Off-grid networking

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myhairisonfire said:
I'm taking the Meshtastic pill, but want to set this up in what appears to be a very non-standard way. I want to access the webclient of a Meshtastic node via browser over ethernet. I have a PoE switch in the garage for security cameras and a mast for an SDR. Ideally I'd put a Meshtastic node on top of the mast and power it via PoE. It would get great signal and I could do all the communication from the comfort of my desktop computer.

However, almost every Meshtastic appliance out there wants you to use your phone or connect to the device with bluetooth or it's own broadcast wifi. The only product I could find is this MQTT gateway. I dont really intend to use this for MQTT, just as a standard node or relay, but this has a PoE powered radio in a waterproof box. What I can't figure out is if this will acutally get a DHCP lease from my router and be accessible over ethernet. Does anybody have experience with this particular product or have suggestions to acomplish my preferred configuration?
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you can definitely configure the nodes from a pc with ip access to the node, as that was how i used mine with one up in my attic.

but i would think you would be better off just running a usb cable up your mast and just having the device join your wifi for network access.
you could probably get a poe to usb adapter that would convert the poe power into something the device can use, but you would need to get networking from something like wireless anyway.


but before you do any of that i would just put up a node in your attic or somewhere moderately elevated and see if you have any activity in your area, i live in a fairly populated area and there is no meshtastic activity near me.
 
I bought a few devices and can't find a single goddamn neighbor. Driving around some local hills gives mixed results, maybe one or two connections. Occasionally some retard in a plane will fly over and connect me to nodes 2 states away.

Meshtastic: Fun at first, but not useful in any capacity.
 
myhairisonfire said:
I bought a few devices and can't find a single goddamn neighbor. Driving around some local hills gives mixed results, maybe one or two connections. Occasionally some retard in a plane will fly over and connect me to nodes 2 states away.

Meshtastic: Fun at first, but not useful in any capacity.
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I wonder if a weather balloon tethered above your house could work as a relay?
 
myhairisonfire said:
Garage is too far away from the house to get wifi
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Assuming that the garage is wired to the same network as your house, what's stopping you from adding a cheap access point there to get an extra wireless connectivity point?
 
Skink Vendor said:
I wonder if a weather balloon tethered above your house could work as a relay?
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Yeah okay, Cpt. Zotov.

Slav Power said:
Assuming that the garage is wired to the same network as your house, what's stopping you from adding a cheap access point there to get an extra wireless connectivity point?
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I eventually bought a node to live in the house on CLIENT_MUTE. It connects to my phone and talks LoRa to the garage node. If I ever get any reliable meshing, I might hook it up to a Pi or Nuc or something to run MeshSense.

I built a few solar nodes to hide on local hilltops, we'll see if that gets me any connections. I just can't playing with these roof fedoras.
 
myhairisonfire said:
I built a few solar nodes to hide on local hilltops, we'll see if that gets me any connections. I just can't playing with these roof fedoras.
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This is unfortunately your best bet. While a weather balloon would actually work (according to the Meshtastic website someone managed to achieve one of the longest transmissions using this method) it's a temporary "solution". Meshtastic suffers from a lack of adoption despite being relatively popular in the off grid communications sphere. It's just that without a local community that has it adopted it's almost entirely useless, hence why people opt to run it over the internet (which kills the whole point in my opinion). Even relatively speaking if no one within 200 miles of you has a node set up (and this is being very optimistic as it's the longest successful land transmission on the site) you'll either have to deploy nodes or switch to a longer range set up that isn't reliant on you flying an antenna around on a balloon.
 
What's a surefire way to hide nodes? I'd like to place some on hilltops in some nearby local/state parks and such, but don't want them to be found. Bonus points for being resistant to extreme temperatures.
 
needforsneed said:
What's a surefire way to hide nodes? I'd like to place some on hilltops in some nearby local/state parks and such, but don't want them to be found. Bonus points for being resistant to extreme temperatures.
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make it look like a utility box and probably no one will mess with it. hiding in plain sight
 
needforsneed said:
What's a surefire way to hide nodes? I'd like to place some on hilltops in some nearby local/state parks and such, but don't want them to be found. Bonus points for being resistant to extreme temperatures.
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Another idea is something like a birdhouse. Add a tag to it that says property of USGS or a local university. People that see it will think it would be for bird migration tracking. Only issue is rangers may see it and know better, so I would place it off the trail.
birdhouse.webp
You could also do a node where it is just thrown into a tree. Most people don't look up, and if you use a brown/tan enclosure it should blend in pretty well.
 
N

Thread 'bitchat'

Join #sneed to meet your fellow kiwis. For channels like Sneed it doesn't use Bluetooth connectivity but routes messages through nodes around the world and uses Tor.

1763258639668.png
https://bitchat.free/

TLDR: a totally decentralized bluetooth-centric chat app that can operate independent of the internet or anything else.

Developed by Jack Dorsey of Xitter fame (it has no central authority so he just invented it but can't really control it whatsoever)

bitchat is a decentralized peer-to-peer messaging application that operates...
Reactions:Informative x 23 Like x 4 Semper Fidelis x 1 Thunk-Provoking x 1
 
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