I’ve been doing LoRa for the better part of a year, in a fairly active Midwest city (checking now, my SeeedStudio T1000-e can see ~145 nodes (although most are via MQTT - more on that in a minute).
I also have two Muzi works h2t hand held nodes - one is connected to my home wifi with a local MQTT server configured as client_base which allows my non-wifi nodes to relay through it to reach the mesh.
It’s a lot, but basically the heltec running client_base stays plugged in at my house, the second heltec comes with me in the car, and the t1000e stays on my person. The Meshtastic android and iOS apps are really good, the former is what I’ll use to send/receive messages for whichever node I’m using.
One word of caution, that mountain solar node may need software updates to keep running smoothly without messing with the mesh, and updates remotely (over Bluetooth) are sketchy at best.
Aside from that, I say go for it. The mountain node would probably be in router mode to encourage other nodes to bounce through it - you’ll want to tweak settings to make sure it performs optimally.
Lastly MQTT… A lot of purists frown on MQTT because it kind of goes against the whole “wireless infrastructure only” mindset. But until there’s enough coverage with LoRa nodes, MQTT can bridge that gap and connect isolated pockets to a larger mesh.
I’ve been doing LoRa for the better part of a year, in a fairly active Midwest city (checking now, my SeeedStudio T1000-e can see ~145 nodes (although most are via MQTT - more on that in a minute).
I also have two Muzi works h2t hand held nodes - one is connected to my home wifi with a local MQTT server configured as
client_basewhich allows my non-wifi nodes to relay through it to reach the mesh.Lastly, I just put up a SensCAP Solar P1 Pro node on my roof.
It’s a lot, but basically the heltec running
client_basestays plugged in at my house, the second heltec comes with me in the car, and the t1000e stays on my person. The Meshtastic android and iOS apps are really good, the former is what I’ll use to send/receive messages for whichever node I’m using.One word of caution, that mountain solar node may need software updates to keep running smoothly without messing with the mesh, and updates remotely (over Bluetooth) are sketchy at best.
Aside from that, I say go for it. The mountain node would probably be in
routermode to encourage other nodes to bounce through it - you’ll want to tweak settings to make sure it performs optimally.Lastly MQTT… A lot of purists frown on MQTT because it kind of goes against the whole “wireless infrastructure only” mindset. But until there’s enough coverage with LoRa nodes, MQTT can bridge that gap and connect isolated pockets to a larger mesh.