Thanks all. This has been very interesting. I ordered a Heltec V4 from Amazon. Somehow it arrived about 18 hours later. I hooked it up, flashed the standard meshcore.io firmware and was immediately able to ping Tarheel Backhaul and get traffic from Georgia, Ohio, Tennessee, etc. with it lying on my desk. I hung it up in the window and couldn't ping anything. Then i realized that the antenna was pointing horizontally so i made it vertical and got ping back! It's plugged in, and if I leave the house and come back (or just kill the app and restart/reconnect) i get all the contacts and messages from when i was gone. Very easy to get started with if you have a repeater in range! Anyway, i made a #triembed channel if anyone wants to say hi on that.
Only bad thing is i might have to order another radio because i wanted to try Meshtastic and now i don't want to turn this one off. :) On Wed, Aug 12, 2026 at 4:38 PM Pete Soper via TriEmbed < [email protected]> wrote: > Whoa, great bootstrap! Thanks again, Josh. Your performance notes are very > encouraging. > Pete > > Aug 12, 2026 4:11:53 PM Josh Wyatt <[email protected]>: > > Great, fun topic! > > I've been experimenting with meshtastic and meshcore for the better part > of six months, including putting up my own meshcore repeater (and > subsequently having to rework it due to bad sealant allowing water ingress, > but v3.0 is going up soon). > > For reference, my location is about halfway between Apex and Garner, just > north of Fuquay and Holly Springs in Wake County. Just north of the > southern edge of 540. > > Meshtastic is great for ad-hoc, smallish dedicated group comms. Think > hiking group, camping group, etc. It has a very easy learning curve. When I > first flashed meshtastic, I immediately saw and was able to communicate > with a human who had two nodes not very far (.5 miles or so) from me. > > meshcore is far better for established and scalable comms. When I first > flashed meshcore, I was able to receive messages from as far away as > Tennessee, Virginia, and Georgia, by virtue of an established network of > stationary repeaters. I was receiving line-of-sight signal from as far away > as North Hills mall (12 miles from me, there's a repeater on The Eastern > building) and Chapel Hill ("Tarheel backhaul" repeater, > https://rdumesh.org/tarheel-backhaul-how-chapel-hill-joined-the-mesh/) as > they are high enough to have direct line of sight to my location, and are > running at legal limit (1 watt). They couldn't hear me at first because my > nodes (heltec v3, heltec t114) were running much less power, my antennas > are crap, and probably most importantly, not high enough. > > Meshcore feels a little better engineered. Meshtastic feels more like a > toy, or proof of concept. > > My guidance for success is: > 1. Run meshcore on a repeater up high and some companion nodes inside your > house (within bluetooth range of your phone). > 2. Deploy your repeater with 1 watt output and > 3. Get the repeater as high as possible. With the low power firmware, > solar repeaters are trivially possible. Mine has a spot 80 feet up in a > tree on the back edge of my property. > > If you're going to flash meshcore, especially on the ESP32 based devices, > be sure to use the power-saving fork of the firmware. > https://github.com/IoTThinks/EasySkyMesh/ > The developer is VERY active and responsive, and works with the original > maintainers to roll changes upstream early and often. > > Thanks, > Josh > > On Wed, Aug 12, 2026 at 2:57 PM Pete Soper via TriEmbed < > [email protected]> wrote: > >> Congrats, Glenn! Your raising this subject on Monday created a hell of a >> spark of interest. >> >> Pete >> >> On 8/12/26 13:45, Glen Smith via TriEmbed wrote: >> > As with all things, the documentation may not be up to date. >> > >> > I have the meshtastic app on my phone and prior to flashing my boards, >> > did discover a node. I don't remember now where I was at the time >> though. >> > >> > I have now flashed my 2 nodes and can report that I have sent messages >> > between them. >> > >> > Keep in mind that we can use this withing our own homes to report >> > telemetry - like Paul's freezer temp even if there is no other >> > infrastructure existent. If we find it useful, adding a routing / >> > repeater node would benefit the community and improve functionality >> > for everyone. >> > >> > A app called Flaresat seems to allow you to bridge to the internet via >> > a single phone that still has mobile connection. I have not >> > experimented with this yet. >> > >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Triangle, NC Embedded Interest Group mailing list >> >> To post message: [email protected] >> List info: >> http://mail.triembed.org/mailman/listinfo/triembed_triembed.org >> TriEmbed web site: https://TriEmbed.org >> To unsubscribe, click link and send a blank message: mailto: >> [email protected]?subject=unsubscribe >> Searchable email archive available at >> https://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ >> >> _______________________________________________ > Triangle, NC Embedded Interest Group mailing list > > To post message: [email protected] > List info: http://mail.triembed.org/mailman/listinfo/triembed_triembed.org > TriEmbed web site: https://TriEmbed.org > To unsubscribe, click link and send a blank message: mailto: > [email protected]?subject=unsubscribe > Searchable email archive available at > https://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ > >
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