I made a thing. Its a MT AND MC repeater. Ive been working on it for a while. It works really well for a unilateral Meshcore AND meshtastic repeater with only one antenna.

Now I just need to get the “hops” logic working and it can actually be used. It already has logic to NOT repeat any packet it hears more than 2x.

It switches between the two different protocols. And if it hears one, waits a tiny bit, making sure no other packets come in to confirm, then re-transmits the packet.

With this, a single heltek v3 can act as a repeater for both protocols.

Some things to work on:

  1. Chance of getting partial packets. If its switching really quick it might get only half a packet. It removes those. In theory if I make it wait on the same protocol for a bit longer, I can remove the amount of partial packets as both systems re-transmit the initial packet a couple of times. So if detected, just stay on the current one for a bit and wait for the next packet.
  2. At the moment it just re-transmits so no real “hops”…so im not going to share the code at this time. If I dont get that working, it could easily flood the network. Even though I do have dup logic built in, it really should know how to deal with hops.
  3. It only works on the heltek v3. Cause thats all I had around the house. RTLSDR confirms packets are being re-sent if registered. I confirmed both MT and MC packets are being sent over :)

Meshtastic is MUCH more chatty BTW. Its like 15/1 at the moment. Code is rough so ill be cleaning it up.

Ill be working on this and polishing it.

  • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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    6 hours ago

    I would be very careful about deploying this as you need to be mindful not to cause interference. If you just blindly retransmit you are likely to actually reduce range in some cases as you will prevent nodes farther away from sending

    • mesa@piefed.socialOP
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      5 hours ago

      Im hoping to deal with that with #2. Worst case i just put a bit of a delay, wait for two or more, remove. Or if it doesnt hear anything them send. The hop logic isnt there yet. I litterally just made it today. Im going to get the rtlsdr set up and do some testing.

      • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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        4 hours ago

        I would highly recommend that you not do this as it is likely to cause more problems.

        Instead I would just setup two separate nodes

        • manefraim@lemmy.world
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          3 hours ago

          STFU, or help if you are concerned. Link documentation, explain the engineering principles, or explain why it can never be done on Earth.

          “Don’t do it; you might cause interference,” has no place amongst scientists.

          NOBODY LISTEN TO THIS MORON.

          DO YOUR WEIRD SCIENCE. LEARN THE LIMITS OF YOUR WORLD.

          Hey, @mesa. Intefere, fucker.