Hi Glen,
I got as much config as I could up front and suffered with making
changes after hoisting the node. It blows my mind that there is no
"help" command in CLI mode. That's so 1960s astronaut in a world with
megabytes of available flash.
I set an admin password and put a copy of the keys in a safe place.
Putting latitude and longitude in place and making this available is
important too unless you aren't comfortable with folks knowing where you
are. I didn't bother to hook up a GPS but configuring this up front is
also on the check list.
I swear I configured my repeater to allow folks to see my telemetry
(DC supply voltage and ESP32 chip temp), but it appears to require admin
login to access, even with a "blank" password. I obviously didn't
understand what I was doing and am left wondering how to fix this with
some other definition of "blank". I think I missed this step doing the
initial configuration and "fixed it" with a CLI session. But you can't
put the set command in with no characters after the resource name: it
flags this as an unknown command (IMO it's silly to call this
"unknown"). I eventually found the settings interface and was able to
change the password without typing anything into the text box but that
didn't change anything.
I set minutes between to "adverts" to 240 minutes (longest interval
allowed) and "flood advert" every 25 hours so the advert time of day
would wander around the clock over time.
I set the radio to 50% transmit duty cycle: the default. This is a
regulatory issue, by the way and 50% is max in the US. The allowed duty
cycle is much less than 50 in Europe, for instance (10% I think). This
is to cap potential interference and give other stations a fair chance
to use the band.
I set power to 22dbm. With the Heltec 32 V4 there is a 17db
attenuater between the radio and power amp but I was too lazy to look at
specs and see the most efficient way to get full power output. That's
on my list. A repeater that is inside your house should not need
anywhere near the max. My "companion-driven mode" is set to 10dbm but I
suspect it could hit the repeater with less than that. Note that
vertical antennas with gain have attenuated signal/receive capability
"underneath". Picture a cone with a varying angle to the "skirt". So my
repeater's skirt encompasses some major fraction of the house. It would
have been better to have it further away because of this.
I temporarily set coding rate to 8. The default 5 gives "5-4 = 1"
correction bit per 4 payload bits, 6 gives 2, 7 gives 3, 8 (max) gives
4s correction bits per 4 payload bits. My bias with this stuff is to
give myself maximum chance of success until the node is actually
handling traffic properly and needs optimization. But this extends "on
the air time" significantly and ties up other node's receivers, so
that's not very neighborly while you're gathering data for optimization.
One of a gaggle of changes I'd like to make to the firmware is per
destination optimization of the coding rate, TX power level, etc. If
anybody is doing their own firmware builds I'd love to hear about any
relevant build tips. IMO there shouldn't even be fixed parameters but
instead for stations fixed in place the system should adjust to every
node it has "conversations" with over time. Notice that our WiFi
networks don't blast at full power all the time.
I selected one byte hash mode without having a clue what this means
for the chances of joy or sorrow. The choices are one, two or three
bytes and this also affects "time on the air".
On 8/25/26 13:25, Glen Smith via TriEmbed wrote:
Pete,
Any thing specific that needs to be done with configuration re
repeater vs a companion node? I think I'm going to do the same -
deploy a repeater and see how things go. According to the map I have
other repeaters closer to me than you do. Some careful branch
selection may allow me to put the trunk shadow Mike mentions in an
optimal position.
On Tue, Aug 25, 2026 at 9:55 AM Pete Soper via TriEmbed
<[email protected]> wrote:
I put a Heltec 32 V4 configured as a repeater near the top of a tree
roughly 60-70ft above ground yesterday and initially the results were
very discouraging: I could no longer hit the Carolina Backhaul in
Chapel
Hill I'd been clinging to earlier; by setting coding rate to 8 aka
"max
error correction bits" I could ping it and get an ack one time out of
three. But I left everything running over night and this morning the
contacts in the companion driven node connected to my repeater had
maxed
out. One of them jumped right off the screen of my phone: DH Hill
library at NC State 14 miles away. I tried pinging it and had
immediate
and repeatable success! So I have at least one reliable path out
of my
"tree farm near Apex" with this setup and hopefully there will be
others
in the companion node's contact list and data structures inside the
repeater. I'm fully expecting this link to break down on rainy days
until I can get a node above most of my trees. Still, this success
will
keep me going. And this setup is a hack, running with a 10AH battery.
I'll keep it up as much as I can after protecting the guts from
rain and
as time allows swap in solar power and hopefully get it near the
top of
a very tall Tulip Poplar here. The immediate priorities are to turn
attention back to gathering info and publishing it on the TriEmbed
web
site and proposing some fun-oriented tutorial meetings.
Pete
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