Sorry about delay - was waiting for Golden Spike info, and was going to clean up the code. (did not get around to cleaning up the code)
Here’s the a for displaying BRC addresses (also time display is pacific):
(just did a rebase on current master HEAD)
Works beautifully, thanks
Hi Everybody!
This is my first post here. My name is Moses from Los Angeles. I will be at Burning Man this year (2022) coming up shortly! I was researching off grid communications for our camp and found the Meshtastic project and this posting! So here I am.
I was thinking of buying a few T-beam units and trying them out for possible use at BM. My camp is one of the airport camps, essentially at 5 o’clock all the way down to the airport. I have a few other friends at camps in the main area where I can possibly sprinkle a few units. I would love to join in on a mesh system if someone is setting it up. I am an EE and into radio, ESP32, coding, firmware, etc… but never tried these T-beam and meshtastic radios. I have a few questions if anyone can spare some time to answer them I would be most grateful!
Thank you and I apologize if these questions sound silly. I’ve been reading documentation, but I’m new to this and not much is obvious to me at this point. I hope I can contribute!
Regards,
-Moses
There’s been some talk about creating a public Meshtastic channel at burning man, but I don’t think there’ll be much going on there. On v1.2, there’s a maximum of 32 nodes and 1.3, we have a maximum of 80 nodes.
Line of sight is definitely best. These don’t have very much power.
That’s correct. The key is stuffed into the channel url and the QR code.
There’s a single broadcast group and you can do client to client (direct) messages in 1.3.
Unfortunately, no.
Totally! Ask away! We’re all very friendly here.
Thank you for the detailed reply mc-hamster!
I was hoping that multiple people can use a single T-beam at the same time, but now I see it’s not designed for such use. That would have been ideal, as one T-beam per camp would have given multiple people messaging capabilities.
I still may bring a pair of t-beams with me for messaging between two people.
Regards,
-Moses
We’d like that as well. It is possible and if anyone would like to contribute some code to make this happen, we’ll all be great full 
Regarding setup on playa - was is the best way to setup shared infrastructure? I can probably put a relay ~14ft up in the deep-playa art project I’m working on, Unbound. (v1.3/master)
It looks like the best would be same modem_config / separate key, but: [Bug]: nodes only rebroadcasting decoded packets · Issue #1388 · meshtastic/Meshtastic-device · GitHub – it seems relay for unknown senders is broken.
So… same modem_config, default PSK, and separate channels? (is ch-index setting frequency, or just how to accept vs reject packets? I guess I should play with that)
(Ideally I’d like to have settings set by end of week, so I can hand off devices to some people I won’t see after this weekend until I arrive on playa on the 22nd)
re: sharing a node, could you maybe to that with WiFi instead of BT - so no pairing to a single device.
I’m new to the game, but will be bringing 6 t-beams on v1.3. Probably dedicating one of them as a base station at camp, though not sure yet how high up I’ll be able to place it. Camping in the Golden Guy Alley at 7:15 & D. Would love to join in.
re: sharing a node, could you maybe to that with WiFi instead of BT - so no pairing to a single device.
tschundler, I was thinking the same thing. I did more reading and it appears that the original design did not envision a main “cell” like T-beam serving more then one person, hence the code needs a non-trivial amount of rework to make this happen. Although entirely possible I believe.
I have zero experience with meshtastic… but I think this would be a very valuable feature/use case. Linking separate sites (like camps) with a just few devices and providing dozens of people (or more!?) with communications, even with small, short, store and forward messages, would be incredible.
Regards,
-Moses
I have 10 t-beams and plan to use them for GPS tracking multiple things. The main channel will be private. However I was curious if I could set the secondary channel to relay one of the known shared channels like LongSlow? Basically anonymously relay public Meshtastic stuff.
I’m curious about using v1.3 but not all the cli commands work last i checked. I want to make it simple to set up multiple t-beams. I have been dumping the config of one and then using it as a template to upload into other units. Most of these t-beams won’t be connected to a bluetooth or wifi device. I just need them to update the network with new GPS info. Planning to have one unit connected via bluetooth and just see where the others are located.
Is v1.3 much better than v1.2?
If you want to setup shared infrastructure, easiest would be to use the default channel but it will be bandwidth limited. I suspect it’ll have difficulty above 64 nodes.
Unless you’re using the CLI, best not consider secondary channels for now. Other clients don’t yet support it.
On the defaults, it’ll have nearly 4x 3.6x better performance for text messages and for text message heavy environments, that’ll free up a lot of network capacity.
Also on a given default modem configuration, there’s up to 16x more channels to choose from. This will further reduce network congestion. That means up to 6400% 5760% (don’t quote me, back of the napkin math) more total devices in a given geo location.
1.3 has a ton of other usability changes which makes it our next generation platform from battery management, direct messaging, a totally new filesystem with wear leveling, a totally new bluetooth stack with massive performance improvements. The change list is really huge and it’s been a big effort for a lot of people.
Edit - Updated with better back of napkin math.
FYI, a fix for this issue has just been merged: Rebroadcast encrypted messages by GUVWAF · Pull Request #1593 · meshtastic/firmware · GitHub
awesome – I just rebased my “dusty” branch displaying BRC coordinates (GitHub - tschundler/Meshtastic-device at dusty) to include that. (I’ll probably continue to rebase periodically)
Although not ready for mobile screens yet, the web UI has full support for multiple channels https://client.meshtastic.org
I LOVE seeing other people planing for this! My idea is to make an antenna at my camp and see what kind of range I can get with just 3 nodes.
I have a question for you guys.
Is there a way to remove nodes from a meshed network? I have 3 other nodes that I need to “reset.” Do I need to have Flasher installed? Is there a way to get flasher for Android?
Id appreciate any tips!
that’s awesome, where is your camp going to be located at?
I’ll be at 3:00 & F, at the intersection.
