So, I’m looking into getting commercially available meshtastic nodes. Buying a bulk set of like 5 of them, and handing them out as birthday presents to my friends to help adoption in the area. A few of them have expressed interest in what I’ve been experimenting with, but don’t want (or can’t afford) to invest themselves.

What would be the most cost effective device to invest in?

My basic requirements are going to be

  • Screen mandatory (these are not all techy people, they need to see that it’s on and doing something)
  • GPS would be nice, but probably not worth the device cost
  • Bluetooth only- I assume everyone will only be using these with the Android app
  • Full housing, battery, antenna provided (no setup)

My top 3 so far are the

  1. ThinkNode M1 ($53)
  2. Lilygo TTGO T-Echo ($65)
  3. RAK WisMesh Pocket ($84)

I’m leaning towards the ThinkNode for price and features alone, but I like the form factor and E-ink display of the Lilygo more.

  • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip
    0·
    1 day ago

    Yep, the channel needs to be “MediumFast” with key “AQ==” the LoRa settings need to be

    Bandwidth: 250khz

    Spread Factor (SF): 9

    Coding Rate (CR): 8

    However, I am not sure what the slot and frequency are. The information I did get was obtained from https://meshtastic.org/blog/why-your-mesh-should-switch-from-longfast/ because I know there’s a page with the presets that are better defined, but I can’t find it right offhand.

    • just some guy@sh.itjust.works
      0·
      1 day ago

      Yup that’s how my nodes have MF setup. I believe it’s default slot is 45, don’t know the frequency but I can look it up/ask the local group. I’ll be sure to check their nodes are using those other settings though.

      They likely are setup with the right settings, when our city switched I sent a link based off my config so they’d be able to switch over easily. they’re just a bit SOL that the guy who owns the routers covering their area doesn’t want to switch from LF to MF and is leaving the people in that area stuck not being able to mesh with the majority of us.

        • just some guy@sh.itjust.works
          0·
          1 day ago

          Thanks for the link!

          One of them actually works for the city they live in. Their home and office is not far from the ridge. He pitched asking within the city gov if he could get a node up on existing city infra that’d be high enough. Initially I told him to wait for the MF switch. Now that we know theres a holdout holding them back we’re going to look at building a solar client base for his home and/or persuing the city infra option with a router late node (or whatever the smarter people around town suggest is best for the overall mesh.