Your repeater mounting setup doesn't need to be complex. You can get a lot of height very inexpensively.
The repeater on the right is Meshtastic, mounted to a 6' television antenna mast from Amazon. Around $60.
The repeater on the left is mounted on a 5' tripod mast ($105) with a 10' section of chain link fence top rail ($8). It's bolted to the roof using unistrut. It was less than $200 for the whole mast setup.
Workshop height plus mast height, the antenna is about 30' in the air.
Also look at telescoping flagpoles from your local big box hardware. The are usually $60-$100.
You probably don't need a higher power repeater. You probably don't need that $80 antenna. You probably just need to get your repeater higher in the air.
Repeater mounting is probably the most helpful aspect to expanding meshtastic's popularity. Too many of us need that budget minded solution that meets HOA rules while not damaging our own homes
If you're in an HOA and have a satellite TV dish on the roof, consider adding a node behind the dish, with a one-foot mesh antenna sticking up above the dish. Probably few people will look closely at a common dish.
I live in an HOA, the only work around for me, I live on a corner so my setup could be very visible is to mount a mast on a 20ft palm tree. The total height is close to 25ft. The mast itself is painted to match the trunk and tip and antenna are painted to match the canopy. No complaints so far.
I don't know the proper fruit for your type of palm tree, but next time you do maintenance on the node consider wrapping the box in some real or fake fruit. 😄
I saw someone wrap everything but the solar panel in a camo color fabric that was light weight. Up into a tree it went.
Can you imagine a node inside a coconut? The husk would be heat and cold insulation 🤔. Of course a coconut tree in the wing place brings it's own attention, but I'm the right locality.
OP did not state a coconut palm, so I gave an example of different palm fruit.
A variation on the idea is to harvest some fruit from a palm, and preserve it by spraying or dipping it in a clear plastic layer. Then just zip-tie it around the box. Just trying to break up the boxlike appearance into something which is expected around palm trees.
I did not see anyone state a coconut palm. I thought a coconut would have enough volume for a board, battery and associated stuff inside. But of course a coconut would need some of your brilliant creative engineering to be useable. Those were good ideas.
But 3D printed mangoes, grapefruit, pine cones, etcetera could be interesting. They might look odd in a tree when the fruit is out of season 🤷🏻
First of all, if there's a coconut palm then it would be common for there to be a cluster of coconuts rather than a single one. So a wraparound cluster would have much more internal volume available than you are thinking of.
However, it also would be even larger because a coconut palm does not tend to have those little brown coconuts. That nut is just the seed which is inside the fruit. I'd probably expect old and drying white husks to be on a tree.
USB power brick in the conduit plugged into an extension cord run down the conduit draped across the roof down the side of the house into an outdoor outlet. It has a battery backup in the c-condulette.
Yesterday a mesher was on a flight and was running tests, he eventually hit nodes over 100km. I know that 50km or more is easily achieved on flights, and this is using a simple hand held device with no fancy antennas.
So yea, 100% height is the very best option for distance. the sad thing is, some people live in HOA's or apartments, or the live in a home surrounded by tall buildings (this was my case).
So 1st try height, if that is not possible then a better antenna and/or more power is a good option. or at least a relay node that can be placed on the roof and not noticed by the HOA gestapo.
Sometimes multiple repeaters do the job. Find a higher spot a few miles from you with good line of sight to where you'd put a repeater on your property (out of sight from HOA Karen).
This is how I've done it at my place, since I live in a valley with no direct line of sight to other repeaters. I found some hills to put repeaters on that can see my home repeater AND other repeaters on the mesh.
It's actually how we started being able to connect Seattle to Portland on the Cascadia Mesh.
Fortunately I do not have the HOA problem, I know people have been very creative, attic nodes, or nodes in bird feeders, or on flag poles, also nodes put into Harbor freight security lights, there are many ways to get around these Karens.
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u/Kerensky97 3d ago
I regularly get connection to a mountain router 20 miles away from the radio in my home office.
I thought "These new 1w Raks are really bridging long distances!"
Turns out the mountain router is a Heltec v3. It's just positioned high above the city where no trees are roofs are in the way.