Author: carl

Readers of this blog already know of the door prizes that have been announced for the upcoming meeting in Summit County, Colorado for ham radio operators and friends of ham radio operators and people interested in ham radio.  The previously announced door prizes are:

• a LoRa mesh starter kit
• A study book for the Technician ham radio exam

In addition to those first and second door prizes, I am delighted to report that third and fourth door prizes have now been added for this upcoming meeting.

• A Wio Tracker L1 Pro.  This device, seen above, has orange buttons.  You can read about this device on the manufacturer’s web page.  It provides complete LoRa mesh circuitry and can be flashed for Meshtastic or Meshcore.  It can be a companion device or it can be a repeater.  It has a 2000 mAh battery and has an integrated GNSS (GPS) receiver.  It is our third door prize, and it is yet another reason to attend the upcoming meeting at the library in Silverthorne.

• 

  A SenseCAP Card Tracker T1000-E.  This device, seen at right, has one button.  It is about the size of a credit card, and could be clipped to a harness on a pet.  You could use it to try to find the pet (see blog article) if the pet were to get lost.  And this device is our fourth door prize for the upcoming meeting.

What, you might wonder, can you do with this LoRa mesh starter kit that is one of the door prizes for the upcoming inaugural ham radio meeting?  I’m glad you asked. (more…)

(Update:  third and fourth door prizes have been added for this upcoming meeting.)

Readers, I am delighted to be able to report that the July 1, 2026 ham radio get-together is going forward as planned.

This inaugural meeting (see Save the date!) will start at 6PM on Wednesday, July 1 at the North Branch of the Summit County Library.  This is at 651 Center Circle, Silverthorne, CO 80498.  (more…)

Every Meshcore device is uniquely identified to all other Meshcore devices by its “public key”.  The public key is a string of 64 hexadecimal characters (meaning 256 bits).  In your Meshcore “contacts” list the first few and last few characters of the public key are shown, for example with the repeater above.

If any two Meshcore devices happen to have the same first two characters in their public keys, this counts as a “collision”.  This article talks about how you can avoid such a “collision”.  (more…)

The usual path for the Harbor Breeze repeater hack is to use the charge manager that comes with the HB light.  In this article I construct an HB repeater that uses the more sophisticated charge manager that is provided in the RAK 19003 and 19007 baseboards.  This offers an opportunity to charge the battery at around 200 mA instead of the 50-80 mA that the HB charge controller would provide.  (more…)

Loyal readers know (blog article) that recently I obtained a device that can carry out capacity testing on as many as four lithium batteries at a time.  How exactly does the device measure the capacity of the battery?  How does the device dissipate the heat during this testing?  This blog article discusses and answers this question.  (more…)

(Update:  I am delighted to report that third and fourth door prizes have been added for this meeting.)

(Update:  I am delighted to report that the upcoming meeting will proceed as planned, see blog article.)

I am working to try to set up an inaugural meeting of Summit County radio amateurs and friends of radio amateurs.

If all goes well, This inaugural meeting will be Wednesday, July 1, 2026 from 6PM to 8PM at the North Branch of the Summit County Library.  This is at 651 Center Circle, Silverthorne, CO 80498.  Please do not just show up for this meeting!  Please check back to make sure the meeting will be going forward.  Please drop me a note at carl at oppedahl dot com to let me know you plan to attend.

But please save the date.  And please post a comment below with your suggestions for the agenda.

Proposed agenda with other topics welcome:

• Put in your name for a door prize.  A Meshcore starter kit!  A study book for the Technician ham radio exam!  Take a door prize ticket for either or both of the door prizes.
• Introductions around the room.  Probably we will find that some attendees are more experienced in particular areas and might be willing to “elmer” some less experienced attendee who wants to learn about some particular area.
  • Brief break time during which some attendees “pair up” for elmering in future days.
• Live demonstrations of elmering:
  • Experienced hams helping a less experienced ham use a 2-meter repeater for the very first time.  I imagine we will use the WB0QMR repeater (146.7000 – and 107.2).  Demonstration of repeater etiquette.  (Less experienced ham might be yours truly.)
  • Experienced hams helping a less experienced ham set up a DMR hot spot and configure a DMR 2-meter handheld to use the hot spot.  (Less experienced ham might be yours truly.)
• Introduction to Meshcore, including repeaters and companion devices.  Presentations by volunteers who have set up Meshcore repeaters in Summit County.  Review of map of installed repeaters in Summit County.  Hands-on looking at actual repeater and companion-device hardware.  Demonstration of actual messaging.  Demonstration of remote management of a repeater.  Optional — discussion of possible next sites for repeaters.
• Drawings for door prizes.  Somebody will win the study book for the Technician ham radio exam.  Somebody will win the Meshcore starter kit.
• Possible next activities —  a VE exam session?  Pick an approximate date for a next meeting?

I was in Leadville yesterday.  I was not able to pick up any Meshcore devices there.

Do you know of Meshcore activity in Leadville?  Please post a comment below.

Today a new Meshcore repeater got installed near Cottonwood Creek, just south of TYL Ranch.  Thanks to this repeater, for the first time there is full coverage everywhere in Summit Sky Ranch, Maryland Creek Ranch, and Sage Creek Canyon.  Other areas of enhancements to existing coverage are in Three Peaks and Ravens Nest.

The repeater is called CO-SUM-COTT-RE.   (Update:  it is now called CO-SUM-COTT3-RE.)

See if you can pick it up on your Meshcore companion device.  The guest telemetry password is “hello”.  Oh and see if you can spot it in the photograph.

How good are Harbor Breeze batteries?  (more…)