Off The Grid

….and the power is out this morning but not for me.

This may be a little technical for many, but here goes.... when a packet travels meshcore network it can use direct routing where individual repeaters are included in the packet OR "flood" where any repeater that hears your packet will relay it.

Additionally we can add a "scope" to the packet. So I can specify that a packet only bounce around within a region such as "us-sc" or "us-sc-flo". So if my peers in North Carolina don't want my "us-sc" scoped packets they can opt out of that region.

So there's a software setting that says if a scope is NOT specified, we can limit the number of hops. For example, a station in Kentucky sends an unscoped packet and it arrives near my town with 15 hops. If I have set my repeater to only relay packets with 10 hops or less, that packet is NOT relayed into my town.

So by specifying a max unscoped hop count and/or specifying a region to relay, I can effecively limit the amount of traffic in my local area. This will allow for regional and multi state directed commnucations but not allow a spammy free for all. The philosophy is the keep the air as free as possible to allow my local guys great communications.

I can tell ya'll this... the meshcore in Sumter / Florence SC is really taking off. The repeater that went up 400ft a few weeks ago died because the solar panel got knocked loose. While I was away, the guys over there climbed again and installed one at 400ft and another at 200ft. We can remotely switch them on and off to see which works best for the area.

There's also one at the intersection of I-95 and I-20 on a hotel about 120ft up.

Sorry folks no recent posts... behind the scenes we're working on hurricane shutters for the house. No rush, just always wanted them.

Got this one up on a local hospital roof today. One of them is mastastic that’s been there a while and the other is mesh core. Good thing I was there. With them mounted parallel to the building I had low signal strength to the local repeaters. We rotated 30deg and signal strength is excellent now. The little things.

I sent a message from just west of Florence SC and it propagated nicely. Oh and the network lit up about the same time. Imagine this network when cell phones are down and the balloon goes up.

pond aeration and water pumping.

End cap at ace hardware in Florence SC this morning.

Fact:
glyphosate, active ingredient in round up, causes cancer.

Fact:
childrens miracle network helps to treat kids with cancer among other illnesses

But glyphosate is a national security issue

Some more arts and crafts.

Floor Framing

When you setup a repeater you need to log into the remote access and the remote command console and enter the command "powersaver on".

The way these repeaters work is there is a logic processor (either ESP32 or nRF52840) and a LORA radio chip. The radio chip is always on waiting to decode the channel it's listening to.

The processor goes to sleep between packets. Afterall , there's nothing to do between packets.

So the radio chip will wake up the processor, the processor will decide to relay the packet or not and go back to sleep. This allows these repeaters to last weeks on a battery.

One immigrant like this is worth more than 100 million of the other kind.

@AltSkull48

A t r v e quad rail supremacist

Wheat exploded in price yesterday (limit up) after USDA forecast that over 8 million acres of HRW (Hard Red Wheat) will be abandoned in the Great Plains

That's 37% of planted acreage reported in the March Prospective Planting report, and means U.S. farmers this year will harvest their smallest wheat crop since 1972.

This comes on top of already record-low planted acreage heading into the season (lowest since 1919 in some metrics). Global supplies are tightening too.

Expect bread, pasta, baked goods, and processed foods to climb in the coming months — and pressure on livestock feed could push meat/dairy prices higher as well. This is another brick in the wall of rising food costs.

Grow your own food — that is the answer. Stock seeds, expand the garden, learn to preserve, and connect with local growers.

- @iceagefarmer

(source)

Cheap mesh repeaters... if you have a solar patio light that already charges a 18650 battery, then you can use the seeed studio xiao module for $23. https://a.co/d/04WBxe5e

Otherwise if you want to build something that needs a solar charge controller, get the RAK 4631 starter kit. https://a.co/d/03hLSa40 .

I tested several 900mhz "fold over" antennas yesterday and they had an SWR of 1.5:1 when straight and 1.2:1 when bend at 45 and 90 degrees.

I'm just a sucker for a "real" antenna. You can find fiberglass 5.8db 900mhz antennas for around $32-$35. They will be around 18inches long. Be aware you will need a short cable to adapt the IPEX connector on the mesh boards to an N connector.

A Goat Milking Stand – Mother Earth News
https://www.motherearthnews.com/homesteading-and-livestock/goat-milking-stand-zmaz80jfzraw/