I just stumbled across this. Probably available from other vendors, but for reference: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F1MWPF7G/134-3819393-6559008

Looks like it’s got everything you’re looking for and is pretty much a turn-key solution.

Love how tiny that is, but I’m not a fan of the pin layout on those little Xiao modules. The connection pads on the bottom, including the battery connection, are a major pain to try to solder to. If I ever get around to playing with the remaining two I have, I’m gonna try using pogo pins or something instead of trying to solder onto them

Edit: I do really like that it has external antenna connectors for both Wifi/BT and LoRa (unlike my Heltecs). Assuming I handle the battery charging and convert to 5v externally (to avoid dealing with the annoying battery pads) they’d make a great “attic node” (in my case on a mast in the back yard) that could stay connected to my wifi rather than having to remote admin it over LoRa (Slow and not all config options are available)

I don’t think that will work. At best, it would split the signal power and neither antenna would perform well. That’s not even getting into the RF wizardry which I’m not equipped to fully explain (or understand lol).

The “proper” solution would be to have two Meshtastic units. One in a high place for long range and configured with the “client base” role and the other one(s) with regular antennas optionally in the “client mute” role. The reason for that is they’d likely be able to “hear” the base station one just fine and relay through it and wouldn’t necessarily need to rebroadcast locally. If they do, then they can be in regular “client” role.

Since I have multiple units inside, I keep mine in “client mute” when I’m home so they go through my “attic node” and switch to “client” when I’m out and about. The 2.7 firmware makes this easy to switch directly on the device without having to mess with the app settings.

https://meshtastic.org/blog/demystifying-router-late/

Now if you’re talking a highly directional Yagi for the high gain/high place antenna, then I believe the general guidance still stands. The newer firmware has some zero hop configuration where you can “pair” devices (via favoriting) and while they still hop the signal, it doesn’t decrement the hop count.

https://meshtastic.org/blog/zero-cost-hops-favorite-routers/

Yeah, it’s hard to know if people use the word “repeater” colloquially or technically, so I always repeat the Meshtastic warning about that role since it has a high likelihood of being detrimental to the mesh in the area.

Hope you find something suitable because it’s a fun project. I only get a few hits each month (less in the winter it seems) but it’s cool when you randomly pick up someone from miles away and have a chat.

I’m not aware of any ready-to-use ones you can buy that are outdoor rated. Pretty much all of the pre-assembled ones I’ve seen are in a handheld or portable form factor.

For a “repeater” node (note the quotes, explained further below), I’ve wanted to pick up one of the new 1 W high power Rak Wireless boards (link). Those have a battery terminal as well as a solar input for charging. All you’d need to add would be a PV panel + battery and put it into some kind of housing. I’d also use a nicer antenna than the little stub one that comes with it.

You should be able to put that together without any kind of soldering, though you would need to wire the solar panel output to a battery-style connector to be able to attach it to the board. There are solder-free wire splicers you may be able to use, but it’s also a good opportunity to practice soldering as there’s little to mess up.

For the housing, you might look for outdoor-rated utility boxes or something like that. Would probably have to drill and seal holes for the antenna connector and solar panel wire, but shouldn’t be too difficult. That, or you may be able to get a friend to help with 3D printing a solution.

Now, back to the use of “repeater” instead of repeater. Meshtastic docs are very adamant about only using the repeater role (now “router” role; repeater has been deprecated in recent versions). In all but the rarest and most optimally placed cases, you’d want to be using “client” or “client base” modes as they repeat messages but without forcing other clients to use them (and thus consuming a hop).

Genuinely curious. Why exFAT? (I didn’t downvote you, BTW).

I’ve not had any issues using ext4 for my Pi’s SD cards. Any issues due to improper shutdowns are fixed with journal recovery. I also like to set a fairly high commit time in the mount options (120 seconds usually). Worst case is I lose the last 2 minutes of data, but it seems to work well to coalesce the writes (especially for things like Jellyfin or anything that uses SQLite and does a lot of constant little writes).

That’s what I was thinking but wasn’t sure if 1 TB ones would even work (my phone won’t read above a 256 GB one, for example).

Thanks. It’s basically a travel router + portable app server + media library. I wanted to play with the much more capable Pi Zero clones and it turns out they can run quite a bit of stuff at the same time and the features snowballed as I just kept adding more stuff (I got the models with 4 GB RAM).

This would be great for parents too

Definitely, at least once I add some GPIO switches to set different modes for the networking (that’s kind of a pain point now if you need to setup a different wifi client connection, switch its internet connection from wifi to USB tethering from a connect phone or switch the ethernet port from LAN to WAN, etc).

We had a power outage during a snow storm week or so ago and the prototype ran all day from a power bank and kept a limited Jellyfin library online for everyone (mostly Star Trek and Marvel movies since those are the only things everyone in the house can agree on haha).

Sounds about right. I held onto my 16:9 OnePlus 3 until the battery completely gave out in 2023 or so. It was the perfect size, and I hated the 2:1 ones that came after. Tried a OP Nord N200 for about a week but returned it.

Daily driving the Minimal Phone now. It’s not the highest resolution by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s 4:3 and makes current phones look even skinnier than when I was used to 16:9.

The only thing preventing me from looking into this further is it’s yet another tall-skinny phone. I don’t know which manufacturer popularized that ridiculous aspect ratio, but I hate them and everyone who followed suit.

I think it’s more exhausting to be around a narcissist.

The narcissists themselves seem to feed off of the behavior.

I have 3 of the original ones in my basement that my parents were going to throw out years ago that I rescued. They were pretty awful in every way but I always hoped to do something with them eventually.

Maybe with this I can make a lo-fi HomeAssistant dashboard / control panel and/or plumb in the Weather Channel emulator (https://weatherstar.netbymatt.com/)

Yep. They just knocked on Banner’s door at a very inopportune time.

I guess what happens is people can redact it such that they can no longer see it in their particular pdf software but then a different software can bypass it

That’s pretty charitable. I’ve worked civil service many years ago and the computer skills of some of them were beyond laughable. I never dealt with redacted documents during that stint of my life but I can say with 100% certainty that I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if someone “redacted” a document by making the text and background highlight color black and posting the Word docx file online.

Not exactly the same thing, but back when TLC was still known as “The Learning Channel” they used to show surgeries and such and I’d be sitting there completely unfazed eating a big bowl of spaghetti or something.

This theory is making more and more sense. Which also implies there’s no Who Tony Stark to make him the uber-stretchy pants.

Or maybe he’s like the Hulk and turns back into a regular Who when he’s in a better mood?

HeltecV3 is probably the lowest-cost point of entry. It doesn’t have GPS or battery (though it has a battery connector and charger built in if you want to add a battery later). Some come with a case, some don’t, but there are lots of cases for them if you have a 3D printer.

The LoRa antenna isn’t integrated though (uses a U.FL connector) but it comes with a little mini-whip. I’m not sure I can recall any Meshtastic-compatible boards that have a fully-integrated antenna.

Running it directly from a solar panel is possible, but the ESP32-based boards aren’t the most power-efficient. I have one of mine running from solar but it’s got a 2000 mAh battery to smooth it out.

The nRF-based boards are more power efficient but they’re a little more expensive and may lack Wifi.

Edit/Addition: Also, be careful powering at least the Heltecs from solar – make sure you use a solar panel with a voltage regulator. I used a small, unregulated 1W panel on two of them and it burnt out the USB->UART controller on them (they didn’t like its 6V). They both still work but can’t use the USB port for serial connection anymore (have to use an external serial adapter to the pin headers). One of those is now a base station connected over Wifi, and the other is acting as a repeater.

i should clarify a generic radio repeater that inst meshtastic but is able to repeat LORA signal

Well, the numbers I gave would be the same since those Meshtastic “modes” are just profiles for different LoRa settings, and the same LoRa Settings + frequency slot still applies (Meshtastic just runs on top of that).

I think what you’re looking for is a dumb signal repeater, but I’m not super knowledgeable of the pros/cons/legality of those for the entire 915 MHz band. You’d be repeating anything in that frequency range, not just LoRa. And those also repeat noise the same as signal. Basically, it could end up making things worse in the long run by introducing noise.

Probably best to just coordinate with or start a community mesh group and settle on a specific frequency and LoRa settings.

AFAIK, the only way to truly turn them off is to remove the battery or cut the positive lead and splice in a switch. Only drawback is the switch has to be on for it to be able to charge, so that’s a bit awkward. The “soft off” when you hold the power button is just deep sleep.

Mine frequently wake up from deep sleep but not after 5 minutes. More like 3-4 days. Which makes keeping a few always charged difficult.

Edit: I just checked the Power settings in the app (they’ve changed it a bit since I set mine up). The longest it can deep sleep is 72 hours it seems. Maybe yours is set to 5 minutes?