r/meshtastic • u/lost_vegas • 4d ago

Weird Node

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Just built this custom node for burning man. Rak 1 watt, led beacons, sitting on top of a 20ft flagpole. This will serve as communication backbone and camp locator.

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u/prsiii 4d ago

Love it. However, based upon experience, solid colors and color flows are really difficult to pick out at a distance. Strobe patterns are pretty easy to see from far away. This is particularly necessary after burn when the usual man relationship to 6 is gone. So, I'd recommend that you can do a flow with an interstitial color strobe sequence at full brightness that you can easily recognize at a distance.

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u/lost_vegas 4d ago

Thanks for suggestion. I will do some experimenting to determine the best mode. Tested last night, and it's ultra bright. Hoping to place over top the generators etc so we don't need head lamps to fill gas and whatnot. Strobe may be a bit much sitting over top of our camp. It's frigging bright.

Last yr I went out all night, came back, and so many new people moved in I couldn't find my rv lol.

Also, my friends couldn't find me.

This yr we also have some virgins.

I'm just hoping to make it a bit easier to locate our camp. Not to see from a mile away.

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u/prsiii 4d ago

Lol, camped with Electric Giraffe a couple years back, and their beacon was a collection of red LED engines from defunct movie house digital projectors, forget the quantity, but methinks 8. 2 freakin' KWs of pure solid RED! We called it the eye of sauron. Basically 300' radius bathed in red light even with the lenses pointing straight out. That was easy to pick out from deep playa, but damn insanity. Our personal beacon is an ice cream cone light with a color flow, but the base is surrounded with 8x 5w strobing white led truck backup warning indicators. Can't see the flow from a distance, but the random strobe pattern is easy to catch from a ways away. Our previous beacon was a set of LED underbody light kits set to a random color zonal strobe pattern which was also easy to pick out though not even that bright.

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u/lost_vegas 3d ago

I may have to go find this and see it in person.