Meshtastic

Has anyone installed in their car?

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#1

Has anyone done a mobile install yet? I’m planning on installing another through-hole NMO mount in my Fusion to run the board to an 8" whip antenna when they show up from overseas. Probably end up doing something similar in our other cars for tracking and whatnot (theft/Offroading?) and communications when cell service isn’t so good.

Are there any cons anyone can think of? It looks like the battery drain of a unit in full use shouldn’t really be noticeable. I’m sure I’ll need to find somewhere to mount it where it’s not buried so I still get ok Bluetooth reception. I’m not too worried about having a second hole in my roof if this doesn’t work out so well. Just means I get to have my 2m radio and my cb at the same time lol. (I do a lot of highway driving, don’t judge)

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#2

I just got my units yesterday, and couldn’t wait to try it out, so did a fast’n dirty testdrive. Just put one unit on my dashboard and the other in the pillow chest outside my home. By no means an ideal installation in any end…and i forgot that I literally live in a hole in the ground :slight_smile:
still, frist check at 500m ok. next at 800m…no go. hills and housing blocking signal. did a wiide drive around, not expecting more, but to my suprise, on the hill at about 6Km opposit the town I got connection, and once again further up at about 8 KM Returning home from opposite direction, and a bit higher than my house I got connetion 3 times at 1-2 km with no direct line of sight. I had set both units to max range/slow speed for this test so I am impressed by the range under these horrible test conditions. I will repeat the test with proper mounting and put up a repeater node somwhere strategically high up soon.

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#3

Welcome @delroady and @Bussemann!

Please post your findings, regarding range test results, to this thread also: https://meshtastic.discourse.group/t/practical-range-test-results

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#4

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Did a new testdrive today. Put a proper antenna(800-900Mhz external gsm with magnet foot) on the car, and a similar on the stationary node. The stationary node is at 0Km in the topological map at first floor inside a building, with the antenna in an south facing window., and each point is a place I stopped and successfully texted to the stationary node.

Distance mesurements are cumulative, sorry, I wanted a star map, but couldn’t get google maps to cooperate.

There is of course a lot of dropouts in between, and I can say without a doubt that in urban environment ground to ground range is limited to a few hundred meters, however there does not take much in height difference to improve range significantly. If you have just 1 node up high it will vastly improve coverage. Even if two nodes are closer together, the signal between them may be too weak, but the common weak node far away will bridge the gap ( I :heart: mesh)

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Practical Range Test Results
#5

Looks like my stuff should be arriving today, so I’ll hopefully be able to start messing with it all soon.

#6

if i’get all running and understand, i’m sure i’will install 1 fixed in my car … and in my wife car too …