Greetings Pete, Looks like you've made great progress! Some notes/things that jumped out while reading your thorough and informative email:
1. Transmit power from the repeater is important for your repeater to be able to reach other repeaters and others' companion nodes, not just your own companions; unless you're in an area flush with other repeaters, and/or want your repeater to be "household only" (AKA not interacting or contributing to the existing mesh beyond your location), you'll want to run power at the maximum possible. 2. The byte hash size should be set to 2 or 3. I think what happens is, a hash is calculated using N bytes from the key, which is then used as a unique identifier for the repeater/node. A single byte hash results in collisions when trying to uniquely identify contacts/nodes. The caveat is that older firmwares can only do single byte hashes, so it's somewhat of a backward compatibility thing. I don't think any nodes in the rdumesh are running such old firmware. 3. I can't offer advice on the telemetry bits; I've also tried making it publicly available without much success. 4. Two excellent resources, if you're not already aware, are the rdumesh.org website, and a couple of discord servers, "RDUMesh" at https://discord.gg/GBUyuk2H6, and "NC Mesh" at https://discord.gg/jsxevk7zp . There are other discords for meshcore, LoRa, etc, but these are regionally apropos for us and pretty active. 5. Do note that another set of recommended repeater configurations for our area are region settings. They're meant to curb wayward traffic over time. Details here: https://rdumesh.org/meshcore-region-scoping-setup-guide/ Happy Meshing! Josh On Tue, Aug 25, 2026 at 2:55 PM Pete Soper via TriEmbed < [email protected]> wrote: > 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 >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 > <[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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