Getting More Range with Meshtastic
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 มิ.ย. 2024
- In this video we go over some ways to increase your mesh network's range with Meshtastic and troubleshoot common range issues.
0:00 - Intro
0:45 - Settings
4:42 - Radios (and SX126x setting)
10:47 - Antenna selection
14:39 - Connectors
15:50 - Antenna Types
17:50 - Antenna Gain
20:40 - Line of sight and elevation profiling
⬇️ Below are links to some of the things discussed in this video ⬇️
Where to buy devices:
Devices:
Neil Hao's nano and high-powered station devices - www.tindie.com/stores/neilhao/
@RoklandSuperTech store- store.rokland.com/pages/mesht...
Meshtastic Starter Kit from RAK - store.rakwireless.com/product...
LilyGo Store - www.lilygo.cc/collections/lor...
Antenna links:
meshtastic.org/docs/hardware/...
store.rokland.com/collections...
store.rakwireless.com/collect...
nanovna.com/
HeyWhat'sThat line of sight profiling tool: www.heywhatsthat.com/
Visit us at meshtastic.org/ to learn more about the project.
Join us on:
Discord - / discord
Github - github.com/meshtastic
Twitter - / themeshtastic
Instagram - / themeshtastic
FaceBook - / themeshtastic
Reddit - / meshtastic
Discourse - meshtastic.discourse.group/ - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
We got 8.7 miles between 2 nodes yesterday with successful communication with the stock antennas. One node was in town in a fairly dense area and one node was out of town, just barely above roof line. Going to try and get 14 miles plus out of them tonight!
did it work? 9 miles is exactly the range at i want to operate it but probably with more interference
Any update?
@shaneciccarelli-palmer2962 yes, sorry. We got 14.7 miles out of them with stock antennas no problem. We are working on getting some antenna that we can mount on the roof of our houses and see about 47 miles here soon now haha
@@MarauderCustomWorks 👍
@@MarauderCustomWorksany recommendations for antennas?
For someone new to this whole field, this is really helpful. Thank you!
Glad it was helpful!
Thank you very much for the great video! Please give us more of this informative content. We have a big Mesh in our City with 20 to 40 nodes active with default 868MHz LongFast settings.
Good news, we have plans to get more content like this out going forward.
The best antenna is the one you make yourself ... best regards from Poland.
17:00 counterpose will help. Easy to add to the SMA since it is is bare metall
18:00 those antennas can be called collinear antenna. It makes top and bottom flat and receives on the horizontal plane as you explained. We use collinear antennas on marine VHF antennas. More gain bigger antenna it is. You can make it out of coax cable. Many elements soldered together. And it has its own ground plane as I understand it.
I remember when to get more range you had to contact someone with an alias on the radio. Then go wait at the truck stop with cash in a envelope for someone to show up with your linear amp that may or may not work
Great video - thank you for taking the time to put it together. Lots of useful information.
A most excellent video. I will be showing it to our Boy Scout adventure group. They are currently working on their Amateur tech licenses, but we will be doing other networking and linux things as well. My 2 daughters are generals and will be doing things soon with meshtastic and ATAK.
Anyway, great info, we will be following you for some of our studies.
Wow! Well done Ben!
Extremely helpful, great explanations and very practical -- thanks!
Thanks for the heads-up on the AliExpress antenna's! Found the model for 5,72 (euros) each and paid just 16 for 2 antenne's and two pigtails. There are practically no nodes where I live and it's a very hilly province so I hope to be able to eventually get some solar powered repeaters on the roofs of flats/high buildings :D
Great video! Very informative and you answered many of my questions.
Very informative video, I wish I saw your video a bit earlier as I just ordered the "old" radio. You explanation about antenna is very good as I am a radio engineer 8-) when explaining why not to use 1/4 wave.
Excellent video
This is perfectly explained, thanks!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Information rich thank you this is helpful.
A very useful video!
Thank you.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Ive managed 7.8 miles on the tiny little stub antennas that came with my heltecs. The SWR was about 4
the newer antennas i have are about 1.25.
Ive been looking for a LoS calculating website for so long. TY!!
awesome video, thanks.
Great vid
Great work, great project 🎉
great video! PLEASE share a setup of a t-beam device!
Hey Hector, the information in this video applies to any of the officially supported devices, including a t-beam. Thanks!
The little stock antennas that came with my Heltec V3 are perfectly matched. No idea why everyone says they are not. But in terms of gain, even a simple dipole made with a SMA to screw terminal adapter is way better.
It can be pretty hit or miss. Most of the time it appears to be a miss. There's a been a few lucky ones like you though.
I'm newbie in this topic, but after watching this video I think about setup (868mhz):
- for carring with me: t-echo with lynx dipole antenna
- for powered setup on the roof of the home placed on top of the hill: rak wireless with hydra board and Rockland antenna
- for car mounted one: t-echo with magnetized monopole antenna
I'm not sure if I understood you correctly. Is this a good choice or would you do something different?
I’ve tested many 915 MHz antennas using a VNA. Most are junk and are not resonant at 907 MHz, which is the default channel. A simple dipole trimmed for resonance works fine. There are quality antennas out there with gain that work great and I routinely get 40 to 50 miles with nodes that have the better SX1262 radio chip. But remember the whole purpose of the mesh is to pass packets in hops between other nodes.
This is all new to me but good info for us noobs. :)
The RC guys are using LoRa too so... they might have some interesting antenna choices.
Is there a reason you don’t recommend Heltec Lora32 v3 boards for battery operation? Thank you for the video!
Esp32. Uses more power.
Hi Ben, i was hoping this would cover interpretation of the apps SNR & RSSI. The link budget was good to know thanks. Can you have different presets for different channels?
No, the presets are per device, not channel. So whichever preset you have selected is what will be used for that device.
Hello, I have used meshtasting in the past between two TTGO T_Beam LoRA devices. My question is: Are there some public channels where I could find other users and just start a chat ? Thank you
Most users will use the default channel for their region as a sort of public channel. There's also those that connect to the public MQTT server. There's also a recent Matrix integration you can check out on Discourse.
11:00 i actually VNA tested 6 of the little one and only one of them was defective.
Check Your Antennas! also measured mine with nanoVNA and All of them was way way off.
A unit with a removable antenna where you can plug in a coax to an external antenna would go a looong way.
so for the lily t-echo whats' a better upgraded antenna? can i boost the gain on it?
Our discord community has a bunch of antenna recommendations. In fact we have a whole channel dedicated to antennas!
Is there a way to _"breadboard"_ a _Meshtastic_ system? IOW, does the Meshtastic firmware allow for different transceiver chips, different GPS receivers, etc. (perhaps with different pinouts)?
Is there a Meshtastic *library* for the Arduino IDE (similar to the *_LoRa_* library)? If possible, I would like the option to modify the message payload, such as to include temperature, barometric pressure, or some other sensor data into a customized Meshtastic message.
It's possible but might require some work, unless you're using an existing DIY variant as a footprint (github.com/meshtastic/firmware/tree/master/variants/diy). If you're using hardware that's already supported it's just a matter of creating your own variant with the necessary pin info etc.
There is a Meshtastic library for Arduino but it is not the firmware, it's more of a driver for interfacing with Meshtastic nodes over WiFi and Serial connections (github.com/meshtastic/Meshtastic-arduino).
I just made an attempt, and it barely made it to 1km , the Rx received some of the messages, but the Tx didnt know about it ..... I will have a play around and see if this can become some useful hardware or if it goes in the junk bin.
Remember, line of sight is key. If you are having issues, feel free to join the discord and ask the community for help. They're great!
Strange question, has anyone put one of these on a drone? And if so how much range do you think you can get?
I think Andy Kirby did.
Can you link the lillygo Aliexpress SX1262 ?
The T-beam
There's a couple purchase links here meshtastic.org/docs/hardware/devices/tbeam/ under the SX1262 tab.
It looks like most Meshtastic installs are vertically polarized?
I think it's fair to say the majority are, yes.
I really need a nano vna... What version is that one?
This one is the first generation, which is very affordable and works well. The new V2 line is even more capable at a higher price point.
I recommend sourcing one from one of the official vendors to avoid purchasing dubious clones that may not give you consistent or accurate measurements.
@@Meshtastic A tutorial on how to measure and compare Lora antennas with the VNA would be great!
I've yet to get 1 mile of range in a residential area. Even with a lynx antenna.
You've made a good step switching to a well tuned antenna. Now try getting one of your nodes as high above the ground as possible. This can make a huge difference in achievable distance. Two devices a few feet off of the ground will generally not achieve very much distance in urban / sub-urban environments.
Also if you're on SX1276 based devices, as mentioned in the video, I recommend upgrading to SX1262 based ones and setting the lora.sx126x_rx_boosted_gain config. It makes a considerable difference in my experience.
all residentials emit a lot of wifi which restrict LORA range .
Not seen a single node. Don’t know if I configured it right.
It's very well possible that there are no other users in your area, or if there are they are not using any of the default settings. There's a large group of user's that operate private mesh networks.
soooo
1. use LONG SLOW (right???)
2. sx1262 with option "more power!!!"
3. better antenna
4. ... on the mast?
If you're specific use-case calls for long slow, yes. Otherwise sticking with Long Fast is usually fine. We've seen some pretty great distances on it. The rest look good too.
Someone told me that I could not download Mashtastic because I have an older 11 Pro Max iphone and when you have to download Testflight and it wont work because you have to have a iphone 13 or above for it to work. IS THAT RIGHT???
😢😭
The only restriction is based on the version of iOS needed. The apple apps currently require iOS/iPadOS 16.2 or higher.
Link for the links diopole antenna?
www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/linx-technologies-inc/ANT-916-CW-HW-SMA/2694126
@@Meshtastic This comment should be pinned ;). I just ordered a handful. Thanks for the link!
@@gingerman5123 this shows only 1.2 dBi gain? Is it the right antenna?
Petit Jean! are you in Arkansas? What an odd thing to happen across.
👀
@@Meshtastic my kids and I are playing with your software and we have a tentative plan to cover NLR, Maumelle and Sheridan. So very cool! Thanks for what you do!
This very subject has prevented my purchase so far. I need 5-6 miles range with some tree obstructions and no buildings over 2 stories point to point. My elevation is about 50' above family members I'd want to communicate with in an emergency. Per your coverage map, one other mesh device exists within 30 miles. Would I be able to achieve comm with an add-on antenna?
Edit...why are these units not sold fully assembled?
We do not have a coverage map. There is a map that is passed around that is all user-generated data. This data is at best unreliable. 30 miles is definitely doable with proper line of sight.
These devices are off-the-shelf devices adapted to our use-case. There are community members that sell fully assembled devices if you'd like though. You can search "Meshtastic" on Etsy.
I bought the device because of its compactness, to find out I needed an antenna on the roof of my house? Then I found out I bought the wrong MHz 433. Why make it then?
That's definitely rough. We don't make the devices though, we use off-the-shelf devices. There are different frequency bands that are used for different reasons outside of Meshtastic. Be sure to check out our hardware section on the website for supported devices and recommended antennas. meshtastic.org/docs/hardware/
@@Meshtastic Original LILYGO T-ECHO 433MHz, sitting here like Will Smith in I am Legend. "My name is Robert Neville, I bought a LILYGO T-ECHO 433MHz, If you can hear this message, please talk to me, I don't have an antenna on my roof"
Discord is a cesspool I wish forms was still a thing.
I can get 1/1000th of a mile in Florida using stock antennas lol
Be sure to check out some of the community's recommended antennas here: meshtastic.org/docs/hardware/antennas/
Play at x1.25 speed
Waste of time at my location without a 11.5db collinear
That STUPID side/centre mount antenna is infuriatingly bad PCB design 😠
It's ok