KBSherwood

Some of that is simply inertia, meshtastic got something like a 4 year head start on meshcore (meshcore came about after the structural issues with meshtastic became clear/wide spread) so its very likely most places will have some legacy meshtastic footprint. From a "node vs node" (apples vs apples) perspective, I see both as equally easy to setup; both have extensive firmware options available, web flash utilites that make it stupid simple, etc. The only difference comes when you are wanting to setup a meshcore repeater, and then the same rules of good RF deployment, husbandry and hygiene come into play. My honest opinion, if you are going through the trouble to purchase a companion (lora) radio and setup a node, start off with meshcore. everyone I've spoken to that uses meshcore started on meshtastic, got frustrated and made the switch (myself included.) If you find meshcore doesnt do it for you, its trivial to reload the firmware to the meshtastic version.

Meshcore. IMO meshtastic has some fundamental design flaws for emergency comms or for use in populated areas. it may work well to get battery and temp info from some random piece of equipment in a field on some farm, but I had roughly a 10% success rate getting messages out on meshtastic. Meshcore requires local infrastructure (repeaters) but is a much more stable/reliable implementation.

Good Afternoon Everyone, Recent events in the world have spurred me to revisit some of my off-grid comms plans, and while voice is well taken care of with all my GMRS kit, data and text were still relying on centralized providers that would likely be unavailable or congested to the point of being unusable in any real emergency, can be surveilled, have records subpoenaed, etc. Previously, I have toyed around with Reticulum network stack (hardware agnostic, very very cool project) using some cheap LoRa 900mHz ISM radios, and while awesome, it's not very user friendly for the less tech savvy, requires network build out and access to the infrastructure and overall wasn't a great option for my goal. So I repurposed those nodes for Meshtastic. Seemed great, had lots of users around, and my "pokedex" of contacts was filling up fast, however some architectural decisions by the creators have made Meshtastic almost unusable where I am. In Meshtastic everything is a "repeater" and those repeaters love to spam useless telemetry about each node, that along with the fact they limit network transversal to 7 hops (if you are in a saturated area 7 hops could be within a few blocks) I had a less than 10% success rate getting messages out. Its advertised as an emergency comms solution, but in reality its best effort text messaging that I wouldn't trust for crap. Enter MeshCore, its another project that aims to correct the shortcomings of Meshtastic: only designated repeaters actually forward packets, network traversal is set to 64 hops, and telemetry is not broadcast, along with some other differences. The project is still very young, but I was immediately impressed with the amount of nodes here in the Pacific Northwest, we can reliably communicate between British Columbia, CA all the way down to Medford, OR. I flashed one of my lora radios with their built in web flashing utility (make sure to enter boot or DFU mode) and connected to it with my phone via bluetooth (important: the basic lora radios are "companion's" meaning they are connected to your phone, and you text through an app that relays to the lora device which then transmits) and threw it up on my roof. I knew that with the slow rate of repeater advertisements that I would need to wait a few days to hear the "adverts" from the various repeaters in my area before the system could build routes to send out data to the wider network. Well after about a week of that, I had received a whooping 3 packets. Cool... cool. A little disheartened I reached out to some of the local Meshcore users to see if what I was experiencing was the norm, faulty hardware, bad settings, etc. Everything seemed good, and it was simply an issue of using sub-watt radios without great line of sight. Determined to throw good money after bad, I decided to at least give building my own repeater a shot, if that worked, great. If not, these $30-50 radios would go back in the bin and I wouldn't be that much worse off. Originally I was going for a roof mounted node, however after seeing other Meshcore folks build "tree-peaters" I decided that would be the best proof of concept and would avoid me falling off the roof. I ordered everything below off of amazon and started building. My repeater consists of the following bits: 1. Heltec T114 915 mHz lora radio 2. A 5600mAh 3.7v li-ion battery 3. A "muzi works" 915mHz 17cm lora whip antenna 4. A "soshine" 5v 6watt mini solar panel 5. A "peakmesh" li-ion battery protection circuit - the T114 comes with a built in solar charging circuit, and a built in battery management system, however its shutoff voltage is 2.5v and the batteries can be permanently damaged by over discharging them, this board shuts them off at 2.9v a much safer level. 6. A generic black project box Total cost was about $100, I could have knocked this down to $80 or so by not purchasing a GPS module for the T114, I ended up not using it anyway. Built it in an hour or two over a weekend and used an arborists line to throw it up in a tree, about 40ft up facing south east. It has been working phenomenal! I am connected to two different repeaters, bridging a gap between a few suburbs and connecting the wider area to the meshcore backbone. Even in the 20* winter weather, I've never seen the battery drop below 88% and the oversized solar panel quickly charges the battery back to full power. I am forwarding thousands of data packets daily along our little data path and for $100 and some time I have made Meshcore messaging accessible to a few immediate neighborhoods, and have increased the coverage and reliability of the local network as a whole. Its a very fun little project for anyone who is interested in tinkering and playing with radios. Let me know if you have any questions and I'll do my best to answer them.

Welcome @WSLC227. Sherwood/Newberg area here. We've got plenty of users in the area. Best way to "meet" folks is to join the weekly nets and to get on some of the repeaters such as ARRG, GoatMT, CooperMT, etc. Lots of traffic in the mornings and evening commute times. Here is the list of repeaters from my cheat sheet I keep by the base station: Repeater Location RX Freq. TX code RX code ARRGPDX Westside PDX 462.550 100.0 100.0 Gervais550 Gervais 462.550 250.3 250.3 WRPP345 Tualatin 462.575 123.0 123.0 Newberg575 Newberg 462.575 225.7 225.7 FernHill575 Forest Grove 462.575 136.5 136.5 Keizer575 Keizer 462.575 141.3 141.3 ORCity575 Oregon City 462.575 110.9 110.9 LAK17R Lake Oswego 462.600 123.0 123.0 Huy600 Beaverton 462.600 118.8 118.8 Brooks600 Brooks 462.600 179.9 179.9 CanbyFire Canby 462.625 162.2 162.2 Overlook625 Portland 462.625 156.7 156.7 RockyPoint625 Albany 462.625 179.9 156.7 Albany625 Albany 462.625 141.3 141.3 WRPX794 Gaston 462.625 100.0 100.0 LinnCARES Linn County 462.625 123.0 123.0 CooperMT Beaverton 462.650 107.2 107.2 Hopewell650 Hopewell 462.650 141.3 141.3 Molalla650 Molalla 462.650 100.0 100.0 Pioneer675 Oregon City 462.675 218.1 218.1 Salem675 Salem 462.675 141.3 141.3 Saint Helens Saint Helens 462.675 123.0 123.0 Sherwood700 Sherwood 462.700 141.3 141.3 GoatMT Colton 462.700 107.2 107.2 GreshamPDX Gresham 462.700 Portland1 Portland 462.700 110.9 110.9 MilwaukieCERT Milwaukie 462.700 167.9 167.9 Wilsonville725 Wilsonville 462.725 110.9 110.9 Prune Hill Camas, WA 462.725 127.3 127.3 Brownsville S. Corvallis 462.725 127.3 127.3 Nets Day & Time ORCity 575 Monday 7:30pm LAK17R Monday 7pm Hopewell 650 Tues 6pm / Sat 9am Salem 675 Mon & Thurs 6pm GoatMT Saturday 7pm MilwaukieCERT 3rd Monday 7pm Prune Hill Sunday 6:30 > 8pm

Learned something new this morning, appreciate it!

I was making a joke about their appetite for “enforcement” not their statutory authority…

Does it though? Granted I didnt spend very much time, a quick "protege" search of LexisNexis turned up... nothing. Do you have something you've found that says otherwise? I would be very curious on the basis for relief.

This is true, and sloppy wording on my part. the FCC does not make law, it however one of its duties is to enforce its authorizing laws and statutes passed by Congress... in theory.

The FCC enforces rules through civil/administrative actions. That doesn’t mean you can convert a repeater dispute into a criminal matter by seeking an injunction. Courts cannot substitute for the FCC on regulatory violations. Courts do not provide a private remedy for regulatory infractions. Injunctions or civil claims are not a valid path for enforcing spectrum rules.

Oh man, a Wikipedia link explaining what a court is. Truly devastating. I’ll need some time to recover from that level of legal analysis.

someone found a dictionary, but maybe didnt read it: In U.S. law, trespass is not defined by Merriam-Webster. It is defined by statutes and common law, and it has required elements. Dictionary definitions don’t establish legal torts. Trespass requires physical entry onto land or structures. RF propagation through federally regulated shared spectrum does not constitute trespass, theft of services, or unlawful intrusion. If a repeater retransmits signals it wasn’t configured to block, that’s a technical issue, not a legal one. Let’s apply your own quoted definition: “To commit an unlawful injury to the person, property, or rights of another, with actual or implied force or violence, especially to enter onto another's land wrongfully.” Keywords: enter onto, land, property, force or violence Radio waves: Do not enter land. Do not occupy space. Do not apply force. Do not cause physical invasion. Are explicitly regulated as shared, non-exclusive spectrum by federal law If merely receiving RF were “intrusion,” then: Broadcast TV would be trespass, Wi-Fi would be trespass, FM radio would be trespass, GPS would be trespass, Emergency alerts would be trespass.

FFS, some people are just incapable of not bringing their own personal political BS into every space and every argument. really added to the conversation there... My wife works in a legal adjacent field and has for many many years, I decided to ask some of her lawyer colleagues for their take, please note: these are lawyers but not specialists in this area, this is not legal advice, I am not your lawyer. etc. etc. 1. Federal communications law (FCC) > preempts state law when it comes to spectrum use and radio operation. States cannot create backdoor control of radio spectrum via trespass or property theory. Courts have consistently recognized this principle in communications related cases. 2. Trespass theory is legally flawed: Trespass requires unauthorized physical entry onto: real property, or a defined physical structure. Using radio waves does not constitute entering real property. No court has ever recognized RF signal reception as physical entry. If it did, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, broadcast TV, FM radio, GPS, and cellular would all create constant trespass claims.There is no legal mechanism to “trespass” someone via RF propagation. 3. Trespass is about land or physical structures. There is no recognized doctrine of “electromagnetic trespass.” Courts have repeatedly rejected: light trespass (except zoning disputes), sound trespass, radio trespass. These are handled, when at all, under nuisance law, not trespass. 4. Repeater is private property =/= universal protections Yes: The repeater hardware is private property. No: Property ownership does not extend to spectrum, property rights do not override FCC licenses or shared-frequency rules. Ownership gives you: the right to turn the repeater off, the right to reconfigure it, the right to physically restrict access to the site. It does not give you: control over who transmits RF signals in public spectrum, a cause of action against someone whose RF your receiver picks up. 5. Theft of service(s): not applicable theft of services generally requires: 1. a paid service, 2. deceptive intent, 3. circumvention of access control. GMRS repeaters: are not paid services by default, do not require authentication, are not FCC-recognized “communications services.” You cannot steal something that is not offered as a service, is not paid, is not access-controlled. 6. RF propagation / receiver responsibility: RF is intentionally non-exclusive, Receivers are responsible for rejecting unwanted signals. If your system retransmits unintended signals, that is a configuration issue, not a legal injury. This aligns with long-standing FCC doctrine: “The licensee must accept interference and manage their station accordingly.”

Personally, I’m a strong supporter of the democratization of technology. We already live in a world where so many everyday tools and services are locked behind subscriptions, access fees, or having to jump through unnecessary hoops. GMRS was supposed to be different, it's a shared public resource with only a small handful of channels available to everyone. If we were talking about amateur radio, where there’s an abundance of spectrum to spread out on, my thoughts would be different... but in GMRS, where the community relies on just eight primary channels, adding gatekeeping, restrictions, or paywalls around essential shared infrastructure feels counterproductive and, frankly, contrary to the spirit of the service. Mr. @marcspaz started a wonderful thread change my mind I dont need permission to use your repeater thats worth a read. TL;DR - Many radios will be able to scan for the repeater codes if there is traffic on those frequencies, and supply the TX/RX codes to you for use. Be polite, respectful and follow the rules of transmission and go for it.

I've got a question for you, I'm in a similar boat but with the antenna mounting. Drilling for an NMO mount is unacceptable, not only for myself but if I intend to stay married and in possession of all my body parts, there will be no holes. 90% of the body panels are alu, roof is all glass which is coated, and there isn't an acceptable spot for a lip mount so right now I'm stuck with a mag mount on the rear trunk lid. I've considered the idea of getting a carbon fiber trunk lid and drilling that but there are better ways I could light a few grand on fire.

Very much so, thank you. Both @markskjerve and yourself (with the digirig), have given me some good interface leads to follow up on! My wife will be thrilled...

Oh man... this might be the money right here. I'm going to have to reach out them and ask some questions but this is looking promising! Thank you very much for the recommendation. Any others, please keep them coming!

All good questions and ones I’m hoping those who have been around longer than I might know the answers to. I did look around and you are right I don’t think there are any published sdks or anything, at least not in the “non-commercial” segment. I'm pretty confident I can get things working if I can just figure out/visualize how I’d interface to the radio with more ability/privileges than just uploading new configs. I didn’t want to have to resort to a Rube Goldberg machine that physically presses the PTT and outputs the desired audio via a physical speaker or something.

Mr. Shannon I was hoping you might have some insight! I'm familiar enough with "dial a relay" boards for power control on devices at remote sites, but I'm also having trouble picking up what you're putting down in the grand scheme of my idea. Are you suggesting to get a DTMF board, hook that up to the PC/rasp. pi/arduino and then have the relay control the power supply to the radio? Right now I've got a Wouxun KG-20XS running off of a pyramid linear/regulated PSU that would be trivial to wire to the relay board (given it supports the max 12amp draw, but thats just choosing the right board) to power on/reboot the PSU thus powering/rebooting the radio? Now getting into the digital outs/GPIO's am I correct in the assuming that I would be using the PC/microcontroller with the radio's USB programming cable to run the radio in a "live" format? In my example above, regarding earthquake alerts, I'm assuming something like: PC is powered on, has the USB cable run to the radio, programming software is up/active and when my script detects whatever it would like to alert on it fires off a macro or similar to push through the alert code? This is really where I feel I am stuck, and likely just not thinking creatively enough, but how do I get from the "OK the controller has detected whatever triggers the action, now make noise out of the radio on the other end." Thank you very much!

Hello everyone, I’m hoping to pick your brains as to how to possibly accomplish some PC/API integration or otherwise perform some function triggering based on various inputs from a PC or other microcontroller (hell, even PLC’s would suffice.) I have been in high level IT for a couple decades and I have no problem prototyping my own boards or writing my own scripts, but I’m unfamiliar with the ways folks have found to interface with the radios. All of our (my) radios can receive an alarm or alert tone and that tone or sequence of tones can sound the alarm, disable the radio, re-enable the radio, etc. What I would like to do is use a PC or microcontroller to interface with the radio to automatically send alerts or alarms to our radios. Possibly expanding this out to use DTMF tones to change channels, reboot devices, etc. For example, I write a small script that runs on the attached PC to query the MyShake earthquake prediction network, when the API returns a possible earthquake is eminent, to blast the alarm to all of our radios on our preconfigured family channel. This would give us 30-60 seconds of notice before the shaking begins and enough time to get outside or under cover. I am NOT trying to link repeaters, OR to transmit over VOIP/POTS/etc but rather use a device (the PC) to physically key up the radio, send the alarm tone sequence or whatnot, then unkey the radio. In my opinion, this falls much more under “accessibility options” rather than “digital GMRS.” I could even try to have the system do a bit of audio analysis on the front end to ensure there is no traffic at the time. Another example, we’re talking simplex from the home base station to the mobile base station and I’m getting out of simplex range, I could use the DTMF tones to send a request for the attached PC to change to the repeater channel that’s most appropriate for where our mobile is currently located. There are a hundred different ways I could see this being used, while hopefully still staying “true” to the rules and regs, but y’all are much, much more knowledgeable than I am. What do you think?

I experience the same on channel 15/repeater 1 in my area, in multiple parts of town.

Beautiful, thank you very much everyone. This is the wisdom I'm hoping to glean from the forums. 1. I've spoken with the MPDigital/USA Coax folks and at least their presales customer service seems great, given the fact that DXE is out of stock until late december I'm likely going to purchase the cable f4rom MPD. The base stations should arrive today so I want to mock up how I plan to mount the home radio then order up the cable. I'll let you know how it goes with MPD. 2 & 3. @PA141 I appreciate the advice/guidance! @Sshannon many thanks for the video. this was essentially my concern. my antenna isnt all that high gain and the run "longer" so I want to be conservative with my potential losses. I am very familiar with amphenol connectors from my telephony/carrier grade POTS work, but since I'm not making the cable/I'll be "supporting" it (rather than calling a vendor to roll a truck to replace a faulty cable) I think I'm going to suck it up and keep all of the connectors straight runs and skip the patch cable at the radio end. I want as few potential points of failure/loss as possible. Since it will be stationary I'm not too concerned about cable flexibility after the initial install. 4. I've talked with a few avionics folks who have sold me on crimped cables rather than soldered. My quasi-educated mind says soldered would be better but everyone I've spoken to has told me their experience is that crimped is more reliable. 5. I will be following the "water proofing" advice given above. Its going to be a PITA to get that antenna mounted where I want it, and I'm really not keen on the idea of having to do it a second time because I skimped somewhere the first go around. EDIT: I thought it might be worth while to add the MPD Digital warranty info on their cables: WARRANTY INFO: 60 DAY Return for Any Reason - 1 YEAR Exchange or Repair for Any Reason - 5 YEARS Repair of Connectors - 10 YEARS Replacement for failure of Cable Jacket or Conductor. If I can get this setup to last me 10 years I'll be happy. Thanks again all!

Oh, rough go man. Well hopefully its something simple like a fuse, otherwise hopefully a hardwired solution would be possible/not too difficult. At least the radio works.

It's a work in progress. Follow the "issue" request for this radio and you'll get all of the details. Last comments were about a week ago https://chirp.danplanet.com/issues/10648

Hello everyone, I've got a couple Wouxon KG-XS20g's coming and I'm planning on making one into a base station for the house. I'm going to mount a GMRS single band antenna to the peak of our two story house (IF I can get a second ladder that will straddle the lower peak...) and route that cable into the garage where the base station will live. I've measured and the run will be 43ft total, so I figured I'd get a nice round 50 footer. All of my research suggests the oft recommend LMR400 should be the go to, but I have a few questions I'm hoping you folks can put to rest for me. I likely wouldn't get times microwave but one of the house brands from DX engineering or USA Coax... 1. Has anyone here used USA Coax (MPD Digital) and can speak to their in house brand cable? I'm looking at the MPD400 ultraflex. DX engineerings website says they're 50ft wont be in stock until 12/28/23... 2. The antenna comes with an N female connector, the radio comes with an SO-239 (I believe that's the name), I can get MPD Digital to custom make me a cable with the correct ends (N male and PO-259) for a good price (I feel) BUT... should I go this route or get N male on both ends and use a small patch cable at the radio? My gut says the less connections/adapters the better, but lots of folks seem to like to use the patch cables at the radio side. 3. The way I'd like to route the cable would be best with a 90* plug coming off the antenna, however I have read on here to avoid 90's. Is this true for my situation or are we talking more along the lines of connecting 2x 50ft cables with a 90 adapter in the middle that's bad? 4. Solder or crimped ends? MPD offers both, I myself am in IT and have made and pulled literal miles of ethernet in my time, always crimped with great conductivity even up to 10Ghz, however I also do a lot of electronics repair/development work and will take a soldered connection over a crimped any day of the week. My guess would be that the individual making the cable at MPD would be capable of doing both. Is there a benefit to one over another if they had the tools and experience to do both correctly? I've seen comments on here that folks prefer crimped, I'm guessing that's if DIYing the cable? 5. I live in the PNW and it rains 6 months out of the year here. I know the N connector is "Water resistant" but I'm wondering about further water proofing, I have some decent shrink tubing that could put over the connector at the antenna, otherwise I could silicone the ish out of the exterior of the connector, I have some proper 33+ electrical tape I could wrap it in, but I wanted something a bit more permanent. Comments/opinions? Thank you very much!

ROFL I ordered one from the "prime day" (which is what once every 6mos now?) and it showed up essentially DOA. Turned on ONCE, received its programming, I turned it off, went inside for a few hours, came back out and dead... Tried on two different vehicles and 3 different 12v sockets. Already submitted my return. Likely going with a Wouxun KG-XS20G