the box is not installed.
Ah, yeah I’m familiar with the type, it just looked like you had marked out the rough height of the case on a wall. I thought you might be doing some kind of odd stealth install.
Oh haha, no I just taped it for a pic.
What case is this?
RAK Unify, the larger one.
Don’t they come with sma connectors not N type? Did you mod it to fit it?
Yeah. The red-capped connector is the stock SMA, left in place but not connected. I drilled a hole for the N-type using a standard stepped bit. Could also use circular saw of the right size.
I’m excited for these 1W nodes. I’m in an area outside a large city. The city has a lot of activity and I can hear much of it due to a station g2 on a sky scraper. But they can’t hear me. I think a little more transmit power in my area can bridge the divide and really extend the mesh
That’s kind of my position. I’m in the suburbs, 20km away from the skyscrapers. This thing now bridges the local cummunity with downtown.
Thank you so much for sharing. I am so curious in also being part of meshtastic and would like to start off with a broadcaster like you did. Is it possible for you to share the parts you were using (electronics only), so that I have a jump start?
Will need to build a small PV power plant first, with decent battery storage, as in winter, I do not have much sun and I would like to have a possibility to recharge the battery via a plug in the worst case.
