Hi
There’s a group of us looking at getting Meshtastic going in the wider Wellington region in New Zealand. We’re slowly pulling together a few interested or already up and running people from various online platforms.
Are you running a node in Wellington, Lower Hutt, Upper Hutt, Porirua, Wairarapa or Kapiti or are you interested in doing so? Speak here 
Cheers
Yup, running one already 
Order is in and waiting for it to ship Scott.
Wynne
Good stuff, I’m waiting also.
Hi, I’m interested in setting up a node near close to Sugarloaf Rock in Maungaraki. Wanting to understand what comms / functionality this has to offer.
Cheers,
Shaun ZL2RSA
Hi Shaun
Steve who I think you may have already been in contact with is leading the charge and is best placed to answer this, he will be along shortly 
Cheers
Hi Shaun,
I’m not sure whether we’ve spoken about this or not - I’m not the greatest at matching faces to names & callsigns - but happy to answer questions. What are you wanting to know?
Cheers,
Steve (ZL4NT)
Hi there. I’m in Nelson. Looking to buy a device on the Bangood site. Is a T3S3 SX1262 915MHz a good device choice in NZ. I’m in Nelson.
@ZL4NT Thanks, on SF16 bouncing off-of Towai no problems. Will take one for a drive round Lower Hutt later today and see what that is like. Yesterday had them on LF 20 and took one to the mouth of the Orongaronga trying to bounce off of Baker but no joy. Would like to thank you and whomever else has been dropping this infrastructure on the high points 
Baker is ZL2ATH’s. I think that one is better further up the Orongorongo valley; there is likely terrain in the way at the mouth.
Want to start a project at Worser Bay, Seatoun. GPS location of Course Marks (bouys) and Rescue Boats for dinghy racing boat club.
FYI Wellington region folks:
Our mesh currently uses the LONG_FAST default preset on frequency slot 20 (LF20). Due to the large number of nodes on our mesh (>150), things are becoming unusably congested, and we need to move to a faster mode in order to restore usability.
Starting this weekend, we will be moving a number of key high sites over to the SHORT_FAST modulation on frequency slot 16 (SF16), with the aim of region-wide coverage on SF. These sites will remain there going forward. Please move your nodes to SF16 if possible.
High sites will have SF16 / LF20 appended to their long name to assist with identifying which nodes are operating on your frequency, vs which are bridged.
The bridges aren’t production-ready yet, but the congestion is getting so bad that the mesh isn’t really usable on LF alone currently; we’re at the point that we have to just move things anyway, and let the bridges catch up a number of weeks down the line when they are ready for wider deployment. Expect some bridging between LF20/SF16, but initially quite limited, and in the early stages may incur an unusually high number of extra hops.
For those who remain on LF20, or are delayed in moving, we do have enough routers built to maintain decent coverage on LF20 in the Wairarapa, Hutt, and Wellington areas. Kapiti & Manawatu might also, but will not initially have the ability to backhaul LF20 back to the rest of the region.
Longer term we’re intending to have SF/LF bridged locally at a number of sites across the region, with most backhaul between high sites taking place over SF, and the LF hop limit clamped. This should result in LF becoming much more usable than it is today (although SF will almost always still be the better choice).
New node settings:
Region: ANZ
Modem preset: SHORT_FAST
Frequency Slot: 16 (918.875MHz)
Primary channel name: ShortFast
Primary channel key: AQ==
Unless you have manually changed these before, the only setting you should have to change is the modem preset. All the other ones should come across automatically. However, if you have any connectivity issues after the move, please double-check that your setting match the above.
Please sing out if you have questions or issues.
Makes sense.
Looking at Liam’s map, it seems both geographically and per capita we are one of the densest meshes worldwide.
Not to say we’re all a bit thick.
Hi All
Just setup my 2 new T-Echo’s. Replaced stubby antenna with full wave antenna with a 1.29:1 SWR and the other with a 1/2 wave withe SWR of 1.40:1.
Both Aliexpress specials. Both tuned a bit low but not to bad at 918MHz.
Andrew (ZL1SU)
Migrated a couple of nodes in Upper Hutt. While they can talk to each other, can’t to anything else for now. Both SHORT_FAST, name ShortFast, ANZ, 918.875MHz (freq slot 16), key AQ==.
They should be well covered up there. Any chance you could say which suburb? Upper Hutt can see the following high SF16 nodes, depending on where you are: Kingsley, Reeves, Climie, Hawkins, Stokes Valley. That should get you out to the rest of the region. There are also a couple of higher SF16 client nodes you might be able to see directly (NZV1 & NZV2).
Boulder also normally hits parts of Upper Hutt, but that one is currently off-air following a battery short. I’m in the middle of rebuilding that now, and hope to have it back up this week.
Which nodes can you see in your list? What are the names of the nodes you migrated? Can check and see if I can reach them via anything.
The settings in your post sound fine.
I’ve also dropped a message in the main SF channel (“Test 1937, for whoever posted on Discourse a few minutes ago.”) - did you receive that?
If this was you… it was indeed received. Can’t seem to reach your node though. Can you describe your setup?
Yes, that was us, thanks for getting back. I’m not seeing your replies. The node is a stock standard Station G2, set as CLIENT, rebroadcast LOCAL_ONLY and standard hop limit of 3. It’s using the SX126X boosted gain, never had woes receiving on LONG_FAST. Not sure what else to share that might be relevant. Please let me know if you can think of something.
What’s the antenna you have connected to it, and where is it located? Is there anything next to it (or nearby) that might be impacting the signal?
Any chance you’d be able to answer some of the questions from my original reply to you?
Remember that meshtastic requires RF line of sight to work properly. The signal can bounce around a little bit, and can penetrate some buildings to a limited degree - but it’s limited. LOS is always better. Note that RF LOS is not the same as visual LOS.
It is elevated and is just shy of visual LOS to other nodes in Clouston Park, but it’s unclear whether they are up much anyway. Aside from that it’s in a shadow for sure. It uses a high gain large VERT900 omni connected via SMA. I use these antenna for GSM work but really anything in the 900MHz space they are great for. Any case, I suspect RX just isn’t getting the reach with SHORT_FAST.
I didn’t see the Test 1937 message no.
