Author: carl

It will be recalled (see blog article) that I had deployed a temporary Meshcore repeater in Sonoma County, successfully linking to a robust Meshcore network extending across much of northern California.  Today is the day that I retrieved my temporary repeater from its hilltop, and I migrated from Sonoma County to San Francisco.

Two days from now I will be on the dais, co-presenting a training class on the Patent Cooperation Treaty with a very nice person from the World Intellectual Property Organization.  This will be at the spring meeting of the American Intellectual Property Law Association in San Francisco.  Upon my arrival at the event hotel (the Fairmont on Mason Street) I fired up a Meshtastic node and a Meshcore node.  What devices did I see?  (more…)

(Update:  I did retrieve the temporary hilltop repeater.  My next stop was in San Francisco and you can read about it here.)

I am a ways north of Santa Rosa, California at a temporary location in a house near Healdsburg.  At the house, none of my devices was able to detect any local Meshtastic or Meshcore (web page, Wikipedia page) device.  Driving around in nearby towns, I was unable to detect any local Meshtastic or Meshcore device.  (more…)

I just now learned of the existence of yet another small handheld LoRa mesh device that is intended to be nearly ready to use out of the box.  This one is called the WisMesh tag (shopping cart), seen at right.  It is made by a Chinese company called RAK Wireless.  How does this device compare with other small handheld LoRa mesh devices that are intended to be nearly ready to use out of the box?  I have not yet held a WisMesh tag in hand.  Here are a few observations based on the public specs for the WisMesh tag.

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The only way that a mesh network grows and gets better is if homeowners volunteer to provide locations for solar nodes.  Where are some ideal locations for a next solar node in and near Silverthorne?  (more…)

LoRa mesh (for example Meshtastic and Meshcore) is ideal for tracking a pet.  At right you can see a credit-card-sized tag that could be clipped to the collar of a pet.  It contains a GNSS (GPS) receiver and a LoRa transmitter.  Using LoRa mesh, it will constantly update the pet’s owner as to the exact location of the pet.  (more…)

With the addition of just two or three nodes in helpful locations, it will be within reach to provide very good LoRa mesh coverage in Summit County, Colorado.  You might wonder “What is LoRa mesh and why do I care?”, and you might next wonder “How can I help?”  This article explores these questions.  (more…)

(Updated to include the WisMesh tag, blog article.)

When a person is using a LoRa Mesh network, very often the person is using a small handheld LoRa device.  This article talks about the pros and cons of several popular LoRa devices.

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Recently I added an environmental sensor to a rooftop solar LoRa mesh node.  (There are two popular communities for LoRa mesh, namely Meshtastic and Meshcore.)  This provides telemetry of temperature, humidity, and barometric pressure.  In this article I describe what was required to accomplish this.  (more…)

Here’s the inaugural post for a new blog about efforts to develop a LoRa mesh network in Summit County, Colorado.

What is LoRa mesh, you might ask? What is a problem for which a LoRa mesh network might be a solution?  (more…)