Would like to share ideas. I have a number of completed units and more on the way to build.
Hello MrRubicon,
I am now in Boston and will be for the foreseeable future. In fact, I found your post by searching for “meshtastic boston”, to see if there was any public local activity, akin to amateur radio nets.
So far I haven’t found any groups for Meshtastic in Boston, which I find very odd since Boston is a very tech savvy city. I’ve done a bit of war driving and have found no other modes so far. There is a New England GMRS group. They have repeaters in RI and southern MA. Not much activity on there boards.
I live/work in the Boston area. Utter neophyte to coms, but eager to get to know folks and learn together!
I’m waiting for some devices, planning to set a repeater around Lynn.
I am starting out with meshtastic and hope to start a node or two near Jamaica Plain once parts arrive. I have a little elevation at my location, so hopefully will get good results.
Also interested in getting into this in the Boston area. What hardware is needed in terms of LoRa units? Which frequency bands are used in the US? Is there any coordination on this in nearby areas say as far afield as New York?
Hey! My name is Chris and I am a Ham Operator in Boston (Allston Neighborhood). I am hoping to get a workshop up soon for this (open to the public) so we can get this Boston mesh up and running. Would yall be interested in attending or assisting with instruction? I have a facility lined up in Lower Allston and hope to see this running in the next couple months.
@KC1TSA Hi Chris, I am in the Lancaster, MA area and would love to help get this going.
Howard AC1MN
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@KC1TSA Hi Chris, not licensed ham like you, (yet) I am in Jamaica Plain MA. Hoping to have a node setup in the area near Forest Hills within the next month. Would love to hear more about your plans!
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@czargb @shpegel
Awesome! Let’s all talk. I just made a Facebook group for us Boston Meshtastic | Facebook
feel free to message me there or we can keep the ideas rolling in this thread as well.
Should we make a github repo for educational materials, code, ideas, etc?
Hi Chris,
I really don’t do Facebook, sorry. I will continue to monitor the Meshtastic forum, however. I have just started to learn about all the options available and it seems that most good options are out of stock for a while. I think this is due to the sudden interest in Meshtastic and the Chinese New Year Holidays. For now, I have a couple of Heltec V3’s coming as well as their new yellow module. After some bench work with the units to get familiar with the technology, I may build a solar powered unit with a high gain antenna to mount outside. As it seems now, this may a bit of a “Field of Dreams” project, but it will be a fun thing to do. I am sure in a few months there will be no problem getting better equipment. I will use an old cell phone to monitor it and will leave it up until it dies unless there actually is some use made of it. It has really taken off in the UK but it appears to be a Preppers thing here in the USA. Time will tell.
My fantasy idea is to use it on the ham bands to do Morse Code. I don’t think anyone is doing this yet and it may not even be practical. It will be a fun thing to try even if it goes nowhere.
Stay in touch.
73,
Howard
Cool thanks for this. I’d like to get involved as well but my schedule is pretty busy with things. Hopefully I can set up some kind of node in the Arlington area in the northern suburbs of Boston over the summer. I’m not very high up so not sure if I would get good coverage.
In the mean time I’ll join the Facebook group (I’m not very active on Facebook though) and bookmark the GitHub link.
Scott (K6AUS)
@KC1TSA Chris. Just thought I would update you on my progress. The first 2 nodes based on the Heltec V3 cards are built and talking to each other and my network via WiFi. I purchased a 8dbi gain antenna from Newark but when I tested it the SWR was a little high. 1.8:1 is about as low as it gets and I think this is a bit high. A friend who is a antenna guru will help me try to tune it better. The card used with the high gain antenna is a LILYGO® T-Beam ESP32 Development Board that should arrive within the next week. This will go on the roof and be a repeater, I think? I still am trying to understand the different modes and their uses. When it is up, I will let you know. Our altitude is around 200’ here and it will be fun to do some range tests. I can reach 2 meter repeaters in Marlboro so I hope to get at least that far with LoRa.
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hey there, I’m over in east Arlington almost at sea level, so probably not the best spot for a repeater. been having a hard time getting a response on LongFast, though it claims my messages are getting through. Anybody been monitoring in the camberville kinda area lately?
@flimshaw Hi, I am located in Lancaster so give lancasterRoof a shot. Will let you know if I see anything.
Hi there! I’m getting my Heltec V3 set up here in North Cambridge. It’s in a ground floor window right now with a 7 inch vertical antenna. I also have a 7 element yagi I could use if I knew where to point it. (Haha!) I’m running in amateur radio mode and intend to monitor 24/7.
Back to fine tuning the configuration…
Scott WA1TEW
@wa1tew Hi Scott, I am curious why you have enabled amateur radio mode? I think this kills outgoing encryption and I wonder if you will see incoming encrypted messages. Another question, the ham frequency allocation for Meshtastic is 420 – 450MHz which will require a different Heltec board. Is that what you are using?
I am in full FDIM mode now and won’t have time to play until get back but lets chat when I get back. I have a hi gain antenna setup and just sitting on the ground out side, I saw some Boston nodes over 75 KM away.
Hi and nice to meet you! I decided to enable amateur radio mode because I’m a long time amateur radio operator. I don’t see a need for encryption since I’m used to ham radio being “public” as far as the content of communications goes, whether voice, Morse, or digital. It was my understanding that Meshtastic and LoRa in general for amateur radio uses both the 420 to 450 MHz and 902 to 928 MHz allocations. My board is the latter. I was guessing there would be a active ham community on Meshtastic, but it seems like there isn’t more than a handful of Meshtastic users at all in and around Boston. I think I’ll try getting out of ham mode and see what I hear. I suppose I need to come up with another name instead of using my call sign. 