Oh, the position obfuscation had me about 8 miles away, I’m actually near clear lake shores.
Ha, yes, is in a field not far from where I am. I will get back to mine tonight or this weekend and figure out the settings.
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I’m in League City near 45. It occurs to me that if we had some kind of organization we could lobby to approach TxDOT to place a few strategic Meshtastic devices atop the big lights on 45 and the Beltway, we could have a zero-cost-of-operation emergency comms system that little could touch.
I’m fielding a Heltec Wireless Stick as a hidden client (for relay purposes) in a tree in my front yard at about 25’ up, plus a Heltec V3 in the attic that serves as my base station.
I typically see about 14 nodes when everything is working, thanks to some nodes I can reach that are running mqtt. Consequently one of the nodes on my list is over 1000 miles away in north ohio, and one at over 8000 miles in Schenzen, China, perhaps near where my radio was manufactured.
My goal is to get my brother down in Corpus Christi on my node list, but pickings are really slim down there. He’s currently setting up his own mqtt server and broker down there.
We’re both just getting started, nothing stable about our deployments. Yet. We’re working with an eye to resilient, self contained infrastructure.
Come join us on msh/US/TX and help us plan the work and work the plan! The info on channels and such is above.
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Hi yNos,
I just tried to take you up on that. I am controlling the device with an ipad, this one, in fact, and it prompted me to save the channel info, advised me of a resultant reboot of the node. The reboot appears to have happened, but I don’t seem to have taken up the channel, as it is not visible in the iOS meshtastic app.
Any suggestions?
What firmware version are you using. Are you using Bluetooth or WiFi? Can you drop some screenshots of your channel config, mqtt config, and network if you’re using WiFi?
I’m on bluetooth, not using mqtt, and running the latest image as of sometime last week. After having made a mess of things several times, I reflashed and made only such changes as it took to get the radios on the air.
I’ve got a Heltec Wireless stick 25’ up a tree in the front yard, and a heltec v3 in the attic where I can bluetooth it from inside the house, and it can relay to the wireless stick. Have confirmed this to be functional each time I take things down to recharge the battery packs.
Both devices are running heltec v3 code.
OH the wireless stick I control via bluetooth on a different ipad.
one further adendum, they were both configured via the python CLI
In order for you and I to connect w/o mqtt, we’d likely need a node up high around egret bay and 518. In the meantime, mqtt is pretty easy to setup as a stopgap. There are about 30 nodes in the Houston mqtt channel working towards building things out. If you want to join us, your welcome to pop on over.
I’ve actually got a couple nodes in my list that have mqtt enabled. As I understand it, thaey should bridge me to the intertubes.
Please correct me if this is incorrect.
Also, I have been fighting this ipad to get me a screenshot, but so far I’ve only managed to turn up the ringer or simply turn off the device lol.
Not much to see there anyway, my channel config is the default channel config. I don’t even have a secondary, only the primary on longfast.
Mqtt is kind of like a Java message queue where there are multiple topics that you can subscribe to. The default topic is msh/US, which is pretty busy and has a tendency to blow out the nodes DB on these little microcontrollers. In order to make it a bit easier, we took some recommendations and made a more specific root topic for Texas. Below that are multiple channels that are sub topics below that, but that’s obfuscated away. Imma hop on the other root topic and see if I can chat there
Lol I’d love to, but it is deployed and operational, and the only way I can find to determine the mac address is to unpack it from it’s case and plug it in to the raspi and use the CLI.
Got a less intrusive means? otherwise, I intend recording both when I have them down for recharge in the morning.
Bluetooth is the easiest way to connect, I’ve only used serial when my wifi node got confused.
Hello Ottomite,
Down here in Corpus Christi trying to cofigure my MQTT to reach Houston, tried your link but nothing happens, you mention should be opened with appropriate app, so i took a usb c cable connected my V3 to my Android imported the config, but dont see anything happening.
Any help would be great!
jastallings
Hey nerds!
Jastallings is my brother, y’all try to give him a leg up if you can, we’re trying to “bridge in” Corpus Christi somehow. The unfortunate thing is, he is on android, and I’m running a pair of ipads, so I cant really lead him through getting set up on a channel.
Y’all are awesome, I know someone can get him up and running.
Thanks so much.
Oh, by the way… Thank You, Todd (yNos), for helping me get my rig right. With guys like Todd around, we are all destined for success.
Cheers,
sparseMatrix.
I am at your service. Inquire within.
wow I’ve apparently confused Todd with Craig lmao!
let me just say, both of these folks are and have benen incredibly helpful. Thank you both so much. 72 and 73
James/sparseMatrix KI5SMN
I’d suggest having one mqtt gateway node per physical mesh. The easiest/most stable way is to
1: factory reset an esp32 based node like a heltec,
2: get it setup on your wifi under the radio config: network menu. After it reboots, you can cycle through the screens to find your IP, or check your DHCP clients on the router to find the IP to connect to connect in the Meshtastic app.
3: under the radio config: mqtt menu, enable mqtt, set the root topic to msh/US/TX
4: click send
After it reboots, configure your channels, they need to be setup on both the gateway node and on your nodes.
You can use this my channel list here if you’d like, otherwise
You can set your own up. Unencrypted public channels use AQ== as their psk.
My channel config:
Worked like a Champ!
Thank you Sir!
Jastallings
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Pop into Texas or Houston and say hello😁