A Long-Range Meshtastic Relay

April 3, 2024 by 22 Comments

In the past few years we’ve seen the rise of low-power mesh networking devices for everything from IoT devices, weather stations, and even off-grid communications networks. These radio modules are largely exempt from licensing requirements due to their low power and typically only operate within a very small area. But by borrowing some ideas from the licensed side of amateur radio, [Peter Fairlie] built this Meshtastic repeater which can greatly extend the range of his low-power system.

[Peter] is calling this a “long lines relay” after old AT&T microwave technology, but it is essentially two Heltec modules set up to operate as Meshtastic nodes, where one can operate as a receiver while the other re-transmits the received signal. Each is connected to a log-periodic antenna to greatly increase the range of the repeater along the direction of the antenna. These antennas are highly directional, but they allow [Peter] to connect to Meshtastic networks in the semi-distant city of Toronto which he otherwise wouldn’t be able to hear.

With the two modules connected to the antennas and enclosed in a weatherproof box, the system was mounted on a radio tower allowing a greatly increased range for these low-power devices. If you’re familiar with LoRa but not Meshtastic, it’s become somewhat popular lately for being a straightforward tool for setting up low-power networks for various tasks. [Jonathan Bennett] explored it in much more detail as an emergency communications mode after a tornado hit his home town.

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Custom Library Rescues Good LoRa Hardware From Bad Firmware

March 13, 2024 by 17 Comments

The range of hardware that comes on some dev boards these days is truly staggering. Those little LoRa boards are a prime example — ESP32 with WiFi and Bluetooth, a transceiver that covers a big chunk of the UHF band, and niceties like OLED displays and plenty of GPIO. But the firmware and docs? Well, if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all. Or better yet, just roll your own.

Of course that doesn’t hold true for all the LoRa dev boards on the market, but [Rop] certainly found it to be the case for the Heltec HTIT-WB32LA. This board has all the bells and whistles and would be perfect for LoraWAN and Meshtastic applications, but it needed a little help getting it over the line. [Rop]’s contribution to this end is pretty comprehensive and is based on his fork of the RadioLib library, which incorporates a library that greatly reduces wear on the ESP32’s flash memory. In addition to full radio support, the library supports all the hardware on the board from the pushbutton to the display, power management and battery charging, and of course the blinkenlights.

[Jop] includes quite a few example applications, from the bare minimum needed to get the board spun up to a full-blown spectrum analyzer. It’s a nice piece of work, and a great give-back to the LoRa community. And if you want to put one of these modules to work, you’re certainly in the right place. We’ve got everything from LoRaWAN networks to the magic of Meshtastic, so take your pick and get hacking.

Garden Light Turned Mesh Network Node

January 21, 2024 by 11 Comments

We love a good deal, especially when it comes to scavenging parts for projects. Cheap outdoor solar lights are more than just garden accessories; they’re a handy source of waterproof enclosures, solar panels and batteries. This is demonstrated by [Tavis], who turned one such light into a Meshtastic LoRa communication node.

Solar Light With Meshtastic node inside
Where there’s an antenna, there’s a radio

A nice feature on this specific $15 Harbor Breeze Solar LED is the roomy solar panel enclosure with integrated 18650 battery holder, allowing for easy battery swaps. [Tavis] was able to easily fit the RAKwireless modular dev board, and wire it into the light’s charging circuit. The cheap  circuit is likely not the most efficient, but will probably get the job done. It’s always possible to just swap it out with a better charging board. [Tavis] also added an external antenna by using a panel-mount SMA pigtail connector.

The Meshtastic project is all about enabling text-only communications through LoRa-based mesh networks, built using off-the-shelf devices and development boards that won’t break the bank. The project has seen some incredible growth, with people all over the world setting up their own networks.

It’s not the first time we’ve seen garden lights get used in project. We’ve seen MQTT added to a PIR solar light with some clever power saving circuitry, and as a power source for Attiny85-based projects.

Meshtastic And Owntracks To Kick Your Google Habit

October 11, 2023 by 20 Comments

I have an admission to make. I have a Google addiction. Not the normal addiction — I have a problem with Google Maps, and the timeline feature. I know, I’m giving my location data to Google, who does who-knows-what-all with it. But it’s convenient to have an easy way to share location with my wife, and very useful to track my business related travel for each month. What we could really use is a self-hosted, open source system to track locations and display location history. And for bonus points, let’s include some extra features, like the ability to track vehicles, kids, and pets that aren’t carrying a dedicated Internet connection.

You can read the title — you know where we’re going with this. We’re setting up an Owntracks service, and then tying it to Meshtastic for off-Internet usability. The backbone that makes this work is MQTT, a network message bus that has really found its niche in the Home Assistant project among others. It’s a simple protocol, where clients send brief messages labeled by topic, and can also subscribe to specific topics. For this little endeavor we’ll use the Mosquito MQTT broker.

One of the nice things about MQTT is that the messages are all text strings, and often take the form of JSON. When trying to get two applications to talking using a shared MQTT server, there may need to be a bit of translation. One application may label a field latitude, and the other shortens it to lat. The glue code to put these together is often known as an MQTT translator, or sometimes an MQTT bridge. This is a program that listens to a given topic, ingests each message, and sends it back to the MQTT server in a different format and topic name.

The last piece is Owntracks, which has a recorder project, which pulls locations from the MQTT server, and stores it locally. Then there’s Owntracks Frontend, which is a much nicer user interface, with some nice features like viewing movement a day at a time. Continue reading “Meshtastic And Owntracks To Kick Your Google Habit” →

Hackaday Prize 2023: LoShark, The Radio Debugger For LoRa

August 6, 2023 by 24 Comments

LoRa, the Long Range wireless protocol is pretty great for trickling data across long distances. There are some great embedded devices based around STM32, NRF52, and ESP32 microcontrollers. What’s been missing for quite a while is a device that allows for full access to a LoRa radio from a more capable CPU. The wait may be over, as there’s now the LoShark. It’s a USB key form factor, with a MIPS processor running a real Linux kernel. Cool!

The way debugging works is interesting, too. The team at SudoMaker is working on their Resonance runtime, which allows interacting with the onboard sx126x radio chip using JavaScript code. That chip can both send and receive, so this device should be capable of more than just capturing traffic. And if JavaScript isn’t your thing, the Linux system on the device means you can knock yourself out with C or C++ code. Who knows, we may even see Meshtastic running on this thing some day.

If this gets you excited, it’s already available for order for a reasonable $59.99. The LoShark ships in 433, 868, and 915 megahertz versions. It’s a really slick looking device, and maybe worth your time to check out. Enjoy!

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Meshtastic For The Greater Good

June 26, 2023 by 62 Comments

Last week, my city was hit by a tornado. That’s not surprising here in Oklahoma, and thankfully this event was an F0 or possibly even an EF0 — a really weak tornado. Only a couple roofs collapsed, though probably half the houses in town are going to need roof repairs, thanks to the combination of huge hail and high winds. While it wasn’t too bad, power did go down in a few places around town, and this led to an interesting series of events.

Chat messages were coming in like this: “That was a [power] flicker, yeah. Even took down my Internet.” Followed by “Whee, [fiber Internet] got knocked out and now Starlink has too many clouds in the way.” And after ten minutes of silence, we got a bit worried to see “Time to hide under a bed. … Is cell service back?” It is a bit spooky to think about trying to help neighbors and friends after a disaster, in the midst of the communication breakdown that often follows. If he had needed help, and had no working communications, how long would it have taken for us to go check on him?
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Building A Communications Grid With LoRaType

March 13, 2023 by 33 Comments

Almost all of modern society is built around various infrastructure, whether that’s for electricity, water and sewer, transportation, or even communication. These vast networks aren’t immune from failure though, and at least as far as communication goes, plenty will reach for a radio of some sort to communicate when Internet or phone services are lacking. It turns out that certain LoRa devices are excellent for local communication as well, and this system known as LoraType looks to create off-grid text-based communications networks wherever they might be needed.

The project is based around the ESP32 platform with an E22 LoRa module built-in to allow it to operate within its UHF bands. It also includes a USB-based battery charger for its small battery, an e-paper display module to display the text messages without consuming too much power, and a keyboard layout for quickly typing messages. The device firmware lets it be largely automated; it will seek out other devices on the local mesh network automatically and the user can immediately begin communicating with other devices on that network as soon as it connects.

There are a few other upsides of using a device like this. Since it doesn’t require any existing communications infrastructure to function, it can be used wherever there are no other easy options, such as in the wilderness, during civil unrest where the common infrastructure has been shut down, or simply for local groups which do not have access to cell networks or Internet. LoRa is a powerful tool for these use cases, and it’s even possible to network together larger base stations to extend the range of devices like these.