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(Update:  I did retrieve the temporary hilltop repeater.  My next stop was in San Francisco and you can read about it here.  The repeater has now been installed at a location in Summit County, Colorado as you can read about 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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(Update:  a new repeater has been installed in the Ptarmigan neighborhood area.)

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…)

(Update:  a new node has been installed in the Ptarmigan neighborhood area.)

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…)