Hello camflyer
I think it’s a good approach. And such silos are high but easy to walk through. And if you have a good understanding with the farmers, that shouldn’t be a problem.
For a good coverage map you can try: http://www.heywhatsthat.com/, or even better, but with registration: https://www.ve2dbe.com/rmonline_s.asp.
I currently mount my routers in nesting boxes with solar cells on the roof, most of which have been approved by the property owner.
Kind regards Haflinger73
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Haha, so I haven’t been the first one with that idea, well…
Hey, I did send you one, at 18:18 today with content “Hoi Lun!”, sent it to “Haflinger73 Base”.
Regarding the radials, yes, the idea was to cancel out half of the length, it initially tried to do a 1/2 lamda antenna, but the SWR minimum was at ~450MHz instead of 868, so I started shortening the radiator but it once it arrived at 868MHz it had obviously become a 1/4 lamda antenna and the SWR was atrocious, then It occurred to me that the lenghth of the radials might have an influence on that, so I just tried folding them over and bingo, SWR went down to 1.1. I was doing this from memory of the Andreas Spiess YT video on an antenna of this style ( https://youtu.be/6cVYsHCLKq8?t=656 ).
Hi guys. Im zarum. I recently got into meshtastic and i think it’s really neat. im in Dürnten ZH, and i currently have 3 mesh devices. i can get a lot of nodes in the Argau region which i find amazing. One of my devices is called MC01 (■■■■■■■01) which is my main device that runs all the time. Im planing on extending the network into my area, im also working on a solar repeater station that will be permanently mounted on my roof as a base/repeater station. would be cool if i can get some help from you guys with mapping the locations for my future repeater stations, and other stuff. Kind regards Zarum 
Hello Zarum and welcome.
Yes, I can reach your node, funnily the route goes over the router on the Lägern, even though you live just next door.
hi everyone, i started playing with meshtastic a few months ago and didn’t receive much back then.
does anybody know of any efforts in the st.gallen/thurgau region to get it connected?
my mobile radio is SE01 and my router/repeater at home is Router9240, i’m currently traveling through zurich oberland and got suprised as my nodelist got filled with nodes.
kind regards seedelmann
Hello Zarum, yes I see you on my node list (Haflinger73Base HA00) yes my router on the Lägern has provided a lot of range. It’s cool that you want to spread the Mesh further in your region. At some point it will become too big and not everyone will be able to communicate with everyone due to the jumps from device to device (please leave the maximum number of hops at 4 or 5, it puts too much strain on the network!) Regarding your solar routers, I hope you set RAK Boards, the power supply is much easier to handle. Regarding locations, consult with the nodes in your region. Maybe you can even have a meeting. We in the Brugg/Limmattal area had a great meeting in Birr at the airfield about a month ago. Greetings Simon Haflinger73
Hello Seedelmann
My friend Sonic75 also recently started using Meshtastic. He comes from the Helsighausen area. The network is growing, always keep the router up. Kind regards to Uzwil
i will definitly keep the Router active just have to finish building it first, it’s currently in a “good enough is perfect” state with all the weather protection a plastic bag can offer.
My router uses a 6W solar panel, RAK4631 and a 1000mAh battery and the 5.8dbi RAK antanna
My mobile radio also uses a RAK4631, RAK1910 GPS with a 7800mAh battery i am still looking for a good antenna for it, does anybody have a good recomendation for a portable antenna?
Nice Case 
1000mAh is also a bit tight for a RAK router.
My first router runs with 5W solar and 1x 3200mAh 18650 cell, after 5-6 days it still had fog around 60%.
The newer routers all have 2x 3200mAh so I save 2-3 weeks. But try it.
There is a large selection of antennas, the important thing is that they are resonant at 868Mhz. (Do you have a VNA to measure?)
The T-Echo antenna is actually not bad. I like to use PCB antennas for mobile devices (for ski jackets, etc.).
The standard antennas from RAK are not bad at all. I treated my “black box” to a PCB from Amphenaol.
With this antenna I can also reach my router 8km away without any problems
Any Meshtastic user (or future user) in Switzerland is welcome to join the brand new Facebook group “Meshtastic Schweiz”.
Let us build a community to enhance the Meshtastic experience for new users and support each other with know-how, tips and tricks etc.
I am happy to welcome anyone to the group with sincere interest in the Meshtastic topic. So, what are you waiting for? Join here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/771317178261325/
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Attention, Swiss Mesh Users!
I would kindly ask you to register your Meshtastic devices (primarily stationary routers, router/clients and repeaters) in the new map here: canvis.app | a mapping platform.
This is probably not the best approach to collect such data. However until we find better means and ways to do so I appreciate every device you register.
The map shall help users to estimate their potential reach using Meshtastic. So the more devices we can see in the map the better.
PS: Do not forget to register with the new Facebook Group “Meshtastic Schweiz” Meshtastic Schweiz | Facebook
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Hello Frank
I think it is a sad state to have all this different maps.
https://meshmap.net/ works fine and has a reasonable timeout. Also enabling MQTT does NOT mean also to repeat traffic on longfast. All can enable the uplink to MQTT but disable the downlink. Also it is even defined to modify the MQTT topic to a country specific one like msh/CH instead of msh/EU_868. This is fully supported by Meshtatstic and by meshmap.net also. (All topics are probably “scanned” for position messages. And this map is also used by many others. OK, both maps can be maintained in parallel. The only issue I have, is that there is only one MQTT server to configure. So I would need to read the public MQTT (for my sensor data) instead my own MQTT server from Home Assistant.
But still, I think MQTT maps need a chance (there are other ones using the public MQTT as a source.
If your “mobile” device has no GPS, you can use your phone as a GPS receiver. Also in the new Meshatestic version you can also decide how accurate you like to publish you location.
Routers can be configured with a static position, no need to have a GPS on a static installation.
Hi CamFlyerCH,
Please, do not get me wrong. I am not in general against MQTT maps. However, as soon as somebody turns on MQTT in the mesh around Aargau and Zürich specialists in that mesh will call you out and ask to turn MQTT off completely, in fact to turn on the “Ignore MQTT” feature. The reason is to save bandwith.
In the latest news by the project here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnCQuv89dLU (see position 53:13 in the video) the map topic was discussed. It seems like the project is discussing internally if they want to provide an official curated map. So sometime in future there may be a solution to the map question.
Unfortunately I am not very familiar with the MQTT-topic functionality yet. Would you know if the topic msh/CH works? Have you tried and tested it? Would that limit the devices that are displayed in the map view to swiss devices? If the topic msh/CH works, I think we can define kind of a Switzerland specific set of default settings that would include setting the MQTT topic to msh/CH.
Could it be that you run your nodes currently without any constant connection to broader Switzerland? Or, in other words, are you running a mostly “disconnected” remote mesh? Is this your situation that you want to be able to connect to other Meshtastic devices in Switzerland through MQTT?
In the Facebook group “Meshtastic Schweiz” I met a meshtastic user who runs a router and two clients in the area of Schwarzsee (canton FR). He is in that same situation. I believe “MQTT bridging” is what you are looking for. However, setting up a wide range solar router in a position as high as possible (as you mentioned in your fist post) is probably what you primarily need.
I would suggest that you join the facebook group [Meshtastic Schweiz | Facebook](https://Meshtastic Schweiz) as we might want to discuss the bridging of remote meshes there.
I was in Magglingen to try to make a connection to HR04 on the Lägern (98km), but only received 3 nodes from Solothurn (AZ-XX-XX). Is this “AZ” guy lurking here? Next time i might need to try with a higher gain antenna.
Hello michi
Yes, HR04 is not ideally positioned in the east/west orientation and the built-in antenna is also estimated to be suitable for connections of up to 50km. I’m already thinking about a second router with a better orientation towards the west and a better antenna, but I still have to contact the local landowners about it. Keep yourself up to date.
I like to add, that I don’t like the idea to mesh everything far beyond the range of lora over some hops via the internet. I am interested in LoRa and Meshtastic because of the interesting radio communication protocol of LoRa and the ranges that are possible to reach with so little energy. For messaging over the internet we have sooo many much more comfortable and specialized options available.
But since a large part of the fun is also the reach of possible communications, an map provides very useful data for test of range and the mesh technology. So I only plan to activate an uplink to MQTT for mapping. I see NO joy of receiving messages from a few hundred kilometers away to my mobile Meshtastic device while knowing, this was not achieved “off grid” via radio waves only.
My proposal / vision for the LongFast Channel and a public MQTT sourced Meshtastic map:
- Good located routers can publish a fixed position every few hours. (No need for a GPS there, and the position must not be very accurate for privacy reasons)
- Mobile devices can update the position more often if they like to and with the newest versions of Meshtastic it is possible to “blur” the exact position too.
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Is there some other forum we can use other than Facebook? It is not the most privacy friendly, my Swiss friends would say it is un-Swiss to use it 
Discord, Slack, discourse groups like this one… Almost anything but Facebook!
It always depends on what you share…
You can still write here, the Facebook group is constantly growing.
Hi SwissMesh,
I understand your concern. However, I am curious what makes you believe that other platforms are more secure and cannot be surveilled by authorities?