It was so draining to make a solar node because when the battery drained due to lack of sun it was hard to make a design that makes it start again when the sun shines. Many hours went down the drain. So my next outdoor node is down a drain (pipe) and has the mother of all batteries instead of using nuclear fusion. It is perhaps my pipe dream. I will be gutt(er)ed if it fails.
Mark 1:
Perhaps I should make a u-bend-tube video when it it is finalised.
Not punny.
Build parts so far:
Node Muzi Works H2T T114 ( H2T - Complete Device: Heltec T114 with GPS running Meshtastic® – muzi ᴡᴏʀᴋꜱ )
Battery Anker 737 Power Bank Power Core 24k (24000 mAh) (https://amzn.eu/d/aD04wXc)
Cable: 2 x 3 m USB C e.g. (https://amzn.eu/d/8JyPxqv)
USB C female - female adaptor: https://amzn.eu/d/jf173yl
70 mm drain pipe parts and 50 mm drain pipe parts: see image
One tree
Cable ties (very large) and / or bungee cords
Tools (maybe): Ladder, teenager
The background: The Muzi Works H2T only had a stable bluetooth connection if plugged into a USB connection (this is a fault in the device, see here Reddit - Dive into anything and links in the comments). But its bluetooth range is rather fabulous in my view. So I thought I might put it up my garden tree… and see if I can use it as my one, and only one, house node.
(But I may now try to boost the bluetooth range some more, using a better bluetooth antenna, in view of this comment Bluetooth going to 'sleep" and not reconnecting - #15 by iggy
which may mean using a different node that gives me access to the antenna connector.)
Written permission from the squirrels might be hard to get.
Worry: the power bank above does have trickle charge mode (if you toggle the mode by pressing the power button twice so a green spot shows
) but I do not yet know if trickle charge will keep bluetooth problem at bay and the mode only lasts two hours apparently. My estimate is 50 day run time if the Gremlins are on my side and the battery does not switch off of its own accord… but then time will tell.
Should be as easy as falling of a …
While waiting for an extra cable to arrive I made Mark 2:
(This part has an insert to keep node away from joint in case of water coming in
)
for this Mark 2 (a shorter version), as my radio consultant friend said, the tree does the work and no need to tie or strap anything…
Mark 3
Longer tube.
Stability is iffy.
20% capacity drop in two days… ho hum…
Node not fully charged and dropping %
Lots of USB C cable risks pulling cable out of base of node. Heat shrink over joins would be good.
Muzi Works asked me to test the node out of its case… ur… mañana
Mark 4
The node was losing juice. The Anker battery reports 0.1 W even when the node is not charging. When the node is charging the Anker battery display reports 1.9 W as show below.
I had to make sure that the USB C connection were not loosened by the weight of the cables in the pipe, otherwise it might be that the node was not actually connected to the battery. The first thing was to make a strain relief using the insert by just wrapping cable around it as shown below:
The other thing I did was to put heat-shrink tubing on the USB C joints in the hope that that provides the necessary support.
Contrary to my usual practice I did not use gaffer tape for this… because it leaves such a horrible residue and I want to be able to use the cables for other things if this node does not have any advantages.
The nice bit might not work
I thought the bluetooth reception in the house from the node in the tree would be good. It is not. Not sure why. Whether the pipe being wet on the outside has anything to do with it, or a random node orientation issue, not sure. Anyway, this solution is not perfect … yet. The nice thing is that because the node has a fault in which bluetooth connection drops if not charging from USB, my poor bluetooth connection was a useful diagnostic, along with the battery indicator falling, that there was a USB cable loose. The USB connector into the node is not a super strong fit.
When the node runs completely flat, I found that unplugging the Anker power bank and plugging it in again lead to the node being charged again… which was a nice surprise - it did not require also a button press on the node. This leads me to think that a timer switch on the power bank which switches on for x hours every n days would keep the node running for a very long time; and longer than a keep-alive circuit which drains power continuously.
The setup is actually like this:
with the attic antennae being described here Using multiple antennae and nodes in the same location
With this setup I get node info updates in my node list and traceroutes from my smartphone’s Meshtastic app without having to approach the attic nodes in the house. It saves having to carry around a node with my smartphone in the house to keep contact with the attic nodes. If my smartphone had an integrated node then none of this would be needed and could use that directly when in the house to connect to the long-range nodes in the attic (dream on Meshphone perhaps Pinephone Linux phone with LoRa?).
I was able to communicate with someone 92 km away from my sofa using this node. Once via a node SĂśD in town, and once via the node Bing in my attic. In any case the direct messages even received confirmation. This sets a record for me.
and this was repeatable the same evening.
Got some crazy traceroutes.
Reached the node H2T in the tree 
directly from the middle of town at point A completely surrounded by high buildings … with confirmed ticks in direct messages… then got a bonkers trace route to a node B in the attic and back into town to a point C and then back to the node in the tree…
I was taken aback by being able to get a direct traceroute and direct message with tick to the pipe node from the middle of town to the tree pipe node as shown in the map below:
The sending location was the car node (Car node with external antenna) in a narrow street and surrounded by 4 storey buildings on both sides.
Other pipe nodes:
