Hey, before we get started, be sure to head over to ham Radio
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Okay, Hey, good evening to all. Thank you for joining us tonight.
I was wondering how long we were going to be able to go before
my power went out again. So some of you might have watched some videos
I put up a couple of months ago, and I am working on a
completely off grade Hamshack setup and I have all the stuff, but I need
to call an electrician to have them put the trance for switch in because I'm
not doing that myself, and you're supposed to get permits to do all that
too, so I ain't done that yet. If I would have known we
were gonna have such a rainy season in Texas this this last couple of months,
and I might have done it a little bit quicker, But uh,
Nevertheless, I took one of my power stations this week and plugged in my
fiber, the fiber box on the side of the house that runs where the
internet comes into my house. I plugged that in. I plugged in my
router and a couple other things, my Google Home devices and whatnot. Plugged
all that in and uh and all that's running on battery back up, so
even if the power blips, my Internet stays up. So priorities. You
got to have the priorities, son, That's just the way it works.
So uh so special shout out to all the folks in Green Text and the
chat tonight. I appreciate the YouTube channel support from all you guys. And
uh, I see a lot of you in there right now. I think
the first one I saw a five ZO three Nick was in there earlier,
ed AC three, I K I saw you in there earlier. Arthur was
in there, KK four p Al, I saw hikin and Hammond him radio
and Crusader Wayne ham till it hurts. Jody is in the chat. Thanks
for joining tonight. Somebody joined from Guam. Yeah, EO d Kaboom joined
from Guam. Appreciate you being here tonight and we're gonna talk about mestastic stuff
tonight, so that's the thing that we're gonna I've got some thoughts about it.
After Himvention. Himvention was my first time to actually have it in an
environment where other people were using it. I have some thoughts about that and
curious to see what you guys would have. So just about two minutes ago,
I updated my website, got a box of Edfong intenna is in yesterday.
Those are the three main ones that I sell that are the most popular.
Those are all back in stock for the moment until they sell out again.
Then I have to replenish. They sell really fast. So those of
you who are asking me about Edfong inten I just shared a link in the
chat. You guys can go check that out. But those are in stock
right now, and then I'm I'll have more mystery boxes soon. I don't
have any right now, but hopefully this week. We're not supposed to have
any rain this week, so if we can keep out of the rain for
at least a few days, I can get out in the garage and arrange
some stuff and put some more mystery boxes together. So we'll see how that
works there. But that is where we're at with that, and I appreciate,
appreciate those of you who support the channel in that way. Jan Luis,
thank you for the super chat. I appreciate that being out there.
And then Glenn, Glenn gave a super chat earlier before the stream started,
Thank you for that as well. Appreciate y'all support out there. All right,
let's bring on the crew. Frank t O Robert. What's going on,
guys? Happy happy Sunday? Yeah for sure, Yeah, happy Sunday.
Hey, you know I'm gonna start it here. Okay, why don't
you start it for h Yeah? Yeah, what's going on y'all? Yea,
I'm a little bit. It's nothing to do with you all on the
YouTube land. If you're driving in a thunderstorm, and I do it a
lot, and I used to do it for races and the weather, skyworn
and everything, and I love to I love it. I loved it.
But if you're out there in the rainstorm, we are all driving slow,
do not do not put your emergency flashes on. And this is why some
cars, some cars are really stupid. When you do that, you don't
know when you're breaking the people behind you. Do not have brake lights anymore,
because your lights are still doing this, no brake lights. So I'm
coming up behind you, and I'm used to driving the rain, so I'm
going a little faster. I don't know when you're stopping. Second point majority
of the cars out there. When your flashers are doing this, what do
you lose your term signals. I don't know where you're going. I don't
know if I'm going to pass you or not. You know, so do
not do not, do not do that. We're all going slow. We're
all driving what we feel that is comfortable. And that was about thirty miles
an hour in the rain, and that's okay. Yeah, do it together,
let's get there together. Do not put your flashes on. I'm sorry
that. I just I had to. I had to do it. I
had, Frank you. He's been wanting to rant that for the last twenty
minutes. So yes, I have what's frank, remove speed limits. Let
nature take its course. Hell, I agree with that selection. I was
the one going the fastest on the roads, and at one point I was
like I was just moving, but still I I I understand you want to
be careful. If you want to be that careful, get off the freaking
freeway. Ye, stop driving, Just just pull over. Yeah, I'm
sure an overpass or something new. Stay dry. I do not do not
stop under an overpass on a freeway. Do not stop, not even on
the shoker. If you drive a truck. Here's here's where I talk about
Frank again. If you drive a truck, I've driven through all kinds of
hail, never had any damage. Now, knock on wood. I know
a lot of guys who drive trucks have had a lot of hail damage,
but for whatever reason, I've never had any. I've never had any hail.
Your truck would look better with hail damage. You'd be more rugged,
and your truck is not. But please, please do not. If you
feel that you're you're safe, get off the road and and get under some
cover at a gas station. Just don't stop on the freeway. So some
people are not stopping, and even if you stop under them in the past,
we don't know you're there. Sometimes if it's that rainy, true,
and you're rightly get rear ended, even on the shoulder. So don't do
it. Don't do it. Don't do it. All right, all right,
moving on, because because this is not a. This is not a
live stream about although I had I had radio for a moment. For a
moment, I thought about changing my live stream. I really want to do
a read Timber. One of these days. I'm gonna get in the truck,
put the camera in the window, hit hit go live, and then
drive around and listen to all the races and areas traffic in the in the
area. So I know, yeah, I'm gonna do it so that that
streams everything. And well, yeah, I'll just do it on my phone.
We'll see. I don't know that something's better than nothing. I think,
uh, one thing real quick. I know. I saw Bill in
the chat Ham Radio tectonics who is discordedly challenged, So which is cool.
We love you Bill, Uh. Bill, if you want to join us
tonight, you're more than welcome to same zoom link as always. I know
you have some meshtastic experience and uh and I sent a message in Discord earlier
and I'm sure you didn't see it. So if you are available to join
Discord to join zoom, Bill, you are welcome to do that, all
right. So t O got a much much bigger travel trailer. He's got
actual like house windows in the side of his travel trailer and a fireplace and
whatnot. So not a green screen thread heavy driving around. Yeah, that's
why I got the big pickup truck. Yeah, that's faux break that that's
just that's just uh, that's just paneling. That looked like britt you know,
right, Yeah, totally totally. But it can barely hold the seven
o five up there you go. Oh boy, Okay, so just kind
of uh could it? Could it have been your rhino liigned hood, Jason,
Well maybe maybe, but only the hood is rhinoligned, so the rest
of it's not. I don't know the rest of it's covered though, and
other stuff. Yes, true, But I tell you what, that's seventy
eight four that I used to drive all the all the play all over the
place. That thing is hail impervious. It's like thick, it's like mosquitoes.
Yeah, so I had I don't even the six beetle that I had.
Yeah, through a hailstorm and zero den yeah right, lost a windshield.
Yeah. Meanwhile, everybody in town's getting their roof replaced, right,
totally totally all right, so meshtastic. So for those of you who don't
know what it is, it's basically In fact, some of the some of
the comments I got on the video that I put up, I'd like to
hear y'alls definition of it. It's an it's a way to build According to
the Meshtastic website, it is an off grid messaging system. But more than
that, it's a way to build a network of devices like what to is
holding up? Frank just held up a network of devices that don't connect with
the Internet. You can connect them to the Internet, but a network of
devices that don't connect with the Internet that mesh to one another when they get
in range. And they're using LAURA, which is long range, what's the
utility. It's a long range utility l O r A is short for long
range and supposedly they go very far. But you still got get some height
on him because it is nine hundred megortz. But but that's basically what it
is. So it's kind of like Arden, but a little bit more robust.
Well, not as much stuff. It won't do as much stuff as
Arden does, but it's not limited to the types of devices that Arden is
limited to. It you can get some pretty inexpensive devices, uh and run
Meshtastic on them and and you don't have to be a HAM It's in the
public is m band on the nine hundred megerts frequency and anybody can do it.
Do not have to be a hand raided operator to do this. So
Chris Bricker says, we are holding ours up to good for you, thank
you, thank you for doing that. So everybody joining the fun. Uh
so, so one, so we ran a many of us had where'd my
phone go? Many of us had devices at HAM vention And did I I
didn't leave my phone inside Gosham? Oh no, there it is. Many
of us had devices at hamvention. And that was the first time I'd been
in and I mean it was well over a hundre nodes that I was showing
on my screen here. Oh yeah, at one point there was that three
hundred yeah yeah. I think the most I saw was like two forty,
but something like that. Yeah. So but I'll tell you, but here's
the thing. Let me switch over here. Yep, So put that over
there, zoom down on that a touch. I'm still showing all these nodes
that I've deleted a few of them, but I'm still shocked. They don't
seem to go away, they don't seem to go away, So what is
up with that? What is up with the like? Like, I want
to know what it sees right now, and the only way to really see
what it sees right now is to scroll up to the top and look at
the time. That's the only way I've found so far, look at the
time stamp and say, oh, that's the time stamp it was seen one
minute ago or you know, thirty minutes ago, with it already raking them
in the order that's this last seen, So the lowest one is always on
top. I think, I think once they go off long, once they
become un of it, unseen, I think they're in just kind of like
a randomphazard order. But it does put like text messages though, it's just
yeah, you didn't delete them. They just stay there forever and there in
order of most recent. The third iconover, isn't that a map? It
is, yes, yep, and the map that even the map says,
you know, this one says fifteen days K four s W fifteen days ago,
this one whatever, the mt fourteen days ago. So yeah, so
they stay on the map too, or at least some of them do.
So it's it's as you should have a message for me from seven days ago.
I did did you see that? Yeah? I did. I saw
it like a few hours after you left. So So and Frank and I
were talking about this for the stream went life. I've been running mine in
my truck. I've been running that t beam in my truck with the external
antenna since I, well, all the way back from Dayton and since I've
been home from Dayton. So it's been running for about two weeks at home,
and I have seen zero people. I've meshed to zero people. I've
not seen any people at all via RF connection since I've been home. I
did see you, Robert, Robert Roberts came up. Robert came over and
picked up antenna that I carried home from him from Dayton, and uh,
and I saw it. And then like an hour after that or something later
that afternoon, I saw a digital rancher blah blah blah, and like,
oh there was and I saw your direct message as well. So yes,
but it took it an hour to populate even. No, no, that's
just no, no, no, that's just when I saw it. That's
just when I saw it. It saw it immediately because when he pulled up
in front of my house, My my my truck was in the driveway and
my my truck caught his first second. Took that long to populate. I
was like, whoa, yeah, no, get this, No, no,
no, no, it doesn't take that long. So yesterday I had
to go to Weatherford. Okay, so that's that's west of Fort Worth for
folks who are not aware. I hit three nodes in Weatherford. Really wow,
M see, because that's what I was going to say. I was
like, I have seen zero activity because I've driven around I don't know,
I've driven around the Mid Cities area quite. I haven't been out to Weatherford.
I don't get much chance to go out there. But I've driven around
Carrollton Lewisville Farmers Brand, not Farmer's Branch really, but Carleton Lewisville Coppel.
Well, I take that back. I got around two nodes and a router.
I got a router too, really okay m hm, okay, okay,
So I'm dropping a link in the chat for you. Have you seen
this link? Let me it's safe ish ish. Yeah. Well that's the
wrong window chrome chrome. I don't want to see that. Okay, let's
let's pull that up real quick. I have not seen this link. What
is this? Yeah, it's the empowered twenty four to seven map, and
it's there's a couple of different maps out here. I forget what the one
that US based is. It starts this one starts in the UK, and
UK is really popular with yeah six stuff. But if you shoot on over
to the US, you'll see like Charlotte, North Carolina, Phoenix, Arizona,
It's like Dallas is pretty hot. It's a heat map and then new
zoom in and it starts telling you nodes some down in Houston area. Okay,
so where is this information coming? Are these nodes that are connected to
the internet or how how does that work? These are that are reporting to
the internet. Okay, So that's the other to the internet, right right?
Okay, so that's the That's the other thing that I that I found
was that I I had my Internet connected to my TA beam in the truck
when we were at hamvention, and it was starting to cause lag on the
network just because it was bringing in all the nodes that were local to us
plus everything on the Internet. So we turned so I turned that off and
I turned off, and a couple other people were doing the same thing.
I think those turned off too. Paul, thank you for the super chat
buddy, appreciate that he says that three hundred nodes. Did any of your
nodes lock up and require reboot? Silar to our use at Defcon? Yeah,
yeah, so the the network was very laggy with not even three hundred,
like two hundred and forty no's yeah uh to share that link in the
chat, Mike's asking for it, n yoh yeah, sure thing. So
so we turned the internet off and whatnot and pretty much all the drive home
for a few days. After I got home, I wanted to see what
was local to me, so I had the internet turned off. But ever
since I even turned the internet back on, I haven't seen stuff pop up
on my note at all. And I don't know if that's because we're in
that super secret chat room that we were using just for him. Vention.
I still have the long fast chat room, the super secret chat room that
yeah, that yeah, that that we shared all over the place, but
you know, no one around me has it. But I don't know,
so I'm a little bit I'm I'm unsure of exactly how it works because it
was the density of the nodes. It doesn't I understand that we're all in
the same chat or not, because these still the nodes still talk to each
other. And I talked to a lot of people on just on the long
fast room, the default room that weren't necessarily part of it. So when
we went to four days in May, I was having a conversation with two
or three guys. They're like, wow, is everybody at our hotel?
I was like, yeah, we're down here at four days in May,
Like, oh cool. I didn't know this would be here, so yeah,
so that was fun. But my point is, I've just I've not
seen anything at home, even after connecting my internet, my node back to
the internet, so I have so have you Okay, Okay. When I
first got it right, I got it like two days before it was time
to leave, So I was I was doing like a boot camp, trying
to figure out what the heck all this stuff was, right. So I
just kind of did like an immersive like four hours just trying to figure it
all out. And I turned on the MQTT stuff yes, and I just
threw a hey, is this working out there? And I had two or
three people coming back to me. One guy was in Ohio just by you
know, just by chance, wasn't in Zenia, wasn't okay than anything like
that. It was just somebody in Ohio. I also got one from Phoenix,
and I think I think the other one was Washington's date. Cool hm
hmm okay, so so real quick, I think I think we might have
said something wrong because it looks like Bill just showed up to correct us.
I know. Yeah, yeah, so uh let's see. So uh K
five t a O says to find those in it in an area, quickly
send a message to all to the all channel and they will show. I
think I did that. I think I did that, but it's possible I
send it to our two birst channel instead, So let me double check on
that. Maybe maybe I didn't send it to the default channel. And hear
me, Yeah, you're in the car, dude, I'm in the car,
all right, cool man with the background. I don't know how to
change it. I'm not gonna bother. Oh it's technologically challenged. I'm not
in San Francis. I'm in the car, okay, all right? Uh
so yeah, so Tracy says, to clear the node list. To excuse
me, to clear the list, go to settings radio configure no dB reset.
Okay, maybe I'll do that because I would like to see what I'm
seeing now and not what I saw two weeks ago, several states away.
I was thinking that I was seeing Carlos there for a while because he kept
showing up at the top of my list. But you know, as the
days went by, the number of days since I've seen that node had had
kept increasing. Also, I'm like, no, this is old information.
So yeah, well and remember Jason, when you guys, when you and
Mike were at Kyles and we all had MQTT on, right, we could
we could all chat. Yes, yeah, that was before that was like
two days. That was like Thursday, Wednesday night, I think, yeah,
I think so, No, Tuesday night. It was Tuesday night?
Was it Tuesday night? No, we didn't get there on Tuesday night.
We got we didn't get there to Wednesday morning. You got the Kyles on
Tuesday night? Yes, okay, you mean for okay, you said Kyle's
and I'm thinking the airbnb, but you mean his house. Okay, yes,
yeah, that's right, that's right. Yeah, Okay, MQTT can't
be the killer when there's a lot of nodes around, that's uh. I
think that's what I've read on and I've heard and I've read and I think
Josh is onto that now too. Uh. When a bunch of nodes are
in an area, and that's already kind of a knob, but then they
they virtually invited everyone in on the internet, and that m QTT can can
be a blocker full of congestion. I can't think of words, but you
know what I mean. No, I get you, I get you.
Yeah. So somebody asked how do you turn on the internet a second ago.
So I am connected to this node right now, this this node right
here, and it is not and it is seeing the node in my truck
right now. Now. This is one thing that Arden will do that Mettastic
will not do. Okay. So if I'm connected here to this node,
this app on my phone is connected to this node right now. Okay,
so that's what it's seeing. And I see all these active hops. I
can click on a hop on Arden and then I could administer that node that
I'm connected to via one or two hops. I can't do that Mestastic.
So this case, five hwb desh V. That's the node in my truck
right now that's running and it's connects. It's seeing it via RF to this
node. But I can't connect the app on my phone to my truck right
now because I'm too far away from it. But what you would do is
you would and this is the Android app, and I'm going I'm gonna talk
about the iPhone app here in a second. This is the Android app.
So what you do is just kind of tap on that on the node that
you're connected to, go to Radio configuration and if you go to network you'll
see Wi Fi enabled right there, and it's by default it should be off.
You turn that on, you connect to whatever, and it doesn't do
a scan, I don't think. So you just have to know what the
ssid, SSID and password is for whatever Wi Fi you want to connect to,
and just enter that and then it will come up and it'll come up
as an IP address on your screen here where you see all the nodes that
you have available to you. And then once you do that, you can
go back in here into radio configure and go to m QTT and you can
turn that on and somehow that connects you to the server with all the other
nodes or something like that. I don't I don't understand. Connecting to Wi
Fi allows your node to connect to Wi Fi. Connecting to m QTT,
I think connects you to the Meshtastic server because it has a server address in
here, and I don't know all the specifics or particulars behind that. That's
just how I understand it. So, but that's but I can't administer my
k C five hwbsh V node, even though I can see it right here,
I can't administer it from the app. But if we were talking about
Orden right now, we could do that. But this is this They haven't
built that into this system yet. I'm told that maybe they're working on that
and that'll be coming soon, but I don't know for sure. I will
say also that we were several of us were at hamventionin and we were comparing
the app. Well, Mike Kadim Murdie, he was in the truck and
we were kind of tinkering with it between Kyle's house and and Xenia and UH
and even at Kyle's house that night. And the iPhone app is much more
robust and has a lot more options than the android app is. So whoever,
the android developer at Mestastic needs to get on the ball because there's not
there's not as many. I mean, you could still do everything. You
could just do a lot more. You do a lot of extra stuff on
the iPhone app. So I got my iPad out early and started charging it,
but I didn't bring it out here. Quack. Question about the m
q TT is that device specific or all of these nodes can join the Wi
Fi network. So the way I understand the way, the way that it
worked at ham Vencha, it's device specific. But if you are so.
Let So when I had my truck turned on, I had I had my
truck node connected to my I have Wi Fi in my truck. I understand
the configuration. I just want to know Whi's nodes or what's radios. I'm
getting to that. Okay, I'm getting to that. Okay, So I
have my truck, I have I have full time WiFi in my truck.
I had my Meshtastic node that runs in my truck on an external intenna connected
to that Wi Fi and my truck and MQTT turned on, so it was
connected to serve and everything. When you brought your node within range of my
truck, you were now on the internet. You were being reported to the
Internet server as well, and once you got out of range, then it
showed as a passed node or however that works, so in a roundabout way,
you your node is connected the Internet when you get within a radio range
of an MQTT connected node. That's why I turned my the MQTT in the
and the Internet off in my truck when we were at hand Mention because it
was pulling in too much information was really bogging down the network. But then
you do you do not have to be a connected to Wi Fi for MQTT
to work. I have never connected any of my nodes to Wi Fi,
and when I turned on one node, I turned on MQTT and it bit
connected to the Internet through the phone. Oh it uses your phones, Okay,
okay, just like if you don't have a GPS device right in the
node, it will get the GPS off your phone. If you turn on
MQTT without Wi Fi or Ethernet, it will connect through your phone. Okay,
I I think I've heard that before. I've never tried that myself.
That's great if you want to keep your phone or tablet or device next to
your node twenty four to seven and let it run Otherwise, if you turn
on Wi Fi and you just if you have a node running at your house
like this one I'm about to show you, or that one running in your
vehicle with Wi Fi on all the time, then you don't have to run
it. I don't have to run an app. I don't run an app
connected to my one in the truck, and it just it just runs so
I can always see it from from this. But yeah, that's good to
know. I had forgotten that, Bill, So I'm glad you said that.
Uh okay in a yo. Yeah wow, Jason said something on it's
better on iPhone than Android. Yeah, one app out of out of a
million and a half apps, one app. So yeah, congratulations, you
know, golf clap and all that. So at Frank I was gonna say,
I was telling Mike I'm about to put him in time out for spins
and nonsense. Yeah, go ahead, man, go ahead. So what
I was going to say is, uh, don't make the mistake I made.
Whenever you're connecting your node to Wi Fi, make sure that you put
in the S s I D and the password at the on the same screen.
If you put in the S S I D and then you back out,
and then you think you're going to go back in to put the SS
or to put the password in. After the fact, you're going to be
disconnected from Bluetooth because you can only have Bluetooth or Wi Fi on. So
just connect you from Bluetooth and you're not going to have the credentials to get
into Wi Fi, so you have to physically connect your node then to a
console to set the password or to turn on Bluetooth. So it constantly me
the just plug in like you reflashed it, plug into the USB poor and
go to that. Yep. Yeah, that's that's something I think is really
I think that's a failure in the design is that it won't run both Wi
Fi and Bluetooth at the same time. Because the first time I connected my
node to Wi Fi, I couldn't connect. I couldn't connect back to it
from the app on my phone. I had to basically reset it and do
everything again and write down the infram air you know, save the password or
whatever you think once it got connect, and then and then and then and
then. The trick is that your fund in order to connect once your once
your note is on Wi Fi, it disables Bluetooth, as I just said,
as Robert just said, then and and then I was trying to connect.
I was trying to I was like, why is it not showing up?
Why is it not shown Well, my the WiFi, my phone was
turned off, So your phone that's running the app has to be on the
same Wi Fi as your as your mesh Tastic note is for them to see
each other and talk to one another so you can. It's just it was
just it was just kind of a learning curve, you know. It's just
something I wouldn't used to that with Bluetooth being turned off when you're running WiFi.
I thought that was weird. Think you think it will attempt to connect
the first time, fail out and turn back on Bluetooth. Yeah, that
would be ideal, but it doesn't know now. Now, after it connects
sexfully the first time, then it has an active weight to be like,
Okay, it's there. I'm waiting for it. I'm waiting for it.
I'm waiting for it. Yeah. Yeah, So anyway, but it was,
uh, overall, it's it's it's it was definitely a learning experience.
I am glad that we did it. I look forward to us trying it
again. I imagine that I plan on taking mine to Utah in July and
next month, and j it was fun. It was fun, a lot
of fun. It was a lot of the other thing that I thought was
really interesting. And I just put this in a video that was uploading right
before we got on here, Jason, So everybody go check that out after
the fact if you need more mesh tastic. What I thought was really interesting
is there were a couple of vendors who tried to take advantage of the whole
meshtastic thing, right. They did some advertising in some of the rooms to
say, hey, if you're looking for this, come on over to our
booth. Hey, if you're looking for that, come on over to Target.
Yeah, it's pretty good. Ham Steady did that. I think Alfon
Tennas did it as well. Yeah, yeah, I thought that was great.
In fact, I told Richard at Hampsteady is like, you need to
take one or you they he has a UHF and but I don't think he
has one for nine megahertz. I'm like, you need to make a nine
mets antenna and advertise it as works on the ISM band for Laura. And
he's like, because I mean, what was great. Is he was hot
and air conditioning. He's right, you know, He's like, hey,
right, you guys are hot, right, yeah, yeah, that's right.
That was funny. Okay, let's see Mark is asking, how is
your truck set up as a router? How are you connected to two separate
devices? Uh, I'm not well, I'm I'm not connected to two separate
devices. My my phone what I just do with that? Oh, my
phone is connected to this, yeah, I lost the app on my phone
is connected to this via Bluetooth. This via Laura is seeing my truck,
which is just that way, not too far that way, so I can't
I don't have the one in the truck doesn't have the blue Well, Bluetooth
is not turned on on the one the truck. If maybe I connected to
my WiFi in my truck right now, I might be able to connect to
that node maybe. But this node that I'm holding my hand is seeing via
Laura, is seeing the node in my truck, and that's how I can
see those both at the same time. I'm not actually connected to the one
in the truck via the app. I'm connected via Laura. And these things
are cheap too, so you know, get a two pack so you could
talk to yourself. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, Well here's the this is
the oh where did it go? There? Right there? Okay, and
zoom back out. This is the rack r AK call it a rack.
Yeah, it's a company name that makes it. Set of health click yeah,
And it has solar panel on it, and it comes with this this
large antenna and this is a waterproof cause it comes all like this, and
it actually kind of and I thought I had to I thought I was going
to have to put my own battery in. It came with this eighteen six
fifty in it as well, so it's got a USBC charger on it right
now, or of course it'll charge via solar as well. So, but
this one is made to be set outside. And I was just telling Frank
before the stream start, I was like, you need to get one of
these, and we need to put them on top of our houses. And
see because we both have two story houses. Now there's a lot of stuff
between Frank and I and and we never could get ard in too work.
But that was on two point four gigaherts. These are on nine hundred megaherts
and they're gonna penetrate trees and foliage and buildings a lot better than two point
four giga hurts. Well, it's not gonna be. It's not nearly as
narrow banded as two point four gigaherts is. So I'm I'm curious, Frank,
if if we could build it to see each old. I gotta tell
you something about that node. Go ahead, man, Okay, that that
is my favorite node in a way, and it is on top of the
green hamd machine. It's on top of my trailer. It as it is
now, it won't keep up, especially if you have a couple of non
sunny days back to back. I know, yeah that node to I left
the battery, but I hooked that note power and so the battery is the
battery backup. But that panel won't keep up even though those racked are the
most power. Yeah, yeah, they are the most that panel. And
I think they've gone to a bigger panel for that node for that reason.
So I'm yeah, yeah, exactly. It's possibly have some solar panels,
are shs? I don't know, yes, but yeah, so it looks
like so this is the guy where I got that this and this is something
that Josh sent me that Josh found this guy. And this one right here
at the top right with the little solar panel on it, which is one
I have. I don't see that available in his Etsy store right now,
but I do see these other two that have larger panels like this. And
this is all complete, like like one hundred and forty bucks, and it
comes with the battery, the uh and it's got a I'm not sure what
that is inside well rack as I guess is the name of the actual device
inside of it. But it's got the battery, it's got the antenna,
it's got the solar panel. Comes with this larger solar panel. So maybe
I'll put a larger solar panel on mine, because that's just this little solar
panel here. I could I could easily change that out. And there's more
than just Racking there. So Racket is the company that Internet a thing,
Laura company that makes that fantastic receiver transceiver Garth the guy that makes those nodes.
He does a special board that they attached to. So there's a little
extra inside of there, like for instance, I think it's the bluetooth antenna.
You don't need an antenna, his board has the antenna. I think
that's it. So the garth makes good stuff. I've got three of his.
Hmm good. Okay, Well that's what this what I a GPS up
here, and then the Bluetooth antenna down there. So this is not a
rack. This is this is the rack five thousand and five. Oh that's
a lot bigger than the one I've got. Yeah, I mean that.
That's my hand behind it, right, yeah, exactly, Yeah, that
things. Yeah, that's in a that looks like one of those boxes you
put on the side of your house to pend out right. Yea, yeah,
it's a it's an aftermarket box. Okay, it's a R R T
H I E A I. It's not a word. That's not a word,
okay. And then there's the Like I said, there's the GPS antenna
up here, and then down here is the Bluetooth antenna. There's a battery
over here. I wish it was an eighteen six fifty type cell. That's
one of those LiPo pillows. And then the little black thing in there is
the rack boards. What you build Did you build it yourself? Steve No,
This came off of the one of the swap meat items on like a
hand radio, crash course discord or something. Oh okay, interesting, I'd
like to get one of those myself. I can't. And then it's got
that same solar panel that that probably can't keep up. No, that's a
whole that's a lot bigger than so it's all nine, that's bigger. Yeah,
this is the this is the sign here. Yeah. Yeah, but
I mean it's it's just a solar panel. I mean, you know,
go grab one, this one. This one's got to uh. In fact,
if you go back to the overhead here, this one's just got these
two wires coming out of the top here, which is where the solar panel
is. It's just a positive and negative wire that go writing here to this
pin. You could easily add your own solar panel to that positive and negative
wire right there and just add Azo said something, Hey, put a bio
in on it. And I'm like, a good idea, right, I
mean you could yeah, yeah, totally. You probably have to down converted
to Yeah. Yeah, it's a it's a few it's a lower voltage than
the bioanal and the only thing is keep that solar connector to the board that
is specific to the board. Yeah, but I have a if you get
a larger seven, so it's it's all about the average, but it's about
seven volts. I have a larger one from voltaic and it keeps up.
It does it. It's always powered. Okay, okay, So somebody's watching
at home talking Smack says that his is bigger. So I told him come
on the live stream, Steve. Oh yes, yeah, yeah, I
saw him and earlier. Go ahead, Robert. I was just going to
say, there's a couple of questions out there we might want to tackle.
One of them was explain what the fun is, right, somebody still doesn't
get it out there, so you know, I'll you wouldn't understand. No,
I'm kidding. Our network not controlled by corporate AT and T Briding or
anybody. It's net Yeah. But for me, the fun part of it
is, first of all, the app is really pretty impressive for a free
app for a few for a free kind of a networking system. It's got
a lot of feature. I mean, it doesn't cost a dime. It's
really pretty good. Android or iOS are both good. Uh, it's you
know, it's it's just fun to see. Some of these devices have a
built in GPS. You can add a GPS to others, so it's it's
cool to see people moving around on a map, kind of like a p
R S a bit different, right, uh, and and and it's just
kind of see it's fun to see who else has one, Who shows up
in the network, who shows up on your map, who shows up in
you in your in your room. I don't know if we talked about this
yet or not, but it's not technically ham radio, so you can do
things like encryption over it. If you wanted to send encrypted messages, if
you wanted to send, you know, photos of what your grocery list looks
like to your spouse, you can do that. If you wanted to put
in your call sign, you can use more power and then you can't do
encryption anymore. But it's you know, it's nine hundred and fifteen Maker Hurts.
It's I think it's inside one of the it's insider nine hundred Maker hurts.
Hand band, isn't it or is it like really really close? No,
it's inside the ham it's inside the hand band. I think if it's
super cheap hardware, you know, it's it's fun to play with. It's
yeah, it's what hand radio should have grown up into. If we all
kept developing. I think, I think Steve, I think you've pissed off
Steve. And now I've got Steve squared in the stream, and I hope
you didn't crater my stream here in a minute. But what's up, dude?
How are you hey? I'm doing all right? How are you all
right? We were just uh comparing the size of our meshtastic nodes. Of
mine is bigger than Steve's smaller, It doesn't matter about the size. Well,
this is still on the commercial bands. You're not doing anything to play
with the power? Got the yah? Right? Yeah? Actually this one's
this one's set up for four thirty three megaerts. Oh nice, So talk
to yourself and only to yourself, right right, Well, I mean I
put it on the m QTT and then I can talk to everybody that's you
know, flighting the channel. That's true, That's true. Okay. So
it's actually a good point to bring up. If you are not in the
United States watching the stream and you want to get in and play with this,
your local country might be on a different band, So check out Mestastic
in your area and then get the band appropriate model. I think UK is
in the eight hundred megahertz range. Yeah, but I'm not in the UK,
so I don't know, all right, So somebody who's asking what's the
best one to start with? So I just shared the link to my Amazon
store. I built meshtastic devices and accessories, and a lot of these,
a lot of these devices we're talking about tonight are only on Etsy, made
by different people. That the Raka one from from Garth vh is is right
here, and I shared that link earlier. I'll put all these links in
the description after the livestream is done. But this one right here, I
suggest starting with these hell Tech V three's Yeah, which is which is right?
That's these right here, the DIY male yeah, yeah, they I
don't know. I like the t beam as well. But I'll tell you
right now. You were talking just a second ago about about the you called
it the no no, no, the the Steve was calling it the battery
pillar battery LiPo pillow, Yeah, LiPo pillow that one. So in fact
I got a bought some more. Yeah, this guy right here. So
here, you guys tell me if you've experienced this also. So this will
run my hell Tech for about a day and a half roughly, maybe not
quite that maybe not quite thirty six and maybe like twenty four to thirty hours
something like that. Jason, that is that was that your experience in Dayton
or is that your experience at your house. I haven't really run it much
at the house since I've been home. I've just been running and running the
truck. Uh. But no, at Dayton. That was my experience at
Dayton. It was over a day, over a day that t beam kills
in eighteen six fifty and about eighteen ish hours something like that. I would
get on day out of mind, right, I would. I'd charge it
overnight, yeah, and you know, I'd walk out the door and it'd
be good until you know, eleven o'clock whenever I'd plug it back in and
roughly like yeah, five or six percent left right on the battery. Yeah,
right. So these batteries are smaller and lighter weight, they come with
the connectors on them, and they last longer than the eighteenth then the single
eighteen six fifty does. That's been my experience. Maybe the t beam is
less efficient on the battery. I don't know, but I so I tell
people get a hell tech with one of these batteries and all of those are
linked in my Amazon story. I just linked, but I mean that's where
I like to start. I agree with you on the t beam. The
great thing about the t beam is that it comes with its own SMA connector
and you can put an external antenna on it right away. But there's there's
a hundred ps built in GPS. Yes, very true. There's one hundred
different places to get these uh three D printed Helltech case. This is a
hell Tech inside of here, which is the same thing Frank holdiers up.
That's the that's the case that the hell Tech comes with, or a lot
of them do, and those work fine, but that one you have to
you have to put a connected battery to it like that or run it.
It'll charge, it'll charge and work via USB C. But these three D
printed cases allow you to put on an external antenna with s M A and
the and UH and put that same that three thousand million Pire battery inside of
here. So I like that hell Tech a little bit better for a starter
radio. That's my opinion, and opinions vary. Sure, this is my
t beam, right And I saw that, and I ordered one of those
cases like two days ago because that's yeah, yeah, in fact here,
I'm gonna pin you Robert Show show show that case around real quick, because
that's really cool looking. Sure, yeah, so it's it's first of all,
it's just really well done. The buttons on it just work. They
actually, I mean you can feel the click. It's just I mean,
everything about this is really well done. It's got a super strong belt clip
on it. Right, this makes a lot of ht's blush with you know
how strong this thing is. Yeah, this is three D printed. It's
got a kickstand, which is also convenient. And the guy who makes them,
he puts, uh, he puts magnets in the case and in the
kickstand. Right, I mean, this thing is you know, it's it's
solid today, but you know this will this will wear over time, and
so when that happens, those magnets will keep that from flopping around. And
Steve ask if that's three D printed? Were you talking about the case or
the clip? The clip is metal clips metal the case it? Okay,
yeah, correct, correct? Yeah, I think I think this is just
an outstanding package altogether. Right. It's the batteries easy. I mean,
it's going to last you a day unless you haven't connected to power. That's
the eighteen fifty inside of their eighteen six fifteen. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
okay, okay, right, and you guys all know the eighteen six
fifty deal, right, I mean you're going to see those on Amazon that
say they're you know, five thousand milliams, eight thousand millionams. They're not,
They're not right. No, if you find one that's you know,
three thousand milliams thirty two hundred milliams, you got a good one and go
with that brand, and you know you'll do well. Uh okay, so
dumb, all right, So Aaron is asking a link for a good three
D a good V three. He'll take B three case. I just got
this case the other day? Where'd it go? There? It is?
I just got this case the other day. I'll open it up before a
year in a second. The same link you shared, Steve, what you're
showing right now? No, this is moozy dot works. There's a lot
of them in there, so you guys feel free to share links in the
chat if you want to. This looks like a really good case, but
I don't like the fact that it takes the eighteen six fifty rather than the
three thousand million hour pillow battery life po pillow or whatever Steve called it.
But I mean it again. It has a good it has a nice window
there for the oh right here, it has a nice window here. It's
got an external SMA antenna. If we take this apart real quick, and
I just got this thing then the other day, so I haven't put anything
in it yet obviously, but it's very tight to get open, which is
good. You don't want it falling apart when you're using it. Pull this
out, you have any luck with that T deck. I haven't even messed
with it yet. Man, I've got it if it's sitting right here on
the desk, but I haven't even messed with it yet. I would have
messed with mine if if you would have remembered. Uh. So this one
comes with an eighteen six fifty battery holder, but it's got bare ends on
it, so you've got to put your own connector or solder it to a
battery or something like that. Well, you got to put a connector on
it and connect it to the uh to the hell tech board as which so
it's it's easy, but it's an extra step that you didn't have to do
with the other case. And yeah, and I like the other I like
the other battery better than this battery. Again, that's my own personal experience.
So I will build this thing just because I went ahead and bought it.
And I'm like, well, I'll go ahead and build it. But
I like, uh, which, what did you share here, Steve?
That's the uh the moozy dot works case that I was showing. Okay,
that's a cool one. The one that I shared has a bunch of extra
components in it. Was you sure what Steve? You were talking to?
Uh? T O, Steve? Which one did? Where did you share
that? Right in the chat? In the chat? Yeah? Okay,
Yeah. See printable printables there's a lot if you. In fact, if
you go search Amazon or uh eBay for mesh Tastic hell Tech v three case,
you'll find a dozen people on all the websites making these. Search printables,
search Etsy, I mean the thing thing verse. Yeah, they're easy
to find. I like that one too. That's a neat looking one.
Is that that one you were just holding up? Yeah. And the way
that he's got this thing three D printed. He picks some really good materials
and I like the fact that it's multi colored. So he's got red buttons,
green case, gray background. Yeah, three D printer filament isn't like
a solid color, it's kind of yeah, Steve's got one. I don't
know how to describe it, but it's a little speckiley, it's a little
it's yeah, it's not just one color. Green is probably, I mean,
it looks a little fibrous. But he also, like the guy knows
how to print too, So this is this is face down on the bed,
and then this is also face down on the bed. So you know,
you don't you don't have the striation look to it that a lot of
three D prints have. So it's a it's a it's a respectable print job.
And is that that's the pillow battery inside of that? Uh? Yeah,
okay, it's gotta be it. Did it come with a battery?
Then? Yeah, So if you look though, seventy five dollars one,
the one you're showing is a full kit and you can get it in a
couple of different colors. So it's the full kit with the battery, the
case, the hell tech board, the Bettery antenna because this is a you
know, slightly better antenna than the little what it comes with. Yeah,
okay, hmm, okay, cool, I may order one of those tonight.
Then I got I ordered a couple of cases off of eBay, and
then I got the box in. I was like, oh, cool,
I'll talk and I put him somewhere in my house and I can't find them
now. I don't know where they are. I don't think you can add
GPS to this case, but I haven't opened it yet. You know,
it's one of those things I still have to play with because there's only a
thousand things to play with in radio, right, Yeah, yeah, totally,
totally. Okay. So I kind of had a question Steve and the
our awesome M seventeen. Steve, you said, you put your is on
the handband. What advantages are you going to get out of that doing that?
Well, you got a frequency that's a little bit lower than nine one
five, so it's going to carry a little bit longer, it's going to
be less congested. It won't have you know, just everybody on it.
It'll have just licensed ham radio operators on it. It's easier to find UH
antenna's. You may already have a you know, four thirty three mega Hurts
antenna, you know, the the little rubber duck antenna that Steve has.
You know, it's it's difficult to find those, like even even the ones
that I get are are like those Wi Fi style ones like this. You
know, it's you know, just a little stick antenna. So it's easier
for you to find antenna's like this antenna. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
The the other advantages also, you have full fifteen hundred watts of power that
you can do it, although spread spectrum I believe is limited to ten I
think spread spectrum is limited to ten watts on MTURE radio now. But so
when you say you say Ham radio frequencies, are you talking about in the
nine hundred band? No, I'm talking for four okay, yeah, seventy
yeah, yeah, because I mean because we have privileges from nine o two
to nine thirty seven twenty eight something like that. Was it? Is it
twenty eight? I think it's yeah, yeah, nine two nine twenty eight,
that's right, yeah, nine two nine twenty eight. Because we have
some nine hundred megahers repeaters here in this area that are beyond you know,
and you can you can amplify that too. But again, spread spectrum I
think is still limited to ten watts. Something like that. Even so you're
gonna be able to take you know, as a ham radio operator, you'll
be able to take a transmitter, whether it be you know, you know,
thirty thirty three centimeters or seventy centimeters, you'll be able to put an
amplifier on it. So even though these men may only put out, like
I think maximum thirty dB, you know, you can amplify that up and
and really get that signal out. So how many watts is it on the
commercial bands first spread spectrum, I'm not sure. I'm just wandering out of
the box whatever you're going to get out of the oh, out of the
box, like on on these fifty, I think they're twenty seven dB.
Okay, so I think at maximum, I think they're twenty seven DV.
The rack wireless ones, I used to know it off the top of my
head because I built like five of them, But I've been trying to plug
them into amplifiers as well, so I don't really what it is. What
my effect, what you put your call sign in, you can yeah,
yeah, yeah, But pugging into an amplifier on the nine hundred makerhurts man,
you're gonna that means they're gonna be yelling out there, but no one
else is going to be able to answer. Yeah. Yeah, Yeah,
it's one of those rules where, you know, big ears rather than a
big mouth kind of thing. You know, you want to make sure that
you're able to hear more than you can speak. So but if you're if
you're in like where you know you're going to have good line of sight for
a significant amount of you know, mileage, you know those those even a
even like a Yagi antenna would get you out pretty pretty far with uh you
know Laura mm hm for sure. And and these things that I'm talking about
are completely hypothetical and experimental. Laura is really designed to be able to be
decoded underneath the noise level. So when you're ranking out this power, you
are defeating the whole purpose of Laura. You know. Yeah, this is
good as Ham's. We're used to disrupt things. Yeah, it's all experimentation
and hypothetical stuff. You know. I'm not I'm not saying that people should
go out and do this. It's just that I'm doing it because I can't
and I feel like I want to. Yeah, it's not illegal at all,
it's just not within the spirit of of Laura. It's kind of like
doing FT eight at fifteen hundred wants. Yeah, it's not illegal. It's
not illegal, and it pisses off the guys on QAZ, so that makes
it even more fun. I agree, yes, yeah, yeah, so
you're you're just double whemmy. You know, there's no reason not to do
it, you know, as some people would say. But yeah, awesome.
Okay. So people were asking for links in the chat. I don't
know. Somebody asked for uh what was what did they say? We put
a bunch of links in the chat. There was a bunch of links in
the chat, all of the links that we there it is. Greg Meta
asked, can you please post a link to the spec case that was mentioned
earlier? So, Greg, I don't know which case you're talking about,
got that. It's it's it's the Spec five case here I got. Okay,
okay, okay, okay, okay, yeah, So I will,
yeah, Robert, you should be able to post that in the chat if
you would, I will here, okay. I will also post all of
these links in the description once the live stream is over, so you guys
can go back and look at that and find that if you want a quick
easy cheat seat. Here's a link to Jason's mess Tactic storefront, and that
has a lot of things in there already. And I've had I've had somebody
mentioned tam you earlier as well. I was I was poking around on Team
you earlier in the week and and I ordered a few things from them as
well. So whatever website you like to shop on, Amazon, eBay,
Ali Express, Ali Baba, Team whatever, Okay, Thing Verse, whatever,
just go search for meshitastic. You might be I have been surprised by
the number of things that I found out there. I was like, oh,
holy crap, there's a bunch of stuff all over this website. So
I'm trying to put all this stuff in the Amazon. But there's a lot
more stuff out there you can get besides just the stuff on Amazon. So
the Amazon's a great place to buy batteries and antennas and those hell techs.
But if you want anything specialty like that, I mean, you can find
stuff everywhere. Just go search any website for mesh tastic. You might be
surprised. The other thing, too, I think is worth mentioning. It
sounds like we've got a lot of folks that are just getting introduced to mesh
tastic is. Their website is really good. It's got a lot of web
based tools that don't require you to download anything to your laptop. They do
want you to be running Chrome. That's the only downside, but you can
connect to your device, you can down or you can update it, update
the firmware through their tools. There's a console that you can connect to and
see what's going on at the command line. Really really well done. Yes,
yeah, agreed. Are you guys. Are you guys seeing that link
that I'm posting? I don't know if I'm getting Are you blue? Got
yes? Back five cellar on Ebaykay? Yes, yeah, yeah, Okay.
I saw somebody asking me to post it and I had already posted it,
so I just went I did put it out there a couple more times.
Yeah, I see it. They fly by on this chat. There's
a lot of people watching, right, Yeah. But I just updated my
radio to what is it two dot three dot ten? I think was a
new stable release that just came out, is it? Okay? I haven't
uh, you know, I haven't messed with mine at all since since we
were all in Dayton, tinkering around with all those and we's they degraded that
one, so I downgraded mine from that one they redacted, and then I
haven't looked at it since then. So I'll go and I guess the good
party. You know, sometimes with Arden nodes, if you get too many
pieces to if you get nodes with different firmware, they won't talk to one
another anymore. Don't think it's just one or two. I think it has
to be several outs. So I'm curious to see how meschtastic works if it's
if they're like five or ten firmware versions away from one another. Ardend,
you got to match the majors. I don't think the miners, No,
daily, the daily ones, you don't have to do the major. Yeah,
you got to match the majors. And then did we address this is
there with Arden? All right? I'm sorry with with this all these mess
Tastic nodes. Is it actively trying to ping like Wi Fi is, so
when you're not connected to a Wi Fi node, your computer is constantly cycling.
It's this guy here, is this guy here, is this guy here?
Is this guy here? This guy here? And then it'll loop back
to the top. And that's how some of these attacks kind of happen.
It's just looping through all your saved Wi Fi networks. Is these mess tactic
nodes when they see node A B C D and a note a B walks
away out of the range, are they trying to actively find those nodes?
Are they still kind of listening and only to interact with the ones that they're
only actively seeing at this moment in time. Yeah, Frank, and I
ask you, Yeah, I don't know either. We were talking about that
before because I was I was wondering about well, battery life, but we
were talking about battery life, but also talking about the fact that they hang
on to the Once you see a node in the list, it apparently it
stays there forever. So is it looking for those nodes or looking for,
you know, something else, or just actively pinging? Or I don't think
that. I don't think that's the way that meshing works, but I'm not
one hundred percent sure. That'd be a good question. Uh. The other
thing I wanted to mention about the batteries, right, I had asked you,
Jason, was that your experience at Dayton or at home? Because I'm
getting about two days on this eighteen six point fifty here at home, but
there's not any activity right, so it's it's just kind of coasting. But
when we were in Dayton, these things were getting hammered. Yes, true,
I I have that my t beam. The only TBAM I have active
right now is the one in my truck, And if I don't charge it
every day, it'll be if I unplug it from the USB in my truck
right now, by this time tomorrow, it'll be dead. So I don't
know if maybe maybe you got a weak battery, and maybe I got a
weak battery, And that's very possible. It's very possible. It's that eighteen
six fifty. I might need a better, better brand or something. But
but my, but like this guy right here, I didn't use these for
several days after we got home from Dayton. And I mean not that one
sat with no activity. That one sat on my dresser and was on for
two or three days with not not getting hammered. So so my I mean,
my experience has been that those pillow batteries last longer than the eighteen But
of course, you know there's probably good and bad version of eighteen six fifty
out there. There's so many of them. You never know for sure,
for sure. But that's well I think too, you know, whether or
not you've got a GPS, right, because that GPS is constantly yes,
you know, reaching out, Yes, those satellites, So that's another factor.
Well, my and my TVAM in the truck is running GPS, so
it's always yeah, it's it's always on there. But yeah, totally,
it's very true. But yeah, I mean for for twenty five bucks,
you can get two of those hell techs. Yeah, and I mean you
can just tag yourself a lot of fun for twenty five bucks. I know
it. Yeah, yep, I agree, Yeah, get them all pre
programmed, and I just yeah, I I think that. Yeah, I
really like my t beam. I've got two or three more of them that
I want to set up. I've got this t deck here. This looks
like a BlackBerry. Bill was running one of these at the MORE Expo and
he met he met two or three people at the MORE Expo and they're like,
hey, you know, I'm over here by the whatever booth this is,
and he's over they're talking to people. He's like, they met on
mestastic at a freaking overland showed. I'm like that was pretty cool. I
was like I like to see that. That was fun. So we're gonna
have to take this. So that's why I want to take these to uh
to not only amkon Zion, but I'm going to take these to the National
Part Yellowstone. I might even I might even bring like my I might bring
my fifty foot mask again and put my rack up the tell you like,
anytime I go somewhere, I just bring it along with me. Now,
yeah, you know, I haven't you know, hooked onto my bag or
I just throw it in the truck, right because I'm just curious. It's
it's like war driving right now, now back to war driving, right Yeah.
And there was there was a I don't I don't remember the gentleman's name,
but he I've talked to him several times before. He was at Belton
last March or April whenever that was that, this last Belton we have and
he was running Mestastic out there, and he he said there was probably five
or six or seven people at the Beltingham Expo running Meshtastic. And I'm like,
okay, so the next time I go to a public gathering of some
sort, I'm gonna take my node with me and see what I can find.
There are random people flying overhead. I'm not talking about the airport when
I'm at work. I mean just overhead. They're playing with it in the
airplane. They I'm not there, yeah right, yeah, I'm on the
ground. They see my node and they go, hey, like so and
so on and so on. So thirty seven thousand feet yeah, I think
tube and so there are people that are using them. And I'm I mean,
I'm right here at home. People flying overhead see my node and and
I have that's RF man. I think that's what's cool about it. Well,
that's it. You know. I saw those nodes in Weatherford, so
I just dropped the I said, hey, you know, just just throw
something out there. Now, I wasn't I was driving through, so I'm
sure they they're like, who heck is this guy? Right? Yeah,
Bill, Next time you fly out, this is what you need to do.
If you're on flight. This is your captain speaking. Just turn off
your metastic news no doubt. BT Cullen is asking, does the Spec five
case only fit the Lilygo TBAM V one dot two. Laura, So it's
I mean it is for the T beam now. Now, Spec five is
the name of the dude's company. Right, he's he's down in uh Austin,
So he's local here in Texas, right, I mean everything's local in
Texas, right. It doesn't matter if you're San Antonio or whatever. We
say, it's local. So he's local to Texas. And he has a
number of other designs for other devices on his et SE page. But that
that that case is for the T beam. It's not the T beam extreme,
right, that's the one that has the antenna connection on the end of
it or out the top of it. You don't want, right, that's
not Yeah, there you go. There's a T beam extreme. Steve's got
one on the on the screen there. That radio won't work in that case.
You want to make sure it's just the original T beam with the SMA
out the side, yeah, or the top. Really, if you're looking
at the screen, it comes out the top. No, it's out the
side. The T beam. My T beam has has the SMA on the
top. If I'm looking at the if I don't have it in the case
at all, I'm looking at the screen and it's on the top. It's
on the wide side, not on the narrow side. Right, right,
correct, extreme comes out side. Yes, yes, Robert, send me
the link for that case. Man, that is very cool. I'll send
it over to you. And also tonight I'm on it. Your t deck
case is getting started tonight. I saw embarrassed. That's all right, that's
all right. I got a teasy about it though, But yeah, you
know what, sometimes I forget names and it takes the second time being embarrassed
for me to go it's in there. Yeah, that's all right, because
I hey, I deserve it. Steve's on there with two lightsabers. Just
just wait, I got to open it up for you, right right,
totally. But yeah, so I saw Sterling was in there earlier. He's
like, I'm late. So I'm watching it two to three time speed,
trying to and I'm like, hey, did you catch up yet? So
so yeah, so I've got it. I've got it. I'm gonna put
together video about what this uh this does right here, and I'm gonna put
it up. And yeah, I think you're right about the about the solar
panel. So may just have to I have to figure out where I can
get a three vault panel. I guess seven that's a battery. Remember that
five five volts it's USB C three to five. But anyway, five volts
you want a seven volt panel to go because they have a solar Those racks
have a solar charge controller built in the Okay, yes they do. So
you plugged seven volts from a solar panel into that rack and a little bit
bigger Wow did you build that, Steve? Uh? Yeah? So I
is that the four forty one? This is uh no, this is actually
nine fifteen okay, but that's a rack uh yeah, nineteen double o seven
double nine something like that. But it's the rack four point thirty one and
an Ethernet module and it gets power over Ethernet. Underneath my plate that I
printed out, that's got a POE splitter, so it provides five volts into
the device as well as the battery gets charged. So that battery gets charged
off the rack. So if it ever loses power, it's still a router
and client, so it'll still pass and receive messages even if it does lose
POE off of the wire here, So why do you have two antennas on
it? One is the Bluetooth, This one is Bluetooth, and this one's
nine to fifteen. Wow, big Bluetooth antenna. Well, it's also supposed
to go up on top of a tower, so you know, I want
to make sure that BLI has a good signal down. That's pretty cool.
That's pretty cool, very nice, And get you get get you to send
me a list and then we'll get on another live stream, Steven build that.
Good luck trying to find these cases. Yeah, you know what,
any weather proof case would work. Yeah, I designed the plate specifically for
this case. Oh, I see, I see, okay, okay,
so it's a rather unique mountings. Well you were saying about who was it?
It was t O. I think you were saying about or no Bill,
it was Bill saying about the three volt or the seven volt solar panel.
This. Yeah, that's what that That reminded me. These things can
power via USB C and your bioin os have USB output, so you could
totally hook a bioin with this and just hook and plug it into USB and
let it go that way. So I think that would I think that would
probably work because you can you can charge your phone directly from a biolinal panel
with a USB output. Oh, biol panel said, because I like my
bio No, no, no bio And yeah, there they make a twenty
eight watt and a forty what mini fold up panel. They make some bigger
ones, obviously, but I've got one of their forty watt mini light forty
I think they call it a forty light. It's a forty watt panel.
It's it's about probably ten inches long, but then it folds out to like
four or five panels wide or tall. I should say. They make a
twenty eight watt it's like three panels, and make a forty white it's like
five panels, and and it has USB output. And I hang that on
the side of the of the deer blind when I'm sitting in the deer Lease
and I plug my phone into it. It's perfect for that. It's it's
kind of like they it's kind of like the Lightsaber Max from Power Film,
but it doesn't have its own built in battery and it's much much less expensive,
So it's it's a neat It's a neat panel that you can You can
do that, or you could get one of the Denco batteries that has the
USBA port on it and plug in a bio Wino to the Denco and the
Denco USBA out to the helltech that would do it too. So there's ways
around it. Where where there's a hand, there's a way, right,
there's ways around that. But but yeah, I will look at putting a
different panel on this one. And I'm already looking at what's his name,
Garth, he's got the ones with I don't remember seeing those ones with the
bigger panel when I bought this one. But now this one's not available for
sale on his website anymore. So I'm like, I should have waited,
I guess. But that's okay. It's it'll be fun to experiment with all
these Well, that's the other thing that's so cool, right, they're they're
relatively inexpensive, right, They're like the cheapest thing you're gonna buy in radio,
right. I mean, so you can buy a few of these things.
You can play around with them, you can see which ones you like.
You can you know, if you screw some up, no big deal,
right, you can buy some for your buddies. And since you don't
need a license, your buddies can play along with you too. Yeah.
Maybe maybe it's the uh the hook right that gets some interested. Why can't
I hear you? Because you ain't got a license? Son. You can't
can't transmit no power. It don't work unless you got power. Yo Bozo
from Back to the Future. Back to the Future too, Yeah, Back
to the Future two. I got it the Yeah. In fact, I
want to put one up at the deer Lease and put it on the fifty
foot mast at the deer Lease and let it run during hunting season, and
then get a couple of the guys to get one, because those guys are
all well, a couple of those guys have like Sprint, and I'm like,
why it's twenty twenty four, why do you have sprint? But and
they can't. They can't get they can't get serviced at certain parts of the
hunting lease. And then they bought some FRS. Ratio was one year and
over the hill you can't get You can't hear the FRS radio through the trees
and over the hill. It's not that big of a place. It's one
hundred and seventy five acres. It's not that large. So I told them
they should get their GMRS license. Last year nobody did, but maybe I'll
try this license. We just need to buy that radio, you know,
right, we're gonna use it an FRS milde A right, sure, but
well cool, I'm I'm looking forward to trying more with this. This is
just kind of a tip of the iceberg. I got this company called Ella
Crow. Yep, Ella Crow. They sent me one of their go on
top of a pie five kits, so I'm gonna be building that on a
on a on a video soon. I'm gonna do this T deck. Bill
Bill was kind of enough to build me a case for this T deck right
here, and uh so I'm gonna put together the T deck and have a
little BlackBerry carry yeah yeah, Bill Bill printed deck for me. So yeah,
I had a little wolf on the back or cat or whatever there.
Yeah, so I don't I'm not a cat guy. I'm a dog guy.
So that's a wolf, That's what I'm gonna call it. But yeah,
So so I got two or three different ones I'm gonna do videos on.
But I'm looking forward to seeing what works, how they work that kind
of thing, and uh and go from there. So I appreciate you guys
coming on tonight just kind of discussing this because I was one some of the
questions that I personally had that I brought up at the beginning of the stream.
I was wondering if you guys had and and most of you were like,
oh yeah, that's yeah, that's this, this and this. These
batteries last as long or they don't drop off or you know, you still
see in the whole list from Dayton that kind of thing. So it's a
learning experience. I for me, it's like, oh, well, you
should read the manual before you do. No, no, just jump in
with both both feet and figure it out, because that's that's half the fun
of it is, just trying to figure out how it all work whatnot.
So I like it that way. Uh okay, So it's eight fifteen and
I think that's good. I appreciate you guys. Robert. Did you premiere
your video yet? Is it? I'm actually going to do it right after
the stream, so when the stream ends, if if you all haven't got
enough mess Tastic in your life, I've got a I don't know. It's
a seven eight minute video that talks a little bit about what I saw with
mesh Tastic, and it talks a little bit about that case that I just
showed off. Do you have a link? Oh yeah, I guess I
could do that. Yeah, share the link in the chat. That would
be the smart thing to do. We're waiting. Come on now, hundreds
of us are waiting, t When are you coming back to Texas. I
don't know. I spent a lot of time in Texas last year and the
beginning of this year already. So we're going to well, you technically live
here, I do. We're going to Utah and for hamcong Zion. Then
we're going out to Yellowstone and then I have no idea where I'm going after
that. Well, we'll see you in Utah in about a month, for
sure, a month and a half something like that. So about at the
end of this month, my wife and I are going to Alaska. We're
gonna fly to Anchorage, spend the night, get on a cruise the next
day seven day crews that ends up in Vancouver. And then that's also field
Day. No, it's the weekend. It's it's like the Wednesday after field
Day. So yeah, so field Day Alaska, come back at home for
two or three days, and then drive at Utah. So I will have
my meshitastic with me during that whole I'm gonna take I'm gonna take So Josh
and Adam did that whole one pound PoTA pac thing, and leaving aside the
fact that I'm going to do a in vehicle one hundred and fifty pound PoTA
pack, it's like, hey, one pound, that's great, let's do
the one hundred and fifty pound. I'm gonna pack everything in the truck and
take it to Photo but I'm not gonna do it. I'm gonna pack a
I'm gonna pack something similar to that, and I'm gonna take it to Alaska.
And I want to activate Alaska when I'm up there, because i want
to activate a park in every all fifty states. It's my personal goal.
And those two guys that were from Alaska that were at him mention that we're
hanging out at our campsite with us, they were like, the propagation up
there is weird. Give yourself a few hours. I told my wife that,
She's like, well, I think we can do that here and here
and here. So fingers crossed. You guys, stay in Discord, stay
on the PODA website, and if I have to do FT eight to activate
it, that's fine. I'll just do ten contacts on FD eight. I
have no problem with that. So I'm going to try my darndest to activate
a national park in Alaska when we're there at the end of this month.
So what is it? Stroke KL seven I think so yeah, I'll get
you K seven yeah, yeah, yeah, TOTALLYWB stroke KL seven yeah yeah,
that would do it. That would do it. So I will certainly
try that. But cruise lines don't allow radios. But you may have a
chance. Well, I'm taking it before the cruise and then I'm packing take
it on the cruise. Can use it on the cruise, right, you
can? You can take it. You can technically contact the captain and get
permission to use it while you're on the boat, supposedly, And I mean
some cruise lines say that. I don't. I'm just gonna leave it in
my bag, just not gonna hamlerts. Yes, absolutely true. Yeah,
we'll have We'll have several live streams between now and then, so this is
not the last live stream we'll do before that trip. But be thinking about
that and try to work me on on FT eight ors. I'm gonna try
to do some sideband. I'd love to make a few side band contacts,
but man, really want to really want to activate Alaska when we're there at
the end of this month. So but but I look forward to taking my
mesh Tastic also and see what I can do with that, so it'd be
fun. But yeah, So you guys that are coming to Yellowstone bring a
bring a Meshtastic node with you. Yep, we will, uh, we
will totally make that happen. So cool man. Uh okay, So y'all
go check out Rob's link. He just shared the chat and uh, I'm
gonna go up there and hang out in the Are you premiering that I am?
Yep? Okay, okay, yours in like three minutes, three minutes,
okay, make it. I was guessing. I was guessing that's that's
cool, that's cool. Make it quick, Frank, Okay, I hit
five thousand. Yeah, thank you, thank you, thank you. I
have teamed up with Gigaparts. Gigaparts next Sunday, six pm Central time,
we're gonna be doing a giveaway and we got some cool things. So we're
gonna do a cigar social six pm before Jason stream. I'm gonna get sloshed
then come over and attempt to do something on his stream. We're gonna have
fun and that that that's about it. Okay, cool. Look forward to
it. Frank, I shared your the link to your announcement video in my
email blast today. Oh thank you. I appreciate that. Are you on
my email list? Yeah, but okay, they're all filtered to a special
focus that gets unmarked and read. And because I signed up like four times,
say that list out. Yeah, yeah, but yeah, we're gonna
have some Funzzo, I already sent you a text message about it, and
Jason you're invited, and Rob You're You're invited, and we're just gonna be
smoking cigars. Anyone else wants to hang out? All right, fine,
Yeah, we'll do our own stream. Don't worry about him. Right to
gars cigars. We're gonna have some fun. Hopefully the weather is crop right
so I could be outside to do this. Yeah, Bill, Bill will
get on there is smoke a cigar with his bet so seventy thirty thousand feet
whichever. All right, seventy three guys go check out Rob's stream. I'm
gonna head over there myself. We'll have a good later