Hi @Ben360
How far west do you think they will reach?
Given Basingstoke is in a dip I doubt it will make the 75km but maybe Bracknell at 44Km is a little closer when the office opens up
Paul
It might be wrong polarity, the screen printing suggests positive is closest to the edge but I found a photo of red inside.
I dug into the datasheet of the base board, apparently the triangle points to the ground pin.
This is reportedly true of the solar connector as well.
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Posted some of this in a thread in the Slack chat, but I thought Iâd share it here as well in case itâs helpful to anyone else:
Iâve been interested in running a RAK board on 12v solar without the cost and space requirements of a dedicated solar power management board. The problem with running a decent 12v or even 5v nominal solar panel directly into these boards is that RAK has a max rating of 5.5v dc in for the solar port. I have run 5v nominal panels that in full sun under a load can easily punch up into the 8v range.
One thing I found when I was looking for an appropriate and reasonably priced 5v dc regulator was this Murata dc-dc switching regulator in an old arduino thread:
https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/murata-power-solutions-inc/OKI-78SR-5-1-5-W36-C/2259781
It supports 7-36 max dc voltage and regulates a fairly clean 5v out. My only concern with these is how they behave with under-voltage, since thatâs a given with solar power once darkness hits.
I experimented with my bench power supply, and it doesnât appear to âjumpâ any higher than the regulated Vout as some switching regulators reportedly do. It sags a 1-2 volts lower than the Vin, which should be fine with the RAK boardâs solar input. I donât currently have an oscilloscope to say that with 100% certainty there isnât a high voltage blip that occurs for a few nano seconds. I doubt there will be anything potentially damaging coming out of it though, especially with a capacitor across the terminals. So Iâm hopeful I can slap just one of these new RAK boards with a murata regulator, a cap and a battery in one of my solar panel mounted junction boxes instead of relying on a whole external solar management system.
For those that have the full WisBlock solar kit, has anyone been able to real world test it to see if it can keep the battery and device going through some normal usage patterns? I have to admit, even as low power usage as this board boasts, Iâm a bit suspicious of that tiny solar cell being able to keep things running long term, especially if youâre deploying it in a region that isnât blue skies all day.
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These boards are inexpensive, pretty small, adjustable, efficient and work well. I just havenât tested them for EMC yet.
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You could perhaps order several zener diodes and bench test them to put one across the solar panel. In theory that would help with your concern and lightning both.
I can confirm this. I had to switch the pins in my JST connector. The triangle does denote negative for battery and solar.
Happy to range test it. Letâs see how many s.e folks we can find and make a mesh network 
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Looks like RAK is aware of the Meshtastic compatibility, they updated their docs for how to upload MT firmware: RAKwireless Documentation Center
Congrats! Hopefully a deal was made. My order finally shipped after more than a month of waiting on standby.
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My Wisblock Kit 2 arrived yesterday. Some initial impressions:
-The solar panel is not adequate to run the board even in direct sun. I do have the GPS block installed and anatmospheric sensor installed. Not sure if perhaps the panel would be sufficient to run just the base board with the LoRa module and without the GPS module, but being that the kit includes the GPS, it seems like it should.
-The box is veryâŚclinical. No passthrough for the reset button, but there is an opening for a USB cable. The lid on the box has no gasket. Should be no time before the 3D printing community has a more user friendly case design uploaded.
So far the operation is good. âMeshesâ well with my mesh. Pun intended. The phone app plays nicely with it and even shows an RSSI value for each node on the mesh. Pretty neat.
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On my boards the Battery Ground indicator was correct, and I could plug the battery straight in.
On the Solar connector, the ground indicator arrow is wrong, but the plug is still correct, so again I could plug the solar panel straight in, but the silkmask then suggests that the polarities are swapped.
@thebentern is the battery charge reporting correctly for you? I get an NA when running meshtastic --nodes for the RAK boards - I dont have a screen for them so canât say if the info isnât being sent or isnât measured.
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The solar panel should be fine once weâve done more power optimization for that board. Iâm currently leaving the GPS power rail on all the time which burns lots of power. Alas, at my current rate it will be a few weeks before I get to that one.
I placed the Wisblock on a hill for a day and night to test as a go-between part of my mesh. When I left it, the connected 3000 mAH battery was fully charged and the solar panel was connected. For some reason, it shut itself down. Iâm not certain if the battery was completely drained in just the over nightâs time or if the board shut off by itself, but when I went to collect the board, it was on an âoffâ condition, ie not showing up on the phone app, all LEDs off. I was able to rouse it by hitting the reset button once. I donât have the equipment to thoroughly test the battery.
Also, in attempting to upgrade the firmware to the 1.2.38 alpha, the file wonât copy to the board. When dragging the file onto the folder, I think the board boots Meshtastic before the new .uf2 is copied making it impossible to upgrade firmware.
After you plugin the USB, double click the reset button to flash the new firmware.
is the battery charge reporting correctly for you? I get an NA when running meshtastic --nodes for the RAK boards - I dont have a screen for them so canât say if the info isnât being sent or isnât measured.
I get the same (as of 1.2.30) but I havenât tested the latest. Since this is brand new hardware for the builds, I assume itâll catch up on a few things like that soon.
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Yes, I have done this. The boot loader shows up in my drive list. I open that drive folder, drag the file over it, drop it, it shows a copy progress dialogue, and then about 35-45% of the process, it errors out and says it is trying to copy to a âdevice that does not existâ as Meshtastic boots on the board.
I cannot do the process quickly enough to stop the error from occurring.
I recall having a copy interruption as well for (1.2.28 â 1.2.30), but in my case, it was a false negative and the firmware did end up showing as updated in the meshtastic app / python api after the process.
You may double check to see if yours updated and didnât just appear to fail. I think what happens is that once the boot loader gets that new .uf2 file, it immediately boots into the new firmware image before the file handle is closed so windows flips out. I could be wrong though.
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AhâŚI had not considered this possibility. Iâll check it after work and report back here.
Thanks!
Itâd be great if you could check the batteryâs state of charge, as if itâs fine then youâre probably running into this bug instead.
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Checked the firmware of the Wisblock board in the phone app and as you said, it did indeed update the firmware before Windows threw the error! It is now running 1.2.38.
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Awesome! Glad to hear it worked. I was a bit concerned at first when it threw the error at me as well.
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Not sure if this is a good place for a discussion on this boardâs behavior, feel free to move it if not.
After having figured out the firmware situation, I placed the Wisblock in my parked vehicle all day with power via USB car charger. When I left the vehicle, it was on and showing on the mesh. After around 7 hours, it dropped off of the mesh. When I returned to the vehicle around 9 hours later, the Wisblock was off despite being powered.
Feature? Bug? LOL