TL;DR

I’ve set-up a meshcore repeater and bought 2 companion devices to communicate (chat) with people without relying on the internet. My setup works, kinda, but damn, that’s a whole new level of rabbit hole.

Am I prepping? You never know when your country catches a dictatorship which turns off the internetz (like in Iran). Or, when countries decide to install backdoors to chat apps like Signal.

Naah, I’m not paranoid, just like to tinker with unknown (to me) stuff.

This is a write-up of first days / initial impressions.

Intro

I always wanted to become radio-amateur, but never managed to do it. Once in a high school I even visited a local club, but was didn’t pursue it further because I had no money for the equipment, neither a will to do the exam and there were some old weirdos in this old place talking weird things in codes like letters and numbers S5AXXX..

Fast forward 35 years, I bought a bunch of LoRa devices and started to experiment with meshcore.

First steps – a repeater

When I checked a map of meshcore repeaters in my area, I saw there are none in my near vicinity. I live at the edge of a plane (Dravska dolina) surrounded by hills. I have a line of sight to all hills and high points on the other side of the plane (Boč, Donačka Gora, Ptujska Gora, Haloze, Ptujski Grad, Grad Vurberg.) There are some repeaters on the far side (Donačka Gora, Jablovec, but none on the Pohorje side (except some Maribor that I don’t see directly).

Perfect conditions for my own repeater, I thought.

After several weeks/months of reading, deciding, forgetting about it, comparing hw, doubts etc., I bought one with solar panel (12W) and mounted it on the balcony.

It has a Heltec v4 board in it, a GPS, a charge controller and a place for up to 4 Li batteries (18650). It came without batteries so I bought them separately. It came with a 5 dbi hollow antenna (and another, 2 dbi for wifi).

The first thing I did is I flashed it with the latest meshcore firmware (1.15). I used flasher from the meshcore.io site.

There was a first issue: It was difficult to plug in USB-C in the heltec board. A plastic edge was in its way. I didn’t have a 90 degree connector, so I cut out a piece of plastic housing and made a space for USB-C connector.

I chose a ‘repeater’ firmware, put the board in the state that accepts flashing (holding left button – not RST!, plugging in USB, releasing left button), clicked ‘Erase device’, Flash and after some moments, it was flashed with a new firmware.

Then I turned it on and attach it to the balcony fence1. Second issue: fixed bracket that it came with, is sub-optimal. It allows only 1-axis movement (up-down).

Solar node with Donačka Gora and Boč in the line of sight.

What now? I hoped it played its role as a repeater, but I didn’t really know. I naively thought the firmware allows remote management via WiFi, but I was wrong. WiFi is only for OTA updates.

The I figured out I need companion devices so I can start using it. I don’t know what I was thinking, I thought I could communicate directly via repeater. Wrong.

Trackers/companion devices

I ordered 2 companion devices (Wio tracker L1 and SenseCAP T1000-E) from Seeedstudio, EU warehouse.

They arrived in a week. Why 2? So I can communicate with my wife, of course. Testing, testing 🙂

sensecap and wio trackers on the table

I flashed both with meshcore companion (Bluetooth version). It required some gymnastics to put them into flash mode:

  • Sensecap: Hold the button, quickly attach the magnetic power connector, release the button, green light is on, click DFU in the web flasher, Erase, Flash. I neededd approx 5 attempts to figure out the sequence.
  • WIO: hold reset, attach powercord, click DFU, erase. Didn’t manage to flash it from web flasher. A desktop window appeared (usb drive), I downloaded the firmware, dropped it in the window, then it flashed.

Both connected to phones via Bluetooth and work ok.

First use of mesh network & impressions

I thought nobody is out there. But I was wrong. There are actual living people that are using this network. During the first night my tracker heard over 50 repeaters (212 after 2 days), some 300km away (Rome – IT, Bratislava – SK).


And I immediately got a personal tutor that taught me how to use, configure it and which tools are useful 🙂 Thanks SORA from MB.

How does it ‘feel’ like? Well, it feels like IRC / Matrix / Signal at the same time.

IRC because of #channels, Matrix because of ‘rooms’ and Signal because of direct encrypted messaging.

I also think that standalone meshcore communicators could be a perfect gadges for… children. They could still chat without mobile phones.

What am I missing?

  • I wonder if there are debates that are not related to ‘test/ping/can you hear me‘? Maybe there are interesting private channels that I’m not aware of.
  • Coverage: there are a lot of spots without signal in my area. Well, this is solvable by more repeaters.

What I wish I knew earlier

I had some wrong assumptions before I started and I wished I knew these things earlier:

  1. you can configure repeater via lora. If I knew this earlier, I would probably bought a board without wifi
  2. there are public channels! Like Public, #slovenija, #alerts, #emergency. As a beginner I miss easy accessible list somewhere.
  3. messages are not stored on repeaters. There are special ‘room devices’ that store messages. I don’t know why I presumed that if you’re not reachable, the (direct) message will eventually reach you when you’re back in the reach.
  4. meshcore app drains battery on my phone fast – 2x faster than normal use

Tools

Some tools I came across and I find useful:

Conclusion (for now)

I’m quite satisfied that everything is working (after modest amount of tinkering) and I can use meshcore for communication.

I am still not sure how to fit it in my everyday life. Should I buy trackers for all my family members and colleagues? Should we ditch Signal and switch to meshcore even before doomsday? Should I guerilla setup more solar nodes around? Should I buy a better antenna for the router? Etc. So many questions.

And yeah, the community seems to be similar type to the one on fediverse. Which is not bad. I suppose.

I wish more people used it. It’s cool.

  1. After some days, I attached repeater to a pole and raised it for another 1,5m. It improved SNR to my nearest repeater (Donačka) from -11 db to -5 db. ↩︎