Possible to find a “hidden” repeater and use it?

Is there a way to determine if someone has previously put a repeater node on a mountain top by “sniffing” for the network? I’d rather not duplicate someone else’s work?

If it is possible, how do you go about looking for it?

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very most easy way: check the nodes-map, that is lniked somewhere :slight_smile:
most easy way:
disable all your devices except one.
on this: send some messages, if you receive an ack, there is something on the same modem settings out there.
try above with different modem settings…

check debug panel in android section for information.
or: activate Rangetest module and activate save.csv to read out the rangetest file later.
or best: connect to serial console (webclient, connected by USB can do that) of your device and read out the logfile later.
that way you get information about recieved encrypted packets received from other nodes… (you cannot decrypt, but you will see there is another node)

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Which settings would I need to try? Short/med/long distances and/or the fast/medium/slow data rates. Anything else?

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try the Lora Modem Presets as defined in the android app.
most important long_fast, then the other presets…
just set the lora setting to one of the presets…
it is possible to change more settings if you dont only use the modem presets. but that would be a lot of looking. (different bandwidth/spread/coding…)
if i wanted to run a router node, that should not be found and used (to avoid energy comsumption on a solar powered node) , i would use modem settings aside from the predefined meshtastic modem-presets…

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Well if it “should not be found” isn’t it enough to not use the standard channels?

For repeaters though, they are not showing up in the node list, so technically they’re “hidden” but should be used by others.