I have a node at home and I go out biking with another Heltec with me. How long does it take for the mobile node to update the information about the other nodes such as distance and signal strength?
I went out and I send a message to a private channel or DM, and I can see it taking its time, but the screen on the Heltec says the signal strength is 80% for example (obviously not true). So I pull over and stand and wait until it updates which most of times it doesn’t until I try to send another message or not sure when that happens.
Even when I’m out of range and bike down hill fast to be in range again, how long does it take to know that it is back in range to send the message? It doesn’t update until i send another message when I’m in range.
I don’t have GPS enabled on either of the Heltec so I’m not expecting to see the distance, but even when I had it on, it was taking a while to update. But what about the signal strength?
Is signal strength related to the GPS as well? Or how often does it get updated?
And for getting back in range, I meant that if I’m in point A which I know that is out of range, and I go quickly to point B which I know for sure that it is in range, how long does it take until the node that is mobile with me to know that it is back in range and updates the signal strength and know that it is in range of the other node? Is there a process in the background that is checking for that or does it wait until something is being sent out to see if it is range (like gps info, a message, etc…)?
If you want to force an update against a particular node, run a traceroute against the remote node, or just send it a direct message. If the packets connect, the node will update it’s signal strength. It’s a good way to do a quick one-off check.
If you have a user-button, a double-tap will initiate an “ad-hoc ping” which is just an out-of-band nodeinfo. All nodes out there that receive the ping will return their own nodeinfo back. It’s a “noisy” operation so shouldn’t be abused, but it’s a nice way to see who else out there’s in earshot.
Yeah I figured that a trace route would be a nice quick way to trigger getting info back. But the adhoc ping is cool! I remember skimming over it while reading the heltec docs but didn’t think of it much. Thanks!