We had some discussion at the meeting earlier this week on Meshtastic. I’ve started this thread to document a few of the talking points from a local South East Queensland perspective, and also hopefully continue the discussion as other HLB members begin to explore it themselves.
I won’t rehash the broader introductory information here as there are plenty of resources on Meshtastic such as the official wiki, the Meshtastic Brisbane User Group Wiki, and Meshtastic Australia. I’m not affiliated with any of these organisations, but their resources definitely helped me wrap my head around it all and get started.
Some general notes to add to the mountain of Meshtastic documentation on the internet, as I’ve navigated getting my own Meshtastic node working this week using a LILYGO T-Deck:
The HELTEC V3 is well regarded as a good place to start. I have not used one, but this unit keeps coming up online as the recommended option for first time users. I believe @jdownie has this unit and may be able to add more details on his experience with it. I bought the T-Deck thinking the keyboard would be useful when operating portable, but ultimately I have ended up using the Android app or web interface more than trying to navigate menus via the keyboard.
When purchasing any device for Meshtastic, make sure it supports the correct region. In Australia we use 915-928Mhz. Appropriate Meshtastic devices are typically labelled with something along the lines of “AU915”. Other frequencies (such as EU868 or US915) aren’t legal to use here, nor will you be able to communicate with other Meshtastic users as your device would be operating on different frequencies to everyone else.
Most of the defaults will be okay to get started, the exceptions being setting it to the ANZ region, and a few minor changes for SE Qld users. There is technically nothing wrong with continuing to use the defaults (LongFast and Frequency Slot 20), but there are many more users in this area operating on MediumFast and Slot 45. You’ll have much more fun and have much better success by changing these settings. I’ve gone from seeing a handful of nodes to dozens of nodes in my local area since changing these settings.
If you decide to experiment with different antennas, ensure that you don’t power on your Meshtastic device without an antenna connected (as it will likely be damaged), and you reduce power output if you install a higher gain antenna (big thanks to @techman for making me double check my work the other night). Can discuss this area further below, but for now I’ll keep these dot points simple.
When you get running, leave the device powered on. It will take several hours for nodes to populate. If you don’t hear anything in the first few minutes after powering on and you’ve ensured that settings are correct, then don’t be discouraged.
I’m thinking of buying a HELTEC V3 to set up a second Meshtastic node in the coming months so if anyone is interested in an end to end documenting of my experience, please let me know and I’ll make sure that I take notes and add them to the thread as I go.
Please feel free to add to the thread if you’re also getting started with Meshtastic or ask questions as you see fit. I’d like to experiment with a private HLB channel if we get a few people interested in experimenting.
I’ve been reflecting on this statement over the last few days and think I have probably been very unfair on the T-Deck!
I re-flashed my T-Deck since making that post, as I was on an older firmware version and was having a few minor issues. The Meshtastic UI is now bundled with the latest firmware which greatly enhances the usability of the T-Deck. I had a play with a very early version in November 2024 after reading Jeff Geerling’s Blog and struggled both with the “alpha” nature of the project (and lots of things that didn’t work) as well as probably not understanding Meshtatic itself well enough to know what I was looking at or to diagnose what was going wrong.
My second go around with the UI over the weekend has been excellent and reminds me of using a mobile phone running Symbian. The UI is far more polished than it was in late 2024 - well done to the team working on it. The touch screen on the T-Deck and roller ball make it very easy to navigate the Meshtastic UI.
I’ll bring the T-Deck to Chermside on Thursday evening in case someone wants to have a play.
Thanks @Belfry, my Heltec v3 came yesterday. I have fired up Zeelotan (zltn) and connected on MediumFast. However, as expected, I have seen only a couple of other nodes in the last 6 hours and none are active now.
I’ve been tempted to do this while experimenting. It might eliminate a variable or two, if nothing else!
The other thing to double check is hop count (experiment with it up to 7), that Frequency Slot is 45 (not the default 20 or 0), and rather absurdly to check that the settings are actually saving. @jdownie and I both had issues with settings not “sticking” - mine were resolved by using the Android client on my phone which seemed far more reliable than the web one when configuring my T-Deck.
My node has been offline for a few days but I’ve just put it back in its usual position so I’ll see if your node pops up over the next day or two.
Thought I’d come back to this to add - leave your node on overnight and see what pops up.
I’ve noticed that I have much more success between sundown and sunup. My node seems to disappear in the noise during the day, and have excellent range at night. Something I need to look into a bit more when I have the chance.
I’m curious to see if you and @zeeclor manage to make contact. I think I need to tinker a bit more and see if I can find a better position to park the T-Deck at home, or somehow get through the noise. I might swap over to another LoRa antenna I have here (somewhere) and give that a go. I seem to have gone from having mild success and occasionally drifting in and out of the noise a few weeks ago, to now being almost entirely banished to the land of “no signal”. No config change on my end during that time.
I suspect you can’t see me @jdownie because I often can’t see the rest of the mesh, or I only see the mesh long enough to receive one or two packets here and there.
Well, maybe. The gaps in my knowledge here are many and vast, but…
There are some nodes up your side of town. I’ve singled out “Dave” and “”. Side note; I’m pleasantly surprised that “” works as a label and a search term. That’s voodoo for somebody that grew up through the transition from ASCII to Unicode.
Anyway, I’m looking for nodes that are up to 7 hops away. “Dave” is 4 hops away and was last seen by me 30 hours ago. “” on the other hand was only 3 hops away 4 minutes ago.
I have been assuming that we just need the number of hops between your node and mine to be less than or equal to seven before we can relay to one another.
I suppose the other big question is “which nodes are expected to retain packets pertaining to the existence of our nodes (including messages) and for how long?”. We’re getting into routing protocol stuff which I took a hard turn away from in my career about 25 years ago, so again…
I might seem like I’m expecting you to have answers for all of this stuff. I’m not. I’m just having fun trying to work it out with somebody.
Here’s what I’m seeing about those two nodes on my phone…
P.S. Thanks again @zeeclor for setting up this Discourse instance for HLB. I wrote this whole post from my phone on the bus. I reckon that this forum platform is a perfect fit for us to all stay aware of our respective side projects, and fit in with our schedules.
I just put my logic to ChatGPT. It is trying to explain to me where my logic could be falling short, but I’m not getting it. I think I need somebody drawing on a whiteboard before it clicks for me.
As far as I can tell, ChatGPT seems to be completely agreeing with me.
MeshDash looks interesting - I shall have to check that out when I get a chance!
I’m definitely not seeing the mesh / am “offline” at the moment. Have swapped over to a different antenna I had and have moved the T-Deck into a few known good positions at home with no success. The next step will be to reflash my unit and try again, but I won’t get a chance to do that until Sunday. I’d say with almost 100% certainty that you can’t see me at the moment because of some sort of an issue on my end. Interestingly, my T-Deck started playing up at the >=150 nodes seen mark. I’ll have to go digging but I wonder whether there’s some sort of memory limit or bug lurking that has suddenly taken me out of action. Probably a coincidence, but stranger things have happened.
@jdownie The ChatGPT answer makes sense to my tired brain this afternoon. It’s a rebroadcast limit (i.e., this packet will be retransmitted by x number of devices along its journey) rather than a “radius” as such. I’ll need to dig into the Meshtastic docs but as I understand it there’s nothing stopping packets going A->B->A->B->A->B->C and hitting the hop limit without going very far. Functionally similar to TTL for IP packets (and in fact TTL was renamed hop limit in IPv6). I’ll have a look for any documentation out there that describes the routing in more detail.
100% this. Very happy to have @zeeclor jump on board too while we’re trying to experiment!
My equivalent of that code is !da6296b0, but i think that the more commonly used names are the “short” names. Mine is 96b0. I know. Hands up if you have no imagination…
Having said all of that, i can’t see ZeeLotan or catnip in my list of known nodes, but i keep checking. This is me…
Well, after over an hour of “I’ll just do this one quick thing which I don’t really have time for… oh, geez now this has turned into a huge mess” and a bunch of troubleshooting, I’m back on 2.6.11. I should have left it alone until I had more time on Sunday .
To cut a long story short - I should be back online, and I should also have position enabled. I’ll keep an eye out for your nodes over the weekend.
Should I be allowing MQTT to publish a position? I’m not sure whether that’s just to publish to the public web maps, or if it’s also a requirement to have the position on the on-device Meshtastic node map. Have either of you run into this question yourselves?
I’ve run a couple of simulations using the Meshtastic Site Planner and suspect I’m slightly outside the range of other nodes at the moment based on the expected coverage pattern and locations of others I can see on the map. I’m intermittently seeing a few other nodes pop up, but not as regularly as I was a few weeks ago. Perhaps there was a nearby intermediary who used to be there and now isn’t? Will keep tinkering over the next few days.
If I can’t get things working reliably in the coming weeks, I might fork out for a Heltec V3 and give that a go. If nothing else, having the two nodes will allow me to test that they can talk to each other and that I’m not making some gross configuration error somewhere.
Looking at the meshtastic app today I have seen a number of nodes over the last 24 hours but most of those seemed to pop up yesterday evening. I have only seen a few in the last 4 hours.
Good to see you’re seeing some activity too. My T-Deck came for a drive with me again today (it’s currently switched off however) and I’ll be curious to see if I pop up in your node lists at all at some stage.
Did you need to make any configuration changes to have port 4403 open for MeshDash? It’s not open on my freshly factory reset and flashed T-Deck, and I can’t see any configuration options in the firmware but I’m also not sure what I’m looking for.
In my meshtastic app I am offered the ip address in the interface and that works. The option to specify an ip address and port (default 4403) is greyed out.
I am now showing up on Liam Cottle’s map (zltn) but don’t have any connections. (Click neigbours in the options.)
I wonder if Brisbane’s topology is a factor limiting the connections. Adelaide (and its hills) seem ideal with a few key nodes easily maintaining the network. Still it’s better than Darwin.
”. Side note; I’m pleasantly surprised that “
.
