Good afternoon, gentlemen.
I recently learned about the Meshtastic network, and I really want to build one in my city.
From studying the experience of Kiev at the beginning of the war, I realized that you cannot rely on relaying messages using unknown users. When what this network is for begins, 95% of the nodes will be disconnected from the network, and the remaining 5% will not be able to hear each other. Only hand-installed solar repeaters can help with this.
I think the best strategy for installing repeaters is to hang them using a drone on wires stretched between the roofs of multi-storey buildings.
This ensures:
1)The safety of me, during installation. Two minutes of drone buzzing is much safer than opening the locks on the roof and installing masts on them.
2)Repeater security. No one will ever take it off the wire. Neither random teenagers, nor the staff serving the building.
3)The best installation height and no shading for the antenna and solar panel.
4)Cleaning of solar panels from snow and ice due to wind blowing.
There are only three disadvantages to this strategy:
1)The highest reliability requirements. We can assume that the repeater is launched into space - if at least something goes wrong, then all costs will be in vain. It won’t work to take it off and fix something.
2) Weight restrictions. My Mavic Pro will not lift more than 300-400g, and I want to reduce the load on the wire for safety reasons.
3) Lack of orientation to the cardinal directions. Come to put four solar panels and forget about directional antennas.
In addition, I will need to build the entire system on LTO batteries, since -30 degrees in my city happens every winter. And the slow rate of degradation of these batteries in such a “satellite” is very useful.
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Questions:
1)Does anyone from the community know examples of an available MPPT solar controller for LTO batteries? Everything I found on Aliexpress is intended for Lion/LiPo.
2) Are there any energy efficient watchdogs that would reboot RAK4631 every day? A complete discharge of the batteries followed by a very slow charge is a completely expected event that should not lead to irreversible failure of the repeater.
3) Did someone combine several LoRa modules in one Mesh device? If this were possible, it would be possible to install two or three directional antennas on one repeater for communication with other repeaters and one omnidirectional antenna for communication with mobile subscribers. Or the transmission of messages in slow and fast modes with one repeater.
P.S. Sorry for my clumsy English - I write through a translator.
