E1701: Off-Grid Communication Spec5 Meshtastic Solar Node Setup

is probably fine. But today's video sponsor is ABR co Acs ABR Coaxs that's made in the USA, and you can always save a ten percent discount on all of ABR assessories with the coupon code of ABR ten KC

five HWB. I bet you didn't think ABR Coaxs would be a sponsor of mesh Tastic video, right, Well, how about replacing going into their nifty coax builder on their website and replacing this piece of coax here with an SMA mail on one end and a B and C female on the other end and putting some higher grade quality coacs on it. So we're going to do that as our next step. But today I put this thing together. I've been it run for about two days at the

time of this recording. It's showing up fine. I've been let it sit on my outside table on the deck of the beach house. We're in the beach house today. This is not my hamshack, in case you hadn't noticed. So we're at the beach house today and Galveston. I've been wanting to put this up because, quite frankly, the last time I was down here, I drove up and down the island a couple of times with my meshitastic note on the top of my truck, and I saw nothing.

I saw nothing at all. Now the good news is that this time I've been here for about four days at the time in this recording, and on this trip I've been seeing nodes again. Three of the nodes are mine. I've got one in my truck. This one's been online, and I've got my pocket node, which is right here, my little sense of cap T one thousand echo from Seed Studios. So I've got my pocket node that I carry with me everywhere, got one in the truck. We're

going to be upgrading the truck soon. This one's going to go at the beach house in Galveston and stay here. It's going to stay here permanently. I'm going to point the solar panel towards the sun. Hopefully it'll run indefinitely. That'll be an experiment for another video later on to see when I come back down here, probably in about a month for winterfield day, to see what kind of nodes it's picked up and if it's still online and how well it's working. So let's uh check this out.

I'll put a screenshot here of what the board looks like. This is a rack wireless rak rack rack wireless board that's in this unit here. It's all put together and ready to go inside of here and then all you got to do is put the antenna and the solar panel, attach them and bolt them down and tighten them down. One thing I do not like about this system at all. Now this may not affect you depending on what your area is. It comes with these radiator clamps and these

are probably fine in a normal environment. But down here on the beach, right next to the coast, right next to the salt water, any metal you put outside will rust in six to twelve months these would be dust in about six months. These are thin, probably just cheapy radiator hose clamps that you put around. You're gonna put this around a pipe here and put the hose clamps through here. I'm not going to use those at all. I'm going to get some zip ties, some heavy deude

zip ties. I'm gonna zip tie this thing up and cut the ends off and that's where it's gonna stay. Well. Also, this is metal right here that holds the antenna on. Of course, the coax connectors are metal. There's metal screws in the side. Most of this is plass. This arm here is metal. This part's metal, This part's metal. This box here on the side, this is plastic, so I'm not worried about it, but the screws in it or metal.

So what I'm gonna do is, I'm gonna get some spray paint, just some clearcoat spray paint, and lightly touch all the metal pieces on this device to help it last longer, kind of like clear coating a fiberglass antenna before you put it in the air and leave it for several years. So we're gonna do that to this today, and we're gonna see how it looks down here on the beach back in the truck. So the first part of that video that you just watched was recorded two

or three weeks ago. I tried to mount the relay. The mestastic node to that pipe was on the top of my pergola, but it was rusted out and I didn't have a ladder tall enough to get all the way up on the pergola. Plus the pipe was rusted out. So we're gonna go to home depot today and we're gonna get a whole new pipe, and we're going to mount this today and then we're gonna do some range testing with it. I have a rudimentary node in the truck right now. It is hanging right I wonder if

you could see it behind me. It's hanging right there. The yellow and blue no just got a Helltech V two in it. And I have an external antenna running magmount nine hundred and fifty meggerz atenna running on top of the truck. And there's probably a lot of loss in that because it's got like a six or eight foot piece of coax attached to that mag mount that's coming off and connected to the node inside the truck. It does work. That's a case five HWBF two to fifty.

That's my truck node right there, and then the one below it, the KC five HWBB Galveston relay. That's the one we're installing today. It's currently sitting on the picnic table on my patio solar panels, just laying down on its side, pointed towards the sun. Additionally, since it's laying on its side, the antenna is laying almost horizontally instead of vertically, so it's incorrectly polarized. For the transmission types

that we need, it needs to be vertically polarized. You can run it like that, you can run it horizontally polarized, it's just not going to be as efficient if you run it vertically polarized for the types of transmissions that we need. There's more to that. If you don't understand radio, there's a lot of videos in this channel about that. But we're going to go today and get that. But I mean, it's working, it's been working. I put it away in the closet and locked away in the closet.

After that last part of the video, I took it out of the closet, set it on the table pointed it towards the sun the other day, and it's been running for about three or four days at the time of this part of the video. Because it's working just fine. I just need to get it up higher and get it vertically polarized and get the solar panel pointed more directly at the sun. And that's the object of today. Parked here at the Home Depot, this is the only

home improvement store on the island. There's not a Lows here. There's not a true veal. You know. There might be a true value somewhere downtown that's like a little family owned shop or some sort of little hardware store, but for the most part, the Home Depot is the only thing here. So Home Depot's fine. I go to Lows at home mostly because it's closest to my house, not because I have any special love for lows o our Home Depot or something. I don't really care. But here

we're going to Home Depot, all right. The first stop is going to be the zipped because, like I said in the beginning, those are huge sheeesh, seventeen inches. Okay, well that is what it is, I guess. Because we don't want to put them up with those really crummy stainless steel radiator clamps, and those things will be rust city in like six months. So much better option here. This galvanized steel supposedly is rustproof, but it's not. Most of the bolts and the screws I put on my

fence are galvanized, and guess what already roasted. I think that's probably what I need right there. That's probably tall enough. Heard was probably twenty feet in the air or something like that, twelve inches. Got a flange base right there, and I got a cap for the top because without that, you're gonna get rain water inside of it. It's gonna rust from the inside out as well as the outside. It's gonna rust anyway. There's no avoiding that, but might

as well mitigate it as long as possible. Those of you who might have asked about some of the videos of my truck with radio rack that I built, I built it out of this stuff. This is galvanized and I used steel, but then I painted it and I can figure it the way I wanted to. I'm gonna make a change to it soon, so watch for video on that upcoming as well. Choose your payment type, all right, we got all that, go get some lunch, Probably might stop by the local cigar shop that has become one

of my favorite places to go around here. And then we're gonna head back to the house and I'm going to put this thing up and then do a range test on it later. Because I can send it a direct message and if I get the checkbox in the cloud, the cloud icon on the Meshtastic software, that means the message was received. I can also just send a message in long fast and see if and then come back

to the house. Just type a message in long fast saying five miles, ten miles, twenty mile, whatever, and then come back to the house and see how many of those are in the long fast inbox of the relay notes. So it's a couple of different ways to do it there, And might do that all right. I got this thing hung up on the roof and you can see it right right there. Go look at it in a second.

Actually went back to home depot and got some larger pipe and I got a barrel connector to go in the middle of the pipe for the mount on the Spec five relay for the mount to set on. I've got my pocket node here. This is a Seed Studios T one thousand echo. This is what I carry in my pocket. I cliped this to my belt loop and I put this in my pocket, and this is the meshtastic device that I carry with me every day. And

I'm gonna show you on the screen here. We've got the KC five HWB pocket on the screen right there, and then in U five M that's the good aprsigate that's in town. But he also has some meshtastic nodes up so cool. And then the fourth one down there is the k HWB Galveston Relay and that is that dude right there. We saw it eighteen minutes ago. I'm going to send it a message direct message test. Let's see, and we can see the checkbox in this screen shot.

Here on the far right side of the test message, there's a checkbox. And now if we go back to nodes here now, the Galveston Relay is the second one we see, and it says it synced with it just now, so it is working. It's online. Show you what it looks like up on top of the roof here, So we're up right now. Probably this deck is probably like eight or nine feet off the ground, something like that,

and there's the backyard there. See if I can climb up here without falling off this ladder and the wood on top of this pergle it needs to be replaced because it's been up here a while and it gets weathered pretty good. So this is the relay here. I've got the dish pointed basically that way. That's kind of like pointing south. It's not due south, it's a little bit southeast. But you can see the sun right now

is over there that part of the sky. When the sun comes up in the morning, it'll be over there in that part of the sky. So it kind of moves from east to west. Actually, it's pointed a little southwest, I should say, not southeast. It's pointed more southwest, but it's almost due south. And I can adjust this right here if I wanted to. It's a twelve watt solar panel, you can see right here. I can. I can loosen these screws and adjust this. This is where the rack

board is for the meschastic radio. And then of course we've got this antenna that's up here, and this is the antenna that the Spec five relay comes with. I mounted it told in the earlier part of the video set. I didn't want to use those really cheap looking to me, stainless steel radiator style clamps, so we put zip ties on it. The zip ties will probably outlast everything in this whole setup. This will eventually rust right here. These

bolts and nuts will eventually rust. I might put a dab of spray paint or something on these just for the heck of it. But that's the relay radio. That's the meshtastic relay radio, and it's gonna stay here in Galveston for the foreseeable future. I'm wondering. I'm wondering if the next time a big storm comes through, if it's gonna rip it off of here. It's not top it's on here really good. It's bolted down. But with the wind out here, I mean, you never can tell. So

we're gonna do something. I'm gonna get in the truck, We're gonna get on the I'm gonna fire up the R finder tablet, show you what it looks like on the screen for my F two fifty note, and then we're gonna drive down to probably like the State Park, which is that direction. It's west of here, and we're gonna see what it looks like and how far we can send a message to it. All right, I stopped at the first point, which I think is probably about

two miles away, straight shot down the beach. That direction is where the house is. Now. My house is not this row of houses, it's the second row that way, okay, And we're right here at the entrance of Galveston Island State Park. We've done a lot of PoTA activations from this spot right here. If you look at Google Maps, this entire road and this whole area right here is actually inside the park. They put the pylon boundaries here.

I think, in my opinion, the reason they put those there inside of the park, inside of the boundary is because if they put them over there, then they'd have people driving down the beach all the time inside the state park. Then they don't want you to do that. It's prohibited, blah blah blah. Okay, So we're probably about two miles that direction, and we're going to look at the case five HWB Galveston Relay. That's where we're at right now. It saw this. I've got the F two

to fifty running here. That's the note in the truck the pocket is in my pocket, of course, and the relay station it says it saw forty three minutes ago hard Road's the rack whiz block. Okay, yeah, so let's just try to send it a direct message and see what happens. Direct message test from Let's just put test one. Did that? Oh yeah, there it is. Okay, it didn't show up. Okay, scent test one, And now we're going

to look and see if the checkbox comes up. Okay, I got a line through the cloud, so the checkbox did not come up, so we're not able to hit it from here. I was really kind of hoping we'd hit it from here, honestly, because it's up high enough. But as I said at the beginning of the video, this node right here, this is just an old Helltech V two node is what that is. It's got its own battery, but I have it plugged into a longer lasting battery, and it's running on this antenna. This antenna

right here. Okay, this little guy right here, some rust on it. Now, this has been up here for probably a year or so. Now that's a great antenna, there's nothing wrong with it. But since it's got the coax running to it. It's probably got i don't know, six or eight feet of kax coming off the mag mount antenna and it's running into the low power mestastic node.

I assume the loss rate is probably quite high at nine hundred and fifteen megahertz, and it's probably putting out tens of miller watts instead of like a couple hundred milliwatts. So it is quite limited in that regard. But you know, you work with what you can. So okay, let's drive back closer, because I think I was really hoping we could get further than that. Actually, I'm gonna try one

more node. Get the glare out of the screen. There, okay, success test two from my phone here, and that's the checkbox in the flag and I am connected to my KC five HWB pocket and I sent a direct message to the Galveston relay. Now, why is the pocket working better than the truck node? Because I set up this RM two. You see the second one on the list there, RM two, that's this guy. Now, I haven't made a video about this yet, but I'm working on that too.

This node right here, this app lab at labs or RM two is a Harden meshtastic device that has full a tax support. This thing is freaking killer. It's got an incredible range on it. I don't know exactly what radio is in it, and I'm not sure it's one of the one radios are not, but it's got an excellent range on that thing. So more to come on that later. It's not what we're talking about today. But I was able to use my pocket node, and of

course these all mesh together. I use the pocket node which my UH Android app is connect to, and I set test too, and it as a direct message to the relay and it bounced off the ARM two and it hit the relay. So now we're gonna drive farther down the road, all right, got to the state park where we're at right now, sitting here on the beach side. I'm going to go to the bay side here in a minute. I was connected to my pocket node and I sent a test which was successful, and then I

connected directly to this ARM two node. Now this is sitting in the side seat over here right, and I wanted to make sure that my checkbox I was getting was not because the first node was seeing it. I wanted to make sure even though I'm sending a direct message. In my mind, that should mean that the checkbox means that node is seeing so I'm sending a direct message.

So I'm connected to the RM two, the Autlab's ARM two device right here, sitting in my front seat, not even outside the cab, and I sent test four and it's and I got a checkbox there, so it's seeing it from there. Now this might be an unfair test. This is quite the powerful node right here. This thing's cool. I'm gonna have this at Hamcasion. Guys come up and look at it if you want to. But I'm able

to bounce. I'm able to mesh off of my pocket node because it's a mesh network, so they form a mesh together and it's self healing, and I'm able to ounce off of my pocket node to the RM two and hit the relay that we're probably about three to four miles from right now. Between three and four miles, I would guess, is the crow flies. Okay, I'm gonna do one more test and that's probably gonna be it.

I could drive around the whole island and test it, and I probably will eventually, but I don't want to do that. In this video, this is again Galveston Island State Park. A lot of the pot of videos that I do will activate underneath one of these covered picnic tables here sometimes, okay, And the other place that I've activated many times is on the base side over there. I'm gonna drive over to the bay side, so on the other side of the farm Market Road, the highway,

the main drag through town. That's my favorite spot. And we're sort of in line of sight with it down the beach right now, so I'm gonna go here and see what kind of results we get from that area. Okay, I'm parked in my favorite spot to activate Galveston Island State Park. Have done many videos from this spot here, and we're back on the truck node. This is my truck node, my KC five HWB F two fifty, and I already send a message and it's working. The RM

node is in the seat there. It's still on the inside of the truck, so we put it on the outside. We're gonna get even better range. We go to the relay here, go to direct message this test five, I just sent that. Send another one test six send and if we look right there, we see a checkbox on the cloud right there. So that is successful. So we are successfully hitting my relay node put up at the house, probably about I would guess it's probably somewhere around fifteen

sixteen feet. I should measure it to be sure to see what it is. I am happy with that. Again, this is my favorite area to activate Galveston On in State Park here, so when I'm here doing activations, which I'm about to do right now, I will have access to the mesh at the house and be able to send messages back and forth. In fact, I should have had my wife connect to it, but oh well, maybe we'll do that next time. So guys check the links

in the description. BLOW very happy with this Spec five relay. I put a couple of pictures of it of the install on Instagram yesterday. Got a lot of really good feedback. One guy came along and said, man, I've been running one for the last year and it's never lost power. With the solar panel and the battery that's running it, it's never lost power. So I'm interesting to see how long the power will last on this one. Probably a lot because we get a lot of sun down here

on the coast. So I'm really happy with this gonna put another one up at the house, gonna put another one up at the hunting lease, and we'll go from there. Let me know what outdoor meshtastic node you're using. If you're using one outdoors with a solar panel or whatnot, let me know what it is. Put a comment, blow love to hear from you on that. Making a video about best mestastic outdoor solar panel nodes as we speak

right now too. So seventy three guys, thanks for watching, and we will see you on the Mesh Network.