frater secessus

retired snowbird

written comms for the win

I boondock around the American southwest in a DIY campervan. I’ve always preferred time-shifted written comms to realtime comms like phone, chat, or meatspace conversations.1 And from a technical standpoint text is a lot more efficient than video, voice, fax, etc.

I ran a FidoNet BBS back in the day. I was interested in packet radio but got my ham Technician ticket too late – by then packet BBSes were basically extinct.

I keep hoping that smartphone-based mesh would take off because the devices are so prevalent, but no go. Briar, serval mesh, etc failed to thrive.

a wild viable (?) mesh appears

In the last year or so LoRa-based Meshtastic seems to have achieved critical mass. The devices are inexpensive and are not tied to Meshtastic. Fine, I’ll bite.

planned implementation

Based on my understanding of Meshtastic roles

  • client_base - a solar powered, magnet mounted node built by etsy/eBay seller PeakMesh
    • RAK 4631 on a RAK19003 base (NRF52) powered by an 18650 and ~1w of panel on an allegedly-MPPT control module. This will stick to an unused section of the camper’s steel roof rack, with a “shock cord” safety. This will put the antenna about 9ft in the air.
      It’s not clear to me what happens to charging at freezing temps, although having a replaceable 18650 makes it a simple swap if it gets wrecked. Might end up wiring in a NO thermal switch into one leg of the solar input that only closes at ≥4°C.
  • client_mute - non-routing nodes
    • a two-pack of Heltec V3 with the Lego-looking L-shaped cases and internal antennas. They will be used in the camper for experiments2 so they don’t need external ants or batteries of any kind. If I decide later to use them outside I can pick up some of those tiny 800mAh batts for them.
  • client - portable nodes to carry on boondocking walks and in public. In areas with a developed mesh these might be changed to client_mute. I don’t know enough about this yet.

I think the rooftop solar[^solar] node will end up being my “main” node since it’s the only one guaranteed to be running 24/7. My camper’s house power has run on solar since 2018 so I’m well-accustomed to picking camping spots based on clear sun. The portables won’t be visible most of the time because they will be turned off. But when they are on it’d be fine to receive messages on them. The V3 experimental nodes will have names including the “no phone” emoji (📵) to indicate they don’t RX messages. Or maybe I should just turn them to client_hidden?

  1. I have rather serious anxiety, social and otherwise. Anything that requires me to make a Normal and Appropriate response on the fly is likely to go down in flames. Part of the reason I boondock is to be away from other people; Sartre and all that. ↩

  2. Could be used for MQTT since they have wifi. Or could be flashed to Meshcore, or left on Meshtastic but changed to MediumFast to see how much of that is out there. ↩