Same with 864-868mhz I added this NZ specific frequency for firmware 1.3/2.0 (its slightly narrower than the EU spec and wider than the Indian Spec) the tbeams that you have can do this frequency no problem the only difference is stock antenna they are provided with.
My copy’s of these antennas have an SWR of less than 1.1 from my testing at this frequency if you wanted to test it out 
(I did 166km with them)
I actually just ordered some of these from ivent myself (for 922mhz). One of the problems (and benefits!) of being here in the South is the mountains and valleys. I couldn’t get 160km here without a lot of terrain analysis but, on the upside, I have a lot of choice in terms of covering the Wairau Valley and adjacent areas with nodes.
Same here is my current location I am out in eastland in the hills its hard to get a signal out
Do you use heywhatisthat?
I have done, yes. Sometimes do a bit of viewshed modelling in GIS too
@ZL4HZ You could just copy the coordinates to Google Maps and use its offline maps feature to navigate or to at least check that you are heading in the right direction.
I don’t understand why you were worried about the board dying? Was it sending different coordinates of its own location every time? Since the device was not moving, I would just go and check around the last coordinates.
@Ol_Dave Which band allows the greatest transmit power?
Google maps are thoroughly inadequate for any sort of back country navigation and there are other apps that do a better job, particularly at displaying appropriate topographic and terrain information. In this particular case the position of waypoints relative to the ridge I was on (eg was it on the ridge, on the side of the ridge, and how far down from the crest.
In relation to the battery, my concern was because the reported coordinates from the board would change during each search. Not by a lot, but enough to shift my search area by a few more linear metres and a dozen square metres each time. I didn’t think of this issue until the battery was almost gone and I still hadn’t captured any of the reported positions, only searched them as they came up. Plotting the reported positions effectively helped me define the search area with the highest probability of a find.
2 of them are higher transmit power 923-928 and 864-868 both allow 4W
Hi there NZ’ers.
I don’t want to hijack your thread, but am keen to connect with other NZ’ers that might be able to point me in the right direction and your title looks like it fits that bill. I’ve only spent a few hours reading but there’s lots of info that to be fair is a bit over my head or hasn’t sunk in properly yet.
Since reading about LoRa a couple of years ago I’d been sporadically searching to try and find if the tech had developed somewhere near a user level that I might be able to create some projects blending in my limited Arduino knowledge. Meshtastic looks like it might just have cracked that level.
I often organise rally sprints and hillclimbs and radio communication over the course is the biggest difficulty for most venues. The locations generally have poor line of sight due to hills or forestry and little to no cell coverage. My concept is initially to be able to place a nodes (maybe every 500m or so) along the course that can each talk directly to one or more other nodes in each direction, and to be able to broadcast messages across the whole network. To start with it might be just sending start and finish beam break times, maybe it could develop to have automated intermediate marshal points, and then maybe a node in each car to track competitors on the course like “Rallysafe” or the WRC coverage, but on a peasant budget.
I’m reasonably comfortable that I could program Arduinos to carry out tasks and use the Meshtastic nodes to just convey simple serial messages for use in the event HQ. I don’t know yet if I have missed something simple and Meshatastic could easily deal with simple I/O.
Also, I’ll buy a few shortly. I first saw a listing on Trademe. Is that the best or simplest, or do you have other suggestions.
Thanks in advance,
Daniel
Hi Daniel,
I’m pretty much just a user level kinda guy myself so won’t be too much help I’m sorry. However I’ll be watching with interest if you decide to progress with your ideas.
As far as buying boards go, Ali Express is your friend.
As for siting nodes, you’re gonna want line of sight but that doesn’t mean you need to daisy chain the boards in a linear manner. Instead, look for opportunities to have nodes overlooking your operating area in a true mesh kind of arrangement (ie so that if you lose a node during the event, there are other paths for signals to follow).
Took a drive and went for a bit of a hike today up one of our back country areas. I chose a spot on a map that would provide excellent line of sight along our river valley with plenty of elevation (1300m / 4200ft). SO now here I am back at home in the urban area and I’m connected to my node 50km / 31mi away. I’ll set another node up overlooking the township and from there I should have reasonable meshtastic coverage covering our entire valley.
It will be a bit of a wait-and-see with how the mountain node performs. A solar panel order from Ali express fell through so I put two 160mw boards in series through a solar charge board plugged into the T Beam. Both the T beam and the solar charge board have an 18650 cell in them. It will get very cold up there which may kill the batts but we shall see…
Good to see https://meshmap.net getting more populated.
The relatively new Meshtastic NZ Facebook group is growing fast and getting some interesting posts and discussions.
A domain has been registered https://meshtastic.co.nz I’m sure the owner would be happy to take your suggestions on what you would like to see there. I can pass them on until contact details appear there.
