Router mode does make a big difference. It’s best not to do that, unless you are sure you are the only one on that frequency within range, and you have an excellent antenna position. It’s kind of meant for dedicated setups on mountaintops.
To deploy an effective repeater, just leave it in client mode- clients pass on messages without risk of saturating the mesh.
I’ve been pondering a gear cutter setup. This is usually done with a mill and a rotary table, but I was thinking of something simpler.
The blank would sit on a rotating table, that spins about the Z axis. The shaft for the cutter sits parallel to the Y axis, and moves along the X axis to contact the blank.
It was more of a lighthearted, fun joke about how I think that humans dying out works be a good thing for biodiversity, on balance.
Ultimately good for the environment, though.
I’m a noob, so check in with the Discord, but it sounds like that’s a good use case for a router. Especially if you can connect it to the public MQTT server, which allows some communication between seperate meshes, and adds the location to the mesh map. Take note, this is sharing your home location with the world.