Noob with a few minor questions

[Daveysawyer]

Hi there, I have literally just got into LoRaWAN via Andreas’ YouTube channel, so please bear with me here.

I have a pair of TTGO T-Beam units (Marked as T22_V1.1 20191212) on 86xMHz which arrived with RFCore on them and have managed to flash both units with firmware-tbeam-EU865-0.9.1.bin using ESPHome-Flasher-1.3

I am using a pair of Kindle Fire tablets (which I have confiscated from my kids) and installed Meshtastic on them.

I can get them both talking to each other using the default channel, which is great in the first instance. I want to set up something private, but there doesn’t seem to be a way to do this in the software. I can manage to move the URL from one device to the other, but the URL just shows a 404 error.

Initially the GPS sees no sats (which I can live with for a little while and I am familiar enough with the Neo-6M to know that the TTFF is poor) and also the units (both display and also the system itself) seem to hibernate after a few minutes (which I would prefer not to happen). I can see this happening on the opposite device, if I wake one up by pressing the middle button, I can see the ‘last heard’ x seconds at several minutes. If I then press the middle button on the one that’s asleep, it’ll spring back to life and the ‘last heard’ counter resets.

So, some simple but probably basic questions:

1. How do I change the default channel to something private?
2. How do I get the GPS working? - SOLVED
3. How do I prevent the devices from going to sleep?

I am happy to work through any suggestions, but I may not understand what is being asked. I used Arduinos a while ago but I never really cracked the programming beyond cutting and pasting with some basic config changes.

Edit

1. Unsolved
2. I took the unit outdoors for a couple of hours and it remained ‘no Sats’. I thought, maybe this GPS antenna isn’t much good. Fitted the bigger patch antenna from my GT-U7 board (bought from Amazon years ago) and that got 6+ sats within a couple of seconds. So the poor TTFF is probably due to a poor antenna, rather than the GPS not working. At least I know that I’d choose the Neo8 and use a decent antenna if I was buying another unit.
3. Unsolved

Many thanks in advance,
Regards,
Dave.

[drewsed]

Hi @Daveysawyer and welcome to the forum.

I think you’ll have more fun with the tablets than your children

When you get a 404 error, the (mock) URL you opened does not get routed to the meshtastic app. I suppose you sent the URL to the other tablet via some messenger? When you click on that URL, the meshtastic app should start and ask you if you want to change the channel. Entering the URL into a browser manually won’t work, because this bypasses the Android App Links system.
If your browser starts on clicking the URL, you probably would reset the standard apps setting of your browser.

See here:

Would you like your device's BLE link to not go to sleep? do this

A number of people have asked for this feature. It is coming to the android in the next weekish, but you can do it now with the python tool. Here’s an example: You can also use this tool to set any of the device parameters which are stored in persistent storage. For instance, here’s how to set the device to keep the bluetooth link alive for eight hours (any usage of the bluetooth protcol from your phone will reset this timer) pip3 install --upgrade meshtastic meshtastic --setpref wait_blu…

A feature to change this via app settings will be added soon.

Hope that helps, but if you need some more help, feel free to ask.

Greetings,
drewsed

[Daveysawyer]

Thanks @drewsed much appreciated!

I’ll probably leave the python editing until I’ve got a bit more confidence, but glad to see so much support from other users around these devices.

I’m looking forward to doing a bit of range testing with these things once I can box off the sleep timing. Power isn’t an issue but I want to be able to keep the devices on. Thankfully it looks like you’ve answered my queries and I’ll be able to resolve the sleep “issue”. Many thanks!!!

Regards,
Dave.