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!
@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
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.
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
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
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.
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'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.
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.
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.
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.
i did range testing with my Lilygo t-deck and my heltec v3, i didn't even get 200 feet away. it was line of site, i don't get it. i live in the county setting. no hills flat open ground. Line of site not even a block away. what am i doing wrong. didn't hardly got out of the driveway. ant ideas ?
I would recommend joining the discord and posting your issue as well as your full setup. Folks can get you sorted. There's a lot of variables involved.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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??? 😢😭
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.
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"
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.
@9:09 you say you don’t recommend these for battery operations why not? If I put six 18 650s in parallel, would not that give it enough power to last it for a few days ?
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.
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?
@@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!
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!
Great video - thank you for taking the time to put it together. Lots of useful information.
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 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
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
Wow! Well done Ben!
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.
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.
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.
Extremely helpful, great explanations and very practical -- thanks!
Great video! Very informative and you answered many of my questions.
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?
Lots of good advice thanks
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.
Ive been looking for a LoS calculating website for so long. TY!!
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.
A very useful video!
Thank you.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Excellent video
This is perfectly explained, thanks!
Glad you enjoyed it!
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.
Information rich thank you this is helpful.
A unit with a removable antenna where you can plug in a coax to an external antenna would go a looong way.
awesome video, thanks.
The RC guys are using LoRa too so... they might have some interesting antenna choices.
Great vid
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!
This is all new to me but good info for us noobs. :)
i did range testing with my Lilygo t-deck and my heltec v3, i didn't even get 200 feet away. it was line of site, i don't get it. i live in the county setting. no hills flat open ground. Line of site not even a block away. what am i doing wrong. didn't hardly got out of the driveway. ant ideas ?
I would recommend joining the discord and posting your issue as well as your full setup. Folks can get you sorted. There's a lot of variables involved.
11:00 i actually VNA tested 6 of the little one and only one of them was defective.
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).
It looks like most Meshtastic installs are vertically polarized?
I think it's fair to say the majority are, yes.
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.
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 .
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.
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!
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.
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.
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 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"
Critical Fault #11
meshtastic.org/docs/development/device/error-codes/
That STUPID side/centre mount antenna is infuriatingly bad PCB design 😠
It's ok
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
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.
Waste of time at my location without a 11.5db collinear
The best antenna is the one you make yourself ... best regards from Poland.
@9:09 you say you don’t recommend these for battery operations why not?
If I put six 18 650s in parallel, would not that give it enough power to last it for a few days ?
Maybe, but that's not very efficient. You get that easily with a single battery using devices with nRF52 MCUs like the RAK.
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!
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.
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.
Is there a reason you don’t recommend Heltec Lora32 v3 boards for battery operation? Thank you for the video!
Esp32. Uses more power.
Check Your Antennas! also measured mine with nanoVNA and All of them was way way off.
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.
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!
Great work, great project 🎉
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?
@@tsp2jxd, Great question. I’m interested in the other two presented as well.