So I’ve been experimenting with LoRa and meshtastic.
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Jan Dytrych🇨🇿🇺🇦replied to Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange: last edited by
@jwildeboer for solar powered node make sure it will last few days, because you can have many days without sun and panel will not charge the big battery much. Running my Pico solar node and 3000 mAh battery will not recharge during day when sun is covered. This is something that must be very carefully decided and later on tested.
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Jan Dytrych🇨🇿🇺🇦replied to Jan Dytrych🇨🇿🇺🇦 last edited by
@jwildeboer during sunny days the battery is at 100% at the end of the day.
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Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:replied to Jan Dytrych🇨🇿🇺🇦 last edited by
@jan Which is what I am doing right now Testing, iterating, measuring. But I also want to make stuff look good
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Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:replied to Jan Dytrych🇨🇿🇺🇦 last edited by [email protected]
@jan I switched the Heltec to router mode, the 6W solar module had no problems charging the 2000 mAh battery to 100% within a few hours. And we didn't have a lot of sun yesterday. I guess I will need a 20W panel for the 10000 mAh battery to get to good results. We will see
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Jan Dytrych🇨🇿🇺🇦replied to Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange: last edited by
@jwildeboer what solar panel size do you plan on use? Have 7W solar panel right now, and it's not enough for Pico on cloudy day to recharge the battery.
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Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:replied to Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange: last edited by
It's really satisfying to be able to do all of that with a few mouse clicks and some simple calculations. Should this case work, I will upload it to https://makerworld.com and tell Alley cat, who might make it far better as she knows her model the best I just didn't want to bother her with my extravagant idea
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Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:replied to Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange: last edited by [email protected]
I'd say, that's a perfect fit Now to solder the connector and move the board from its old case to this one I also put the case together with the battery in it — no problem at all. Still enough space left to secure it with foam double-sided tape. Nice! I'm happy
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Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:replied to Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange: last edited by [email protected]
As promised, if you want to print this case yourself: https://makerworld.com/en/models/671349 or if you prefer printables: https://www.printables.com/model/1022773-ac-slim-pro-10000
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Richard Hughesreplied to Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange: last edited by
@jwildeboer if it helps, I pressed the button on the bits for a T-Deck based on your posts.
I've got some older LoRa modules I'm going to try and make work with the newer hardware. I'm also pondering putting something on a M.2 PCB and making it all internal in my ThinkPad...
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Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:replied to Richard Hughes last edited by
@hughsie Hahaha! The mesh is spreading Have fun!
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Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:replied to Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange: last edited by [email protected]
And the new antenna on my balcony node has made it possible that I could send a message successfully from my orange node with its little antenna to the T-Deck at home (also just a little antenna) by using it as a hop in the mesh. That’s 900m in a densely built part of Munich with a measly 22 dBm transmission power. Nice!
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CodingPanicreplied to Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange: last edited by
@jwildeboer what does your balcony setup look like? Any special antenna? I can’t get more than 30 feet with an antenna in my setup. (I’m US frequency, also using the heltec based board.)
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Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:replied to CodingPanic last edited by
@codingpanic I got this 16€ antenna which promises a 8 dBi gain, directly connected to the Heltec V3. And it seems to work. I’m no expert, didn’t measure the output
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Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:replied to Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange: last edited by
And before I go to bed, I finished upgrading the balcony node from a 2000 mAh battery to the 10000 mAh version in the big case. It came with 77% charge, so should survive the night. The node is outside on my balcony, connected to the 6W solar panel. I’ll be travelling for a few days, so it’ll be interesting to see if it stays online while I’m away.
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Evan Light (looking for work)replied to Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange: last edited by
@jwildeboer How would you go about such a bigger run? Curious for some of my own 3d printed and custom electronics ideas I've had.
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Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:replied to Evan Light (looking for work) last edited by
@elight I wouldn't I'd happily do a run of 25-50 devices for friends and followers who know what they are getting into, but that'll be the max. If I would do that, I'd get the orders in (prepaid, no discussion, trust me or not), source the components needed (+5% to have some wiggle room for defective stuff) and spend a weekend on putting stuff together and shipping it.
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Simon Bissonreplied to Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange: last edited by
@jwildeboer That's pretty much its main use case. Look at the cobra hood of a modern LED streetlamp. They're LoRA nodes with a mix of (mainly air quality) sensors.
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Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:replied to Simon Bisson last edited by
@sbisson But typically LoRaWAN, which is quite, but not completely open. Meshtastic replaces (AFAICS) the WAN part of the stack with a more open solution.
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Barthélémy Rochatreplied to Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange: last edited by
@jwildeboer Hello, I am interested in your experience. Do you plan to document it?