Speaker 1: This is the Spec five relay, which is a mesh
Speaker 1: Tastic device with what I assume is quite the high
Speaker 1: gain antenna for nine hundred megahertz. Right here, this is
Speaker 1: the whole thing put together. Twelve WAT solar panel on
Speaker 1: the back. Here, you've got a little tag on the
Speaker 1: back says twelve WAT solar panel comes in you know,
Speaker 1: ready to assemble. I assembly. It took me like ten
Speaker 1: minutes to assemble this and put the intenta on here
Speaker 1: and connect the coacts. This coax that comes with it
Speaker 1: is probably fine. But today's video sponsor is ABR co
Speaker 1: Acs ABR Coaxs that's made in the USA, and you
Speaker 1: can always save a ten percent discount on all of
Speaker 1: ABR assessories with the coupon code of ABR ten KC
Speaker 1: five HWB. I bet you didn't think ABR Coaxs would
Speaker 1: be a sponsor of mesh Tastic video, right, Well, how
Speaker 1: about replacing going into their nifty coax builder on their
Speaker 1: website and replacing this piece of coax here with an
Speaker 1: SMA mail on one end and a B and C
Speaker 1: female on the other end and putting some higher grade
Speaker 1: quality coacs on it. So we're going to do that
Speaker 1: as our next step. But today I put this thing together.
Speaker 1: I've been it run for about two days at the
Speaker 1: time of this recording. It's showing up fine. I've been
Speaker 1: let it sit on my outside table on the deck
Speaker 1: of the beach house. We're in the beach house today.
Speaker 1: This is not my hamshack, in case you hadn't noticed.
Speaker 1: So we're at the beach house today and Galveston. I've
Speaker 1: been wanting to put this up because, quite frankly, the
Speaker 1: last time I was down here, I drove up and
Speaker 1: down the island a couple of times with my meshitastic
Speaker 1: note on the top of my truck, and I saw nothing.
Speaker 1: I saw nothing at all. Now the good news is
Speaker 1: that this time I've been here for about four days
Speaker 1: at the time in this recording, and on this trip
Speaker 1: I've been seeing nodes again. Three of the nodes are mine.
Speaker 1: I've got one in my truck. This one's been online,
Speaker 1: and I've got my pocket node, which is right here,
Speaker 1: my little sense of cap T one thousand echo from
Speaker 1: Seed Studios. So I've got my pocket node that I
Speaker 1: carry with me everywhere, got one in the truck. We're
Speaker 1: going to be upgrading the truck soon. This one's going
Speaker 1: to go at the beach house in Galveston and stay here.
Speaker 1: It's going to stay here permanently. I'm going to point
Speaker 1: the solar panel towards the sun. Hopefully it'll run indefinitely.
Speaker 1: That'll be an experiment for another video later on to
Speaker 1: see when I come back down here, probably in about
Speaker 1: a month for winterfield day, to see what kind of
Speaker 1: nodes it's picked up and if it's still online and
Speaker 1: how well it's working. So let's uh check this out.
Speaker 1: I'll put a screenshot here of what the board looks like.
Speaker 1: This is a rack wireless rak rack rack wireless board
Speaker 1: that's in this unit here. It's all put together and
Speaker 1: ready to go inside of here and then all you
Speaker 1: got to do is put the antenna and the solar panel,
Speaker 1: attach them and bolt them down and tighten them down.
Speaker 1: One thing I do not like about this system at all.
Speaker 1: Now this may not affect you depending on what your
Speaker 1: area is. It comes with these radiator clamps and these
Speaker 1: are probably fine in a normal environment. But down here
Speaker 1: on the beach, right next to the coast, right next
Speaker 1: to the salt water, any metal you put outside will
Speaker 1: rust in six to twelve months these would be dust
Speaker 1: in about six months. These are thin, probably just cheapy
Speaker 1: radiator hose clamps that you put around. You're gonna put
Speaker 1: this around a pipe here and put the hose clamps
Speaker 1: through here. I'm not going to use those at all.
Speaker 1: I'm going to get some zip ties, some heavy deude
Speaker 1: zip ties. I'm gonna zip tie this thing up and
Speaker 1: cut the ends off and that's where it's gonna stay. Well. Also,
Speaker 1: this is metal right here that holds the antenna on.
Speaker 1: Of course, the coax connectors are metal. There's metal screws
Speaker 1: in the side. Most of this is plass. This arm
Speaker 1: here is metal. This part's metal, This part's metal. This
Speaker 1: box here on the side, this is plastic, so I'm
Speaker 1: not worried about it, but the screws in it or metal.
Speaker 1: So what I'm gonna do is, I'm gonna get some
Speaker 1: spray paint, just some clearcoat spray paint, and lightly touch
Speaker 1: all the metal pieces on this device to help it
Speaker 1: last longer, kind of like clear coating a fiberglass antenna
Speaker 1: before you put it in the air and leave it
Speaker 1: for several years. So we're gonna do that to this today,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna see how it looks down here on
Speaker 1: the beach back in the truck. So the first part
Speaker 1: of that video that you just watched was recorded two
Speaker 1: or three weeks ago. I tried to mount the relay.
Speaker 1: The mestastic node to that pipe was on the top
Speaker 1: of my pergola, but it was rusted out and I
Speaker 1: didn't have a ladder tall enough to get all the
Speaker 1: way up on the pergola. Plus the pipe was rusted out.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna go to home depot today and we're
Speaker 1: gonna get a whole new pipe, and we're going to
Speaker 1: mount this today and then we're gonna do some range
Speaker 1: testing with it. I have a rudimentary node in the
Speaker 1: truck right now. It is hanging right I wonder if
Speaker 1: you could see it behind me. It's hanging right there.
Speaker 1: The yellow and blue no just got a Helltech V
Speaker 1: two in it. And I have an external antenna running
Speaker 1: magmount nine hundred and fifty meggerz atenna running on top
Speaker 1: of the truck. And there's probably a lot of loss
Speaker 1: in that because it's got like a six or eight
Speaker 1: foot piece of coax attached to that mag mount that's
Speaker 1: coming off and connected to the node inside the truck.
Speaker 1: It does work. That's a case five HWBF two to fifty.
Speaker 1: That's my truck node right there, and then the one
Speaker 1: below it, the KC five HWBB Galveston relay. That's the
Speaker 1: one we're installing today. It's currently sitting on the picnic
Speaker 1: table on my patio solar panels, just laying down on
Speaker 1: its side, pointed towards the sun. Additionally, since it's laying
Speaker 1: on its side, the antenna is laying almost horizontally instead
Speaker 1: of vertically, so it's incorrectly polarized. For the transmission types
Speaker 1: that we need, it needs to be vertically polarized. You
Speaker 1: can run it like that, you can run it horizontally polarized,
Speaker 1: it's just not going to be as efficient if you
Speaker 1: run it vertically polarized for the types of transmissions that
Speaker 1: we need. There's more to that. If you don't understand radio,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of videos in this channel about that.
Speaker 1: But we're going to go today and get that. But
Speaker 1: I mean, it's working, it's been working. I put it
Speaker 1: away in the closet and locked away in the closet.
Speaker 1: After that last part of the video, I took it
Speaker 1: out of the closet, set it on the table pointed
Speaker 1: it towards the sun the other day, and it's been
Speaker 1: running for about three or four days at the time
Speaker 1: of this part of the video. Because it's working just fine.
Speaker 1: I just need to get it up higher and get
Speaker 1: it vertically polarized and get the solar panel pointed more
Speaker 1: directly at the sun. And that's the object of today.
Speaker 1: Parked here at the Home Depot, this is the only
Speaker 1: home improvement store on the island. There's not a Lows here.
Speaker 1: There's not a true veal. You know. There might be
Speaker 1: a true value somewhere downtown that's like a little family
Speaker 1: owned shop or some sort of little hardware store, but
Speaker 1: for the most part, the Home Depot is the only
Speaker 1: thing here. So Home Depot's fine. I go to Lows
Speaker 1: at home mostly because it's closest to my house, not
Speaker 1: because I have any special love for lows o our
Speaker 1: Home Depot or something. I don't really care. But here
Speaker 1: we're going to Home Depot, all right. The first stop
Speaker 1: is going to be the zipped because, like I said
Speaker 1: in the beginning, those are huge sheeesh, seventeen inches. Okay,
Speaker 1: well that is what it is, I guess. Because we
Speaker 1: don't want to put them up with those really crummy
Speaker 1: stainless steel radiator clamps, and those things will be rust
Speaker 1: city in like six months. So much better option here.
Speaker 1: This galvanized steel supposedly is rustproof, but it's not. Most
Speaker 1: of the bolts and the screws I put on my
Speaker 1: fence are galvanized, and guess what already roasted. I think
Speaker 1: that's probably what I need right there. That's probably tall enough.
Speaker 1: Heard was probably twenty feet in the air or something
Speaker 1: like that, twelve inches. Got a flange base right there,
Speaker 1: and I got a cap for the top because without that,
Speaker 1: you're gonna get rain water inside of it. It's gonna
Speaker 1: rust from the inside out as well as the outside.
Speaker 1: It's gonna rust anyway. There's no avoiding that, but might
Speaker 1: as well mitigate it as long as possible. Those of
Speaker 1: you who might have asked about some of the videos
Speaker 1: of my truck with radio rack that I built, I
Speaker 1: built it out of this stuff. This is galvanized and
Speaker 1: I used steel, but then I painted it and I
Speaker 1: can figure it the way I wanted to. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: make a change to it soon, so watch for video
Speaker 1: on that upcoming as well. Choose your payment type, all right,
Speaker 1: we got all that, go get some lunch, Probably might
Speaker 1: stop by the local cigar shop that has become one
Speaker 1: of my favorite places to go around here. And then
Speaker 1: we're gonna head back to the house and I'm going
Speaker 1: to put this thing up and then do a range
Speaker 1: test on it later. Because I can send it a
Speaker 1: direct message and if I get the checkbox in the cloud,
Speaker 1: the cloud icon on the Meshtastic software, that means the
Speaker 1: message was received. I can also just send a message
Speaker 1: in long fast and see if and then come back
Speaker 1: to the house. Just type a message in long fast
Speaker 1: saying five miles, ten miles, twenty mile, whatever, and then
Speaker 1: come back to the house and see how many of
Speaker 1: those are in the long fast inbox of the relay notes.
Speaker 1: So it's a couple of different ways to do it there,
Speaker 1: And might do that all right. I got this thing
Speaker 1: hung up on the roof and you can see it
Speaker 1: right right there. Go look at it in a second.
Speaker 1: Actually went back to home depot and got some larger
Speaker 1: pipe and I got a barrel connector to go in
Speaker 1: the middle of the pipe for the mount on the
Speaker 1: Spec five relay for the mount to set on. I've
Speaker 1: got my pocket node here. This is a Seed Studios
Speaker 1: T one thousand echo. This is what I carry in
Speaker 1: my pocket. I cliped this to my belt loop and
Speaker 1: I put this in my pocket, and this is the
Speaker 1: meshtastic device that I carry with me every day. And
Speaker 1: I'm gonna show you on the screen here. We've got
Speaker 1: the KC five HWB pocket on the screen right there,
Speaker 1: and then in U five M that's the good aprsigate
Speaker 1: that's in town. But he also has some meshtastic nodes
Speaker 1: up so cool. And then the fourth one down there
Speaker 1: is the k HWB Galveston Relay and that is that
Speaker 1: dude right there. We saw it eighteen minutes ago. I'm
Speaker 1: going to send it a message direct message test. Let's see,
Speaker 1: and we can see the checkbox in this screen shot.
Speaker 1: Here on the far right side of the test message,
Speaker 1: there's a checkbox. And now if we go back to
Speaker 1: nodes here now, the Galveston Relay is the second one
Speaker 1: we see, and it says it synced with it just now,
Speaker 1: so it is working. It's online. Show you what it
Speaker 1: looks like up on top of the roof here, So
Speaker 1: we're up right now. Probably this deck is probably like
Speaker 1: eight or nine feet off the ground, something like that,
Speaker 1: and there's the backyard there. See if I can climb
Speaker 1: up here without falling off this ladder and the wood
Speaker 1: on top of this pergle it needs to be replaced
Speaker 1: because it's been up here a while and it gets
Speaker 1: weathered pretty good. So this is the relay here. I've
Speaker 1: got the dish pointed basically that way. That's kind of
Speaker 1: like pointing south. It's not due south, it's a little
Speaker 1: bit southeast. But you can see the sun right now
Speaker 1: is over there that part of the sky. When the
Speaker 1: sun comes up in the morning, it'll be over there
Speaker 1: in that part of the sky. So it kind of
Speaker 1: moves from east to west. Actually, it's pointed a little southwest,
Speaker 1: I should say, not southeast. It's pointed more southwest, but
Speaker 1: it's almost due south. And I can adjust this right
Speaker 1: here if I wanted to. It's a twelve watt solar panel,
Speaker 1: you can see right here. I can. I can loosen
Speaker 1: these screws and adjust this. This is where the rack
Speaker 1: board is for the meschastic radio. And then of course
Speaker 1: we've got this antenna that's up here, and this is
Speaker 1: the antenna that the Spec five relay comes with. I
Speaker 1: mounted it told in the earlier part of the video set.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to use those really cheap looking to me,
Speaker 1: stainless steel radiator style clamps, so we put zip ties
Speaker 1: on it. The zip ties will probably outlast everything in
Speaker 1: this whole setup. This will eventually rust right here. These
Speaker 1: bolts and nuts will eventually rust. I might put a
Speaker 1: dab of spray paint or something on these just for
Speaker 1: the heck of it. But that's the relay radio. That's
Speaker 1: the meshtastic relay radio, and it's gonna stay here in
Speaker 1: Galveston for the foreseeable future. I'm wondering. I'm wondering if
Speaker 1: the next time a big storm comes through, if it's
Speaker 1: gonna rip it off of here. It's not top it's
Speaker 1: on here really good. It's bolted down. But with the
Speaker 1: wind out here, I mean, you never can tell. So
Speaker 1: we're gonna do something. I'm gonna get in the truck,
Speaker 1: We're gonna get on the I'm gonna fire up the
Speaker 1: R finder tablet, show you what it looks like on
Speaker 1: the screen for my F two fifty note, and then
Speaker 1: we're gonna drive down to probably like the State Park,
Speaker 1: which is that direction. It's west of here, and we're
Speaker 1: gonna see what it looks like and how far we
Speaker 1: can send a message to it. All right, I stopped
Speaker 1: at the first point, which I think is probably about
Speaker 1: two miles away, straight shot down the beach. That direction
Speaker 1: is where the house is. Now. My house is not
Speaker 1: this row of houses, it's the second row that way, okay,
Speaker 1: And we're right here at the entrance of Galveston Island
Speaker 1: State Park. We've done a lot of PoTA activations from
Speaker 1: this spot right here. If you look at Google Maps,
Speaker 1: this entire road and this whole area right here is
Speaker 1: actually inside the park. They put the pylon boundaries here.
Speaker 1: I think, in my opinion, the reason they put those
Speaker 1: there inside of the park, inside of the boundary is
Speaker 1: because if they put them over there, then they'd have
Speaker 1: people driving down the beach all the time inside the
Speaker 1: state park. Then they don't want you to do that.
Speaker 1: It's prohibited, blah blah blah. Okay, So we're probably about
Speaker 1: two miles that direction, and we're going to look at
Speaker 1: the case five HWB Galveston Relay. That's where we're at
Speaker 1: right now. It saw this. I've got the F two
Speaker 1: to fifty running here. That's the note in the truck
Speaker 1: the pocket is in my pocket, of course, and the
Speaker 1: relay station it says it saw forty three minutes ago
Speaker 1: hard Road's the rack whiz block. Okay, yeah, so let's
Speaker 1: just try to send it a direct message and see
Speaker 1: what happens. Direct message test from Let's just put test one.
Speaker 1: Did that? Oh yeah, there it is. Okay, it didn't
Speaker 1: show up. Okay, scent test one, And now we're going
Speaker 1: to look and see if the checkbox comes up. Okay,
Speaker 1: I got a line through the cloud, so the checkbox
Speaker 1: did not come up, so we're not able to hit
Speaker 1: it from here. I was really kind of hoping we'd
Speaker 1: hit it from here, honestly, because it's up high enough.
Speaker 1: But as I said at the beginning of the video,
Speaker 1: this node right here, this is just an old Helltech
Speaker 1: V two node is what that is. It's got its
Speaker 1: own battery, but I have it plugged into a longer
Speaker 1: lasting battery, and it's running on this antenna. This antenna
Speaker 1: right here. Okay, this little guy right here, some rust
Speaker 1: on it. Now, this has been up here for probably
Speaker 1: a year or so. Now that's a great antenna, there's
Speaker 1: nothing wrong with it. But since it's got the coax
Speaker 1: running to it. It's probably got i don't know, six
Speaker 1: or eight feet of kax coming off the mag mount
Speaker 1: antenna and it's running into the low power mestastic node.
Speaker 1: I assume the loss rate is probably quite high at
Speaker 1: nine hundred and fifteen megahertz, and it's probably putting out
Speaker 1: tens of miller watts instead of like a couple hundred milliwatts.
Speaker 1: So it is quite limited in that regard. But you know,
Speaker 1: you work with what you can. So okay, let's drive
Speaker 1: back closer, because I think I was really hoping we
Speaker 1: could get further than that. Actually, I'm gonna try one
Speaker 1: more node. Get the glare out of the screen. There, okay,
Speaker 1: success test two from my phone here, and that's the
Speaker 1: checkbox in the flag and I am connected to my
Speaker 1: KC five HWB pocket and I sent a direct message
Speaker 1: to the Galveston relay. Now, why is the pocket working
Speaker 1: better than the truck node? Because I set up this
Speaker 1: RM two. You see the second one on the list there,
Speaker 1: RM two, that's this guy. Now, I haven't made a
Speaker 1: video about this yet, but I'm working on that too.
Speaker 1: This node right here, this app lab at labs or
Speaker 1: RM two is a Harden meshtastic device that has full
Speaker 1: a tax support. This thing is freaking killer. It's got
Speaker 1: an incredible range on it. I don't know exactly what
Speaker 1: radio is in it, and I'm not sure it's one
Speaker 1: of the one radios are not, but it's got an
Speaker 1: excellent range on that thing. So more to come on
Speaker 1: that later. It's not what we're talking about today. But
Speaker 1: I was able to use my pocket node, and of
Speaker 1: course these all mesh together. I use the pocket node
Speaker 1: which my UH Android app is connect to, and I
Speaker 1: set test too, and it as a direct message to
Speaker 1: the relay and it bounced off the ARM two and
Speaker 1: it hit the relay. So now we're gonna drive farther
Speaker 1: down the road, all right, got to the state park
Speaker 1: where we're at right now, sitting here on the beach side.
Speaker 1: I'm going to go to the bay side here in
Speaker 1: a minute. I was connected to my pocket node and
Speaker 1: I sent a test which was successful, and then I
Speaker 1: connected directly to this ARM two node. Now this is
Speaker 1: sitting in the side seat over here right, and I
Speaker 1: wanted to make sure that my checkbox I was getting
Speaker 1: was not because the first node was seeing it. I
Speaker 1: wanted to make sure even though I'm sending a direct message.
Speaker 1: In my mind, that should mean that the checkbox means
Speaker 1: that node is seeing so I'm sending a direct message.
Speaker 1: So I'm connected to the RM two, the Autlab's ARM
Speaker 1: two device right here, sitting in my front seat, not
Speaker 1: even outside the cab, and I sent test four and
Speaker 1: it's and I got a checkbox there, so it's seeing
Speaker 1: it from there. Now this might be an unfair test.
Speaker 1: This is quite the powerful node right here. This thing's cool.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have this at Hamcasion. Guys come up and
Speaker 1: look at it if you want to. But I'm able
Speaker 1: to bounce. I'm able to mesh off of my pocket
Speaker 1: node because it's a mesh network, so they form a
Speaker 1: mesh together and it's self healing, and I'm able to
Speaker 1: ounce off of my pocket node to the RM two
Speaker 1: and hit the relay that we're probably about three to
Speaker 1: four miles from right now. Between three and four miles,
Speaker 1: I would guess, is the crow flies. Okay, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do one more test and that's probably gonna be it.
Speaker 1: I could drive around the whole island and test it,
Speaker 1: and I probably will eventually, but I don't want to
Speaker 1: do that. In this video, this is again Galveston Island
Speaker 1: State Park. A lot of the pot of videos that
Speaker 1: I do will activate underneath one of these covered picnic
Speaker 1: tables here sometimes, okay, And the other place that I've
Speaker 1: activated many times is on the base side over there.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna drive over to the bay side, so on
Speaker 1: the other side of the farm Market Road, the highway,
Speaker 1: the main drag through town. That's my favorite spot. And
Speaker 1: we're sort of in line of sight with it down
Speaker 1: the beach right now, so I'm gonna go here and
Speaker 1: see what kind of results we get from that area. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm parked in my favorite spot to activate Galveston Island
Speaker 1: State Park. Have done many videos from this spot here,
Speaker 1: and we're back on the truck node. This is my
Speaker 1: truck node, my KC five HWB F two fifty, and
Speaker 1: I already send a message and it's working. The RM
Speaker 1: node is in the seat there. It's still on the
Speaker 1: inside of the truck, so we put it on the outside.
Speaker 1: We're gonna get even better range. We go to the
Speaker 1: relay here, go to direct message this test five, I
Speaker 1: just sent that. Send another one test six send and
Speaker 1: if we look right there, we see a checkbox on
Speaker 1: the cloud right there. So that is successful. So we
Speaker 1: are successfully hitting my relay node put up at the house,
Speaker 1: probably about I would guess it's probably somewhere around fifteen
Speaker 1: sixteen feet. I should measure it to be sure to
Speaker 1: see what it is. I am happy with that. Again,
Speaker 1: this is my favorite area to activate Galveston On in
Speaker 1: State Park here, so when I'm here doing activations, which
Speaker 1: I'm about to do right now, I will have access
Speaker 1: to the mesh at the house and be able to
Speaker 1: send messages back and forth. In fact, I should have
Speaker 1: had my wife connect to it, but oh well, maybe
Speaker 1: we'll do that next time. So guys check the links
Speaker 1: in the description. BLOW very happy with this Spec five relay.
Speaker 1: I put a couple of pictures of it of the
Speaker 1: install on Instagram yesterday. Got a lot of really good feedback.
Speaker 1: One guy came along and said, man, I've been running
Speaker 1: one for the last year and it's never lost power.
Speaker 1: With the solar panel and the battery that's running it,
Speaker 1: it's never lost power. So I'm interesting to see how
Speaker 1: long the power will last on this one. Probably a
Speaker 1: lot because we get a lot of sun down here
Speaker 1: on the coast. So I'm really happy with this gonna
Speaker 1: put another one up at the house, gonna put another
Speaker 1: one up at the hunting lease, and we'll go from there.
Speaker 1: Let me know what outdoor meshtastic node you're using. If
Speaker 1: you're using one outdoors with a solar panel or whatnot,
Speaker 1: let me know what it is. Put a comment, blow
Speaker 1: love to hear from you on that. Making a video
Speaker 1: about best mestastic outdoor solar panel nodes as we speak
Speaker 1: right now too. So seventy three guys, thanks for watching,
Speaker 1: and we will see you on the Mesh Network.