First if all: I love this project! Thanks for all involved.
Secondly, I have a wisblock 868 on my roof as my ‘base’ station. Have this running for several weeks. There are actually very few nodes around me (Hilversum , Netherlands) and my personal tests show a reach of about 2 to max 3km (I also have a few portable nodes). Few days ago I started to get +70 new nodes from within Europe and UK. Some as far as +800km from my base station. I also see a station about 5km away from me in my list which is updated every few minutes. All setting are standard beside hops to 5.
My questions:
I have tried to send messages on the public channel but never get any response, also the icon shows the not delivered cloud symbol. How can I have so many nodes -of which some are relative close and get updated often so there is active coms- but nobody receives my messages? This feels contradictory.
How could I get nodes in my list from so far away (up to 800km)?
when it is so many stations, your node is receiving packets from other station that is connected to the internet and rebroadcasting information it gets over internet connection.
if you just have a sending range of 2-3km, that is a bit low, maybe depends on placement and what kind of antenna you are using.
2-3 km are the range in polulated area with many buildings blocking the signal.
with line of sight you should get a minimum of 7-10 kms.
when you send out messages and dont get a ack, but you can “hear” other nodes, these probably dont get your messages.
also maybe problem of placement or antenna.
my guess is, that the internet-connected node is somwhere in a very good position for sending , high on abuilding or mast, with strong antenna, so that these signals come thru to your node, but yours signal is blocked by buildings or other so that i does not reach the other node.
take you mobile node, drive closer to the 5km away station and try to connect there
kilroy is correct. If you do not want to receive internet-connected nodes then enable “Ignore MQTT” in your app settings. I’m receiving nodes up to 75 miles away, which suggests to me that some of those might be spamming MQTT packets as kilroy suggested. I’m into LoRa for the off-grid aspect so detection of these nodes, at least for me, is annoying. There are community discussions on how to resolve this issue, as in proposed “mesh network etiquette”
