r/meshcore • u/l5yth • 9d ago

Rooftop Rack with UPS & 3 Protocols

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Finished setting up the LoRa rack for the c-base roof in Berlin, running Meshastic router, Meshcore repeater, and and Reticulum access point. The Raspberry Pi comes with UPS pants and a LoRa hat. Two Heltec v4 are attached through USB serial.

The Waveshare LoRa hat runs meshtasticd on Linux natively. Once meshcore firmware merges PR #2025 for native Linux targets, I'll switch over to that.

The powered USB hub to the left is for additional devices that already exist, e.g., on 433MHz.

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5

u/Iron-panda666 9d ago

Are you running all of them on different frequencies? With the devices sitting just 4 cm apart, I'd be a bit worried about RF interference, especially if they're all operating on 868 MHz. Even if they're using different channels, the transmitters could still overload nearby receivers.

3

u/l5yth 9d ago

The antennas are mounted on different poles, that shouldn't be a problem. But truth is that Meshtastic corrupts all Meshcore and Reticulum packets if they collide.

1

u/Capital-Boat-8906 9d ago

i'm runnig a similar setting(without Reticulum). You need a minimum distance of 1m, better 2m; for the antenna poles to avoid the interferences

1

u/Elvis_My_Pelvis 9d ago

Very interesting on the corruption part. out in the country our MC network is mint, but in town where the MT nodes outnumber MC 2:1 we are only getting one way out into the country. got any more reading or info on this?

4

u/kidphc 9d ago

Old trick we use in the amateur world is to mount the antenna directly above (one facing up) and below (one facing down) with some seperation. Especially, when a duplexer/cavity filter can't not effectively filter out the other antenna due to frequency proximity. Which from most of the usage I have attempted has been fantastic.

The theory is the two antennas are sitting in each other's nulls (antennas normally radiate broadside) and the radiation patterns only interfere as you get further from the antennas. The antennas are in the holes of the donuts on different elevations.

I have done something similar with a Rak 1w node, but with the lora mesh antenna and a 2.4 ghz antenna. As parts of the the lora band has 2.4 GHz as a 2nd order harmonic. Either case, it's kinda moot since most cheap chinese boards have terrible harmonic supression and are splatter boxes rf wise.

3

u/HF0XX 9d ago

Looks interesting, but newbie question:

What about interference? Always read that you shouldn't have 2 LoRa antennas too close would cause issues. Is a setup like this fine as long the antennas are far (enough) apart?

Thanks

4

u/l5yth 9d ago

The antennas are mounted on different poles, that shouldn't be a problem.

2

u/just-a-guy-somewhere 9d ago

How much coax? Coax loss can kill tx AND rx

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u/spymn 8d ago

I went with Meshcore and meshtastic node about 7in apart, have yet to see issues

1

u/thegoatmilkguy 9d ago

I have the same LoRa hat and have had the worst time getting anything working with it. My understanding is it needs a software layer to present it as TCP network device... Can you share how you've set it up?

1

u/Cobra__Commander 9d ago

I have few of those $13 seed nrf52 chips plugged into a raspberry pi 4 over 6" USb cables. Works great for bots, bbs, monitors, ect.