January 2025 - A New Meshtastic Podcast!

Howdy, I'm Jon and you're listening to Voice of the Mesh, a podcast

about everything Meshtastic, related technologies, projects, and anything

adjacent that's just plain interesting.

Currently, we're targeting a once a month release covering the latest

news, social media posts, and new hardware and other cool projects.

For everything you hear on the show, there is a link available in the description.

Additionally, if you've got suggestions for items to cover, we'd love to hear it.

Comment on this video or see the description for submission routes.

With that introduction out of the way, let's jump right in to the headline news.

First up, from the Meshtastic blog, Meshtastic Site Planner, an open source

tool to optimize your mesh deployments.

That title is very descriptive.

They have released a new site planner tool that is developed to help aid in

the planning of deployments of nodes.

Most importantly as it relates to location and geography.

This tool will help you visualize coverage both as it relates to line

of sight around geography, but also in relation to ground clutter if you're

just over the height of the ground.

This type of tool is the same style that professional RF planners use

when trying to plan out locations for cell phone towers and radio stations.

So this is nothing new in broad concept, but it's nice to have something available

For the advanced users, you'll also find that it includes details like

antenna sensitivity and handling cable loss and even receiver sensitivity.

So if you are a community or person trying to find the best place to put a

node, this is a great tool to try out.

The second item is New Year, New Look.

The web flasher for firmware has been updated overall.

This is mostly just to clean up a nice coat of paint over it, but I

think the really important change, if you haven't tried it yet, is

the new select target device where previously was just a list of devices.

Now it's an entire screen that includes pictures of each type of

hardware, which is just amazing for the less technical people to help

them figure out what it is they have.

If auto detect does not work there's also a filter.

So you can filter down by manufacturer and chipset type since the

amount of hardware available for Meshtastic is growing by the week.

And in fact, later in the show, we'll talk about some of those new options.

From Reddit, we have a video titled, I goofed the Meshtastic CRC problem.

This is a three minute video from Jonathan Bennett, who is one of

the core developers of Meshtastic.

If you're into the more technical side of things, or use a Raspberry

Pi hat, this is worth a watch.

Again, it's a three minute video.

But the TLDW is that the Waveshare Raspberry Pi hat is no longer recommended.

And the best option for use with the Pi is the MeshADV from Frequency Labs.

And this is available on Etsy.

As for why the Waveshare HAT isn't recommended unfortunately, like the

Heltech T114 it comes down to oscillator issues, And the Waveshare HAT uses

a passive crystal oscillator, Also known as an XTAL, And that is bad.

The longer a device transmits with a passive crystal oscillator that,

Crystal heats up, and then the frequency drifts away from where it

should be, and it corrupts the message.

What you're looking for, if it's listed though most devices

do not list it, is a TCXO, or Temperature Controlled Oscillator.

So once again those waveshare hats, it's not like they're bad but

if you're using them on long fast, you're going to have a bad time, but

the faster bitrate speeds, like medium fast, you will not have an issue.

But just again, and just in general, they're no longer recommended.

The fourth and final news today is Rack Wireless has launched

the Meshtastic Designer.

This is available on Rack's site.

It's a Pretty simple tool to help you figure out, a survey almost, to help you

figure out what device you want to use.

It starts by asking what kind of functions you care about, like GPS, air

quality, screen, so on and so forth.

The second question is a very important one, where in the world are you, so

you get the right frequency chip.

And then it shows you a nice 3D model that matches what your Request is, and

it shows you even where the WizBlock modules will plug in so you don't make

the mistake of trying to buy multiple modules that all require the same port

or trying to put GPS on the wrong port, which I have definitely done and wasted

a whole bunch of time trying to debug.

So if you're buying a RackWizBlock and not entirely sure of what modules or what

you should get check out that designer.

Now before we move on to the next segment this is obviously episode one,

it says so in the title but if you like what you hear, hit the thumbs up button

and leave a comment, so I know this is something that people find interesting.

I especially welcome comments, suggestions or even constructive criticism.

If you don't like something, that's cool.

We're all gonna learn together.

And I hope to improve this each month.

Let's move on to talking about the firmware.

As the firmware typically changes rapidly, there always seems to be something

interesting, but with the holidays it's been a little bit on the quieter side.

So there are four releases of Note recently.

The most recent stable release is 2518.

And that's beta, which is the quote unquote stable line right now.

That was at the end of December, and the one feature of note that I saw

was that there is work being done on Meshtastic D, the Linux version

for Raspberry Pis and whatnot.

But as it relates to Docker.

Now, you don't need to use this, the Dockerized version, for just

one hat on one Raspberry Pi.

But when we get into a world where there's a potential to have multiple radios

hooked up to the same Linux machine Docker will certainly make life a lot

easier and this has a lot of very cool potential when you start talking about

a single hub device that maybe talks amongst different radios on its own via

its own local MQTT and then allows you to mix, medium, slow and long, fast,

or, relay signals maybe using multiple Yagi's kind of stuff in the future, but

it's cool to see the work being done.

There were actually two releases for 2.

5. 19 an alpha version, both of which have been revoked.

But the one note there of value was that Helltech Wireless Stick

Lite V1 and V2 gained support.

And the final release of the month was 2.

5. 20 Alpha.

It's a bunch of notes about little fs that has been a work in progress for a while.

But the thing that really caught my eye, which is just a small little tiny bit, was

the DF Robot Lark Weather Station, which has been supported for a little while now,

finally gets support for the rain sensor.

Which I personally think is required for a good weather station.

I'm looking forward to having an entire mesh of weather stations out there that

do not require you use some terrible website to get basic environmental data.

So with the firmware out of the way, let's talk about the

latest in hardware developments.

It has been a surprisingly busy month.

In January, there were three new hardware devices from major retailers available

all based on rack wireless hardware.

The first item released just before CES at the beginning of the month was the rack,

wireless wiz mesh pocket mini all in one.

This is similar to the previously released wiz mesh pocket, but.

It's mini now.

That should be obvious.

The big change is that it's, significantly smaller in size.

It has an internal antenna and no screen.

I think this is a great option for a node that can be tossed in a bag or a backpack.

Just, kept around, but just out of the way.

The second piece of hardware, which was released just a few days

later, and Actually starts with an entirely new line, is the Lomesh

Pocket S Portable Solar Node.

The Lomesh brand is brand new and currently for sale

exclusively at Rockland.

The first of this line is the Pocket S Solar Node, but we saw some pictures from

CES and we know that there are some other.

Hardware in that line that will be available hopefully in the near future

because one of them is MagSafe related and I am personally super excited

for a MagSafe device as an EDC node.

The Pocket S is one of the first solar focused nodes that's ready

to go out of the box as a solar.

I know that you can buy a Raxolar case.

You can buy devices from various Etsy sellers.

But this one's kind of the first small portable solar node all

ready to go out of the box.

You don't need to build or tinker with anything.

It's clearly targeted around the outdoor enthusiast prepper type.

As it's pretty small just about the size of a deck of

cards sitting here on my desk.

And I've been tinkering with it for a few weeks myself since it came out.

It does not include GPS which is something notable for something for the outdoors.

And that's mostly for battery life reasons.

With the battery, it's good for a week or two at least without using the solar

at all, which is super nice to have.

And it does have a real time clock to compensate for the lack of GPS.

There is also an internal antenna, but support for external is available,

and a BME environmental sensor.

A nice little potential base station for your camping trip kind of node.

And finally, yesterday, we saw the release of the brand new Rack Wireless Wiz Mesh

Board 1, or sometimes abbreviated B1.

It is noted as a baseboard tailored for Meshtastic.

It's a narrower form factor with power ports on the side rather than on the top.

So you can have a slimmer build and also has an integrated Bluetooth antenna.

The base price is $30 us which is about $5 cheaper than the

standard whiz block starter kit.

My guess is that this node, while I have not seen it with my own eyes, is targeted

to be something more in the hell tech T 1 1 4 or V three style shape and size.

I think the rack wireless version will be probably slightly larger, but it's

it's a competitor for that Haltech T114.

Moving along from the new hardware Meshtastic is

nothing without its community.

So there are two events as of late that caught my eye.

The first in mid January was Noisebridge, which is a hacker space in San Francisco.

Launched a balloon with a Meshtastic payload.

And apparently they lost their own telemetry, but the Meshtastic

telemetry continued to come through for quite some time.

And they aided in that collection by the San Francisco Bay Area Mesh User Group.

The second event, which is ongoing as this podcast is being recorded, is At

FOSDEM, which is the Free and Open Source Developers European Meeting which is

occurring February 1 and 2 so right now.

And one of the members of the community was giving a talk about

Meshtastic along with, I believe running a table or a booth there.

So hopefully the talk will be recorded and posted on the FOSDEM website.

By the time you actually see this, I could not catch it live myself as it was very

early in the morning where I was, but I'm looking forward to watching it later.

And the final segment today is going to be other interesting finds from

the community, mostly that on social media, YouTube, Reddit and whatnot.

Several posts on Reddit really caught my eye this past month.

The first was one titled First Solar Node, and it's pretty self explanatory.

And it wasn't anything special in terms of hardware.

It was a RackWiz block with a battery in a box.

But I really love posts that people provide.

Full parts breakdown, their logic, their thought process.

Because it's really great when the community can learn from each other.

It's not just, oh hey, I built a thing, but it's here why I built this

thing and why I chose these parts.

The user in question had a 10, 000 milliamp hour battery

so they threw it in there.

Sure, of course, use what you got.

But they also chose to use a DF robot solar power manager rather than the

Rack wireless integrated solar and this is partially because the RackWizBlock

solar is not an MPPT It's also limited to I believe 300 milliamps of

charging so using an external Solar manager is not a bad idea though.

It does add to the cost

another fun build is latest build birdhouse node from reddit Again,

this is fun to see the different variations that people build.

The first one's a big plastic box that goes on your roof, and the second

one is a node designed to blend in.

So if you're trying to put it up at a family member's house, or perhaps

your significant other doesn't want a half meter antenna on your roof

you could have a little bird house.

And the user even included solar panels on the top.

The next on the list was The use case I prepared for happened.

Meshtastic found my dog.

This user had three T1 1000Es.

One for himself, his significant other, and finally a third one

attached to his dog, so that if his dog ever ran off into the forest,

he would be able to find his dog, which, dogs be dogs did happen to him.

And this is one of those great example use cases of how to use Meshtastic

and it's data plane for things other than just sending text messages

but it's a great cheap way to keep track of things that you care about.

Especially when you don't want to pay for cell phone service for

them, or it might not be available.

Or just simply that those other hardware options are really expensive

compared to something like a T1000E.

In a similar vein, another Reddit user posted, My first Meshtastic

device in action while skiing.

And this is a similar use case.

They wanted to keep track of their kids, make sure that If they got

separated they could find them.

So they take a node and they toss it in this kid's ski jacket, and you

set a good encryption key, and you can always know where the kid is.

And if you want to get crazy, you can always teach them to, take

action when they hear the node chirp.

The T 1000E has a pretty decent speaker on it.

So you could page that node and, have the child know to stop.

And pull over safely so you can find them again.

And in another line of fun builds, pretty proud of my first wiz block build.

This user missed the perfect opportunity.

It's a wiz block in a box.

In this case, a cardboard box.

But it's a great example of how you do not need to have a 3D

printer to get into Meshtastic.

You can stick the wiz block in a cardboard box and call it a day.

I took a Heltech T114 and hot glued it into the plastic box that the T114 came

from, and that was my Heltech node.

I added a battery, but that was it.

You don't need anything fancy, even though, 3D printers are there, there's

members of the community, you can buy cases, but you don't need to.

Or if you take another user's path in a post titled Fresh Node, they

put a Heltech V3 in an Altoids tin, which is always fun to see.

And the final item from the socials is actually from YouTube, is a video titled

I Have Some Big News by Andy Kirby.

He's a YouTuber who has posted a half dozen or dozen videos about

Meshtastic, and now he's got something a little bit different.

He's involved with starting up a project called MeshCore, which is

titled as a lightweight, portable C library that enables multi hop

packet routing for embedded projects using LoRa and other packet radios.

It is designed for developers who want to create resilient,

decentralized communication networks that work without the internet.

And if that sounds a lot like Meshtastic, you're right.

Because it's clearly a I don't want to use the word competitor, but it's a different

take on mesh communications overall.

As the joke goes, it's a bold strategy call, and let's see

how it pans out for them.

But in all seriousness I'm excited about this as an open source project

because They might come up with something new and cool and better

and new routing technologies because they're not doing flood routing.

They're doing something a little differently.

As I understand it.

But when it's open source, it's rising tide lifts all boats.

We can all work together.

Even different projects can work together to come up with cool new

technologies and borrow the best.

from each other and build a better community overall.

It's not competition.

It's just something new and different.

And I look forward to seeing how this MeshCore project goes.

So if you made it this far, you're clearly a mesh head.

Two reminders, everything covered in the show is linked in the show notes or the

description, or you can figure it out.

Second, as I mentioned at the top of show, I'd love to get

some more community suggestions for news topics, anything else.

I especially would love to get more stories of cool things

happening in local user groups.

So if you want to see your project or community spotlight in the

next show see the links in the description for how to submit

I look forward to reading your comments and feedback.

Until next time, this is the Voice of the Mesh, signing off.