What is the key for the triembed channel? I tried to enter it as a public
channel and it says the channel uses a static secret key.

I seem to be getting a lot of incoming messages, and new contacts
discovered, but nothing is getting out. I've got the antennae properly
oriented, and in a second floor window. I may containerize it and get it up
on the roof or a tree this week.


On Sun, Aug 16, 2026 at 3:29 PM jonathan hunsberger via TriEmbed <
[email protected]> wrote:

> 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.
>>> >
>>>
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