Please note, this is not for driving around with the antenna on the roof, obviously! The setup is to use when car is parked to get more height and range to play around with testing reception of Meshtastic signals when camping or parked up. The use of “Fast Grip” clamps makes for particularly fast and easy mounting and removal of the antenna, and is sure to drive the family up the wall at those beauty spots during what your family calls “holidays” but is otherwise properly known as Meshploring or “Meshtastic field trips”. I use another “boxed” node Boxed solar node - glorified Bluetooth link to main nodes to provide contact to the car node rather than keep getting disconnected or out of range for bluetooth connection to car node. But it should be said that the node list of the “boxed” node was never identical to that of the car node… which is a bit of a pain when simply trying to spot new nodes. I asked about this on this site and someone said one has to re-start nodes to make the neighborhood info data update… and I am still testing this.
Parts list:
Map showing places that might have good range for the mesh (otherwise known as “family-friendly places of interest” or “super places for lunch” etc.)
Car (Toyota Proace City Team Deutschland) with roof bar Thule WingBar Evo | Thule | Deutschland
Roof box (2m long) to store the antenna when driving.
Grumpy family in or near car (optional, they can be grumpy far away, or could be in a good mood.)
Node: Station-G2 Meshtastic Mesh Device Station G2 – B&Q Consulting Shop . These are really really good. I have several for fixed node. It comes with a short little antenna and that antenna really is perfectly ok for normal use - I use it in the interior of the the car near the sun roof, with super-dooper results. The setup here uses a different antenna on the roof primarily to get more height and to have something silly to do when on holiday.
Antenna: RAK Wireless - 868 MHz Rundstrahlantenne, 8dBi, Outdoor
comes supplied with the u-shaped mounts and an N-type female connector to SMA female connector of about 50 cm long.
SMA female to SMA male adaptor: https://amzn.eu/d/0gYLfaKx to connect to Statoin G2
Right-angle mount out of wood, but anything similar will do. This is a shelf bracket, not sure where I got it from all those years ago, but it is like this one https://amzn.eu/d/040SKksE
Thule Fast Grip clamps (or similar), x 2, the ones used to attach a roof box that clamp together from both sides with hand-tightened turning knob (an old set from a broken roof box) Can be bought new https://amzn.eu/d/0dCxsyNa for attaching the right-angle mount to the roof bar.
Optional (but running the car to power the node really is so un-relaxing that it is just not a long-term solution and can spoil a picnic): Jackery Explorer 240 Jackery Explorer 240 Tragbare Powerstation – Jackery Deutschland (it was on sale for 119 euros from cyberport.de but the delivery was a drama that took weeks) (warning, see Station G2 | Unit Engineering FAQ for a perhaps better power supply Explorer 100 Plus that can stay on all the time and is PD 3.0 directly; the Explorer 240 switches off automatically after 10 hours.) This power supply is intended to be solar charged, or charged from the car, but in this case I charge it from the mains because it lasts a week or more when the node is on for 10 hours a day.
12v car adaptor https://amzn.eu/d/07NWw90D plugs into the optional Jackery Explorer 240 12V port, or car’s 12 V power point, to provide USB 3.0 PD to node.
USB C cable, 3m, https://amzn.eu/d/052B4qfP (whatever cable one chooses, this cable has to work for USB 3.0 PD: which not all cables do. The node will come on with multi-colour lights if the power supply is OK, and only with red lights if power is insufficient.)
Very important: buy / rent / hire a car in a colour that matches your antenna.
Never drive a car without a Meshtastic sticker on it ! (I used these guys https://www.aufkleberdrucker.de/ and used the data on meshtastic github e.g. design/logo/png/play_store_icon.png at master · meshtastic/design · GitHub but noting trademark issues).
The sky is the limit Reddit - Dive into anything
This setup is also useful for making a gateway node…
so can be mounted in all manner of places although the Fast Grip clamps only really work when clamping onto a roof-bar type bar, so a couple of F-clamps or G-clamps would be good to use instead if mounting the antenna in non-car places (see Vale of Evesham UK node search to see what that gateway node was about…).