Howdy, I am still planning on putting together a workshop to build some radios and talk about meshcore. I ordered 25 Heltec V3’s, cases, antennas and batteries for the workshop. My summer kind of ran away from me so will look at putting something together in the coming weeks if there is still some interest 
I’m flying back from Regina tomorrow but I land around 6:10pm, just need to go home and get my car and head over to VHS once i get in. Should be there around 8 at the latest.
I’ll drop by at 7:30ish!
wootwoot.
am setup in the front room.
Heltec v3 + CO2 monitor attempt underway.
1 Like
cool to meet everyone in person, I’ll be back at VHS next Tuesday, 7PM onwards.
Notes from tonight:
- Meshtastic ruined by mqtt spamming the network
- RAK (Nordic MCU) way better for power consumption than Heltec gear (ESP MCU), so use it for repeaters
- 3Ah batteries seem normal for repeaters
- There’s some new boards with solar charge controllers? The Heltec v4?
- Damn does meshcore ever take a long time to compile the first time (platform IO from git repo on a surface 7)
- Room servers have persistent text, but the ‘Public’ etc channels may have one-side-heard only conversations, text is easily lost, no storage
- Todo: get a room server setup with the AQI sensor attached, writes the human readable data to the room for all to see every hour, anyone can login and see the weather there, also the status of the garage door for ex
It was great meeting you all! Thank you Arthur for the notes, and the beer!
Hope to see you all again for the workshop to get some gear going…
Thanks all for the knowledge, looking forward to the full workshop and possibly building a repeater after that!
I was reminded about this from Benn Jordan’s recent video. How is the VHS repeater doing? It looks like it is doing alright according to this meshcore site.
I would be interested in another MeshCore hack night so I can see what people are doing with it. I’m interested in maybe putting a solar repeater on the Arbutus Ridge greenway and another at my home in Kerrisdale.
6 Likes
I watched the same video and now I want to set up a repeater at my house near 41st and Victoria. 
1 Like
I’m interest in a meshcore hack night. I have some heltec v3 devices, a T114 and also an Ikoka Stick I have setup as companions and repeaters.
1 Like
after seeing Portugals power outage and now Irans internet blackout in the last 12 months I 100% want to get meshcore connected.
3 Likes
Anyone using this device with MeshCore:
Going to states soon might pick one up
1 Like
I’ve been looking into this a lot lately after seeing the Benn Jordan video. I liked the sound of meshcore but it looked like most people around here are on meshtastic (https://vancouvermesh.ca). Would love to join in if you’re open to ordering multiple!
Posting here from the web interface as my several email replies this week to the forum are getting dropped silently somewhere.
Have heard good things about the T1000-E, one of the discussions I was following indicated it had some improvements over the Rak Wismesh Tag. The Rak is pretty much my daily driver now, given water/weather resistance and takes up minimal space.
I was carrying the LilyGo T-Deck (looks like old Blackberry with keyboard and trackball) as my daily driver, but the official (Ripple) firmware ui/ux kinds sucks, don’t recommend it for anyone new to MeshCore at this point, though there are a couple of other entrants for firmware, the invite only MeshOS test (beta I think) and the new entrant Aurora (very early Alpha)
The M5 stack folks also have tool to allow you to dual boot so you could run both MeshCore and Meshtastic on the same device. Know it works with some devices. I am hoping to use it to dual boot the T-Deck with Ripple and Aurora, or later MeshOS when it becomes publicly available.
I’d love to have another VHS Mesh event, the last one I attended was great and would be lovely to share knowledge!
As to MeshCore locally, there are multiple groups pursuing it across the lower mainland. There’s a busy WhatsApp group, some discussion on the PugetMesh Discord and the SalishMesh group
Also of note, the Nanaimo Ham Radio club puts up a lot of repeaters on the Island and they often build dual radio units running both Meshtastic and MeshCore. I might consider that for my future repeaters, but at this point my 2 repeaters at both running MechCore only.
One tip repeater wise if you get the Rak WisMesh Repeater Mini kit, expect to need to upgrade the solar charge controller and add a larger solar panel. The Salish Mesh folks have noticed there just isn’t enough light to keep them charged now that we are in the winter season otherwise. Adding 6W panels with Adafruit 1061 charge controller fixes that. Other good option doing well in the PNW is the SeeedStudio SenseCAP P1
With bigger batteries, larger solar panel better charge controller, batteries running out seems to not a thing even in the backcountry. The SenseCAP pricing is comparable to the Rak Mini, around CD$150 landed.
6 Likes
Hello, i just signed up, have been interested in mesh for a few months (since I discovered it via youtube) and have a radio in my amazon cart - and found this place with another google search for vancouver meshies. I’ve been considering getting a repeater and putting it up here in surrey central, and now that i’ve found this place i’m looking more forward to the next mesh get together. Very cool to see all the activity on the subject and look forward to meeting you.
Marty
1 Like
I’ve got a small fleet of T1000-E that I picked up early last year. They’re a nice bit of hardware, but I’ve been a little disappointed with the meahtastic software/network. Most of the traffic is just pings and pongs and junk from afar that gets dumped from an MQTT node somewhere nearby. I guess I could just ignore the long fast open channel. But even then I’ve had little luck with my own messages making it through the mesh reliably.
1 Like
Thats cool, I havent yet bought any radios, but i can see myself getting a set of these myself for camping, hiking and concert going. Where did you get your set?
I got them directly from seeed.io last year, $40 USD each
1 Like
Is there a Meshcore firmware for those? Seems like Meshcore might actually be a lot better.
I got a chance to try out my T-Deck Plus at VHS the other day! Worked a charm with the new MeshOS! Though I’m quietly contemplating making a custom firmware!
2 Likes