Sun Coast Amateur
Radio Club Society - blog

va7ilo_meshcore_repeater_build

VA7ILO Meshcore Repeater Build

Here is a little write up about the repeater I decided to build for Meshcore using a Heltec V4 board, I could have bought an off the shelf one, but I thought it would be more fun to build and design.

I am very new to Meshcore so there are still quite a few things I am learning about it and consequently after starting on this I revised a couple of things and also realized that there are a few things hardware wise I would have done differently. Some of the things I bought I wanted a shorter lead time so either bought more than I needed or paid more to get things in a timelier manner. The links are put there to illustrate what I used, not necessarily a suggestion to where to buy them from.

First off, the Heltec V4 has a built-in solar input so this could be used to interface it (using caution that the maximum voltage is 6 V) the downside of doing this is the charging current is maximum 500 mA and there is a risk that even a 5-volt panel might have an open circuit voltage that exceeds this 6 V maximum. In light of this I opted for a charge controller board rated at 3 amps, which takes advantage of the maximum charge that the solar panel can put out as well as over voltage protection etc.… The board has ntc pads on it for freeze protection and high battery temperature protection (by default on the variant I have this is bypassed with a surface mount 10K resistor, which could be removed and pads soldered to with the yellow or white wire from a battery that has an onboard 10K thermistor or alternatively adding a thermistor against the battery casing if it doesn’t have this) this could be useful to use but I opted to not bother with it as I decided to use a separate freeze protection method, the charging board has overcharge and over discharge protection, the battery has its own high temperature and other protections too. The remaining consideration that is left is freeze protection (not sure if this is overkill or not if I insulate things somewhat but better safe than sorry) so I ordered some small temperature switches from Aliexpress that are normally closed 0 degree centigrade rating, these should open up if the battery temperature reaches 0 degrees and halt charging until it warms up again, I will open one of the lines from the solar panel and install it there and put it against the battery case with some Kapton tape. I chose this board originally for the NTC part but abandoned that idea as I preferred to have the freeze switch instead, I could have chosen a different board for my purposes due to this. I think it is better to go with minimum 3A board as I tested this one by plugging it into a usb charger and it drew 2.6A at first charging the battery so if you want to pre charge the battery good to know, as charging progressed it did switch to a much lower charging current.

Another thing worth noting, is using a custom firmware tuned to ultra low power consumption like EasySkyMesh, below is a link to a separate article I am writing (bit of a work in progress), an excellent way to go for a solar node to really bring the draw down incredibly. Actually EasySkyMesh has affected another hardware choice, I was going to put a voltage monitor circuit to ground out the RST pin when the voltage dropped too low to prevent brown out boot loops, but this firmware virtually eliminates this concern so another advantage.

EasySkyMesh Firmware for Meshcore

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0FFS9WXQG?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title

To prepare the board I soldered a PH 2.0 connector to the battery terminals B+ and B- and then I soldered a JST 1.25 pigtailed connector to the J+ and J- pins on the charging board so I could plug directly into the Heltec V4 battery input connector. I decided since the solar panel has a USB C connector, I would just plug it directly into there and make a USB C adapter later on for the temperature switch. I also left the solar panel cable full length to give me the option of moving it around for the best sun location.

I used this for a case:

This for SMA to N connector (I should have used one a little shorter but not a huge problem)

The antenna I chose was this one, it was probably not the best value for what it was but I had it so I used it (got rid of the 20 foot cable) there are many similar or better outdoor antennas that are less expensive, so this is one of the things I would have done differently.

This is the solar panel I used:

This is the battery I used, 5200 mA with BOM protections, battery plugged in nicely to the PH connector I soldered to the board, I might opt for a larger capacity battery later on, will see how this works out first.

This is the Heltec V4 I used:

This was my first step, installing the N connector with SMA pigtail and the solar panel cable.

Next I mounted the charge controller board and battery:

I didn’t want to put a GPS in it as it is fairly power hungry, so I set the coordinates manually and added a real time clock module to keep the time in synch. This is the module I used, doesn’t have indicator LEDs so that is helpful with power consumption too. The Power Win (99% Less Drain): A GPS module constantly pulls 24 mA to 30 mA to track satellites. The DS3231 RTC pulls a near-invisible 0.2 mA when updating, a huge power saving.

This is the module I used:

(I removed the details about installing this temporarily as I will need to give a better explanation on how to install it and with which firmware, GPIO3 and GPIO 4 work well for EasySkyMesh for instance after remapping but not the stock MC firmware, I will add this back with more details later). Latest update, I actually am going to remove the clock module as it doesn't seem to be capturing the time correctly anyways. Since I am using EasySkyMesh firmware, I will put the GPS module back as it is off something like 99% of the time with this firmware so the overall draw is miniscule.

Next, I mounted the Heltec board and clock module, plugged the connector from the battery terminal on the charging board into the Heltec onboard battery connector, the battery into the charging board connector and the solar panel USB C connector into the charging board.

For good measure sealed around the N connector and the strain relief for the solar panel wire, finally mounted the box on my roof and the solar panel on the sunny side.

The location I mounted it has a rectangular metal chimney cap, I worry that it might affect the radiation pattern too much so most likely will mount it a little above this, but for now it is getting out fairly well. I used high temperature double sided tape to mount everything and also adhesive clips to organize the wires better.

Here are some of the links, I am sure if you shop around, you can get much better prices on things if you are willing to wait a little for them to arrive.

Heltec V4: (cheaper on Aliexpress)

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0G3P28F1N?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title

Enclosure:

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B07KXSPRGC?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title&th=1

Charging Module:

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0FFS9WXQG?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title

Battery:

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0C2VFTDPY?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title

Antenna:

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B09N2H166D?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title

N connector to SMA:

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0FDB2BN1R?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title&th=1

Real Time Clock Module:

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B08X4H3NBR?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title&th=1

Temperature Switch:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007233738243.html?spm=a2g0o.order_detail.order_detail_item.4.83eb126a15Xgpz

These kind of clips are nice for arranging the wires in the box:

https://www.amazon.ca/Xetree-Cable-Adhesive-Transparent-Organizers/dp/B0H6X1JCVL/ref=sr_1_10?crid=3UCHVA81WV822&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.fTut_kH-4qwM99Dn_5CoABaRd8lb4TaQzRcnM3Z82PC0koK5gfiEi54jE1cfZEUX8i8kPdPgbKv1yTTlO4wCB9uxItRV_PK-1UzhPQ7GkP2DKUghHtCe7hrr7JEbIVw9zH9h9Q5dVIdCgt5FZaMLpQHi5MWHsW7CJl_WD1A770f65GAe2rqbynOESzunYzUOR2aIJonm__p-VL3ciYim7juKtMenmbcYvfZbYsCy5nNJSQF9mhNL3L3GqEOliztzdLO4xoT3JrzMUvBUd7cL3Vts5rplJHErdNmsAvXFWSE.kxa4dI1Yqi0_EDjx-75AmOzfLNqB6bqxngdtlsrJ844&dib_tag=se&keywords=adhesive+clips&qid=1787703074&refinements=p_85%3A5690392011&rnid=5690384011&rps=1&s=electronics&sprefix=adhesive+clip%2Celectronics%2C154&sr=1-10

ic-7300mk2_remote

IC-7300MK2 Remote

To remote into my IC-7300MK2, I connected its LAN port to my AREDN hAP, then used wfview (a free and open source program), to access it anywhere on the AREDN mesh.

The settings I had to get from the radio were:

Hostname
Control Port
Username
Password

This page lists settings that should be adjusted in the radio to get better results. I haven't played with that yet.

printed_references

Printed References

Computers are great, but for some things, there's nothing like paper... Here's a list of references that I have printed at my station:

Page 1‒3 of my Radio Frequency List found on the Radio Programming page under the “Refs” section. On that page, I've got the repeaters that I use the most circled with some hand written notes.
The radio “Reference Guides” for the three kinds of radios I have at my stations from the Radio Programming page. These are single page print outs that show me how to setup a frequency, repeater offset, and tone in the VFO in case I need to work a repeater I don't have programmed. This is the kind of stuff that's important to know but really easy to forget.
Page 2‒3 of the nets page using the PDF output command. I also hand wrote the channel numbers for quick cross reference.
A paper copy of the Sunshine Coast Emergency Communications page filed in my emergency binder.
I also have my Grid Square taped to my desk. A Grid square is a series alternating pairs of letters and digits like CN89. The more characters are listed, the more precise the location, which is a good way of giving your location to any desired level of resolution and keep any level of privacy you like. At my latitude:
- 4 characters covers an area of about 16,000 km²
- 6 characters covers an area of about 28 km²
- 8 characters covers an area of about 0.2 km²
- 10 characters pretty much pin points my house.

school_amateur_radio_club_network

School Amateur Radio Club Network

SARCNET is really cool site that lists activities and projects to explore the world of ham radio. I stumbled on it searching for an 2-axis antenna rotator.

cyd_ham_dashboard

CYD Ham Dashboard

This project seems really interesting:

A HamClock-inspired ham radio dashboard for the ESP32 Cheap Yellow Display, supporting both the 2.8“ ESP32-2432S028R and the 4.0” 320×480 ST7796S variant from a single source tree.

Here are the seven screen it displays:

If anyone is thinking of building one, let me know, I'd love to have one of the 4“ ones!

reactos_attempt

ReactOS Attempt

I recently just learned of ReactOS, a Free and Open Source Operating System that has been in the works for over 20 years and aims to be able to natively run Windows programs and drivers. It's still feature-incomplete alpha software, but I thought it could be a good way of running ham radio programs made for Windows so I gave it a try in Virtualbox and tried to install Winlink.

TLDR:

Winlink loads but I can't seem to be able to configure it. Here's what I've done so far and where it fails. If anyone else is interested in tinkering with this, let me know if you manage to get passed any of these issues...

Download ReactOS

First step: Downloaded the BootCD (not LiveCD) of ReactOS 0.4.13 and save it.

Virtualbox

I used Virtualbox 6.1 under LinuxMint 20 XFCE.

Create a new machine.
Name it “ReactOS” and the version will pre-populate to “Windows 2003 (32-bit)” on its own.
I doubled the RAM to 1024MB
To load the “install CD”, click on the word “Storage”:
Select “Empty” and click on the CD icon.
Navigate to the file ReactOS-0.4.13.iso and you should see:
Back to the first screen, you can now start the machine.

Install ReactOS

The install screen will start and you simply press ENTER.
In fact, you'll have to press ENTER a few times until this next screen, where you need to press P first, and then ENTER:
On version 0.4.15, press C instead of P
ReactOS will show a bunch more screens, simply follow the prompts. It'll reboot and install more things. Then at some point, it'll ask to remove the CD. This is done using the CD icon at the bottom of the Virtualbox screen:
That looks promising! ReactOS has a Windows 2000 look, which I personally prefer to all the other versions of Windows.

Install Firefox

Now that ReactOS is installed, we're ready to install some programs.

Click on the Applications Manager:
Search for Firefox and install version 48.
Once Firefox is installed, do not let it update; that broke it for me.
Up to this point, everything works fine, but we're about to break things so before we continue, let's create a clone of the Virtualbox install...

Attempt #1

The first thing I tried was to install Winlink Express.
It installed but wouldn't load at all.

Attempt #2

This Winlink with Wine page says to install these in the following sequence:

.NET 3.5 sp1
“Microsoft Visual Basic 6 Runtime Service Pack 6”
“Microsoft HTML Rendering Engine 8”
“Visual C++ 14.0”

I got stuck at step 1...

At first, it looked like it was gonna work:
But then it seems it got stuck downloading some components and after a while failed:

Attempt #3

I deleted the machine and re-cloned the clone I made earlier.

From the Applications Manager, I installed .NET version 2:
and VB6:
Installed Winlink again, and this time it loaded. It took about 15-20 seconds, but it loaded:
But unfortunately, when I go to Settings → Winlink Express Setup... and fill out the information, it doesn't “Update”.

Attempt #4

I tried the same thing as the previous attempt but with .NET version 2 SP2. Same result.

Attempt #5

I tried the same thing as the previous attempt but with .NET version 4 and Winlink wouldn't even load.

Attempt #6

I tried the same thing as all the previous attempts with the daily version of ReactOS without luck. It looks like they did fix a small bug in Firefox though.

To Be Continued...

... maybe. I don't really know what else to try so I'll leave this aside until I think of something else to try. If you have ideas, please let me know! – Patrick, VA7FI 2020/09/28 10:15

easyskymesh_firmware_for_meshcore

EasySkyMesh Firmware for Meshcore

Here is some information on an alternate Meshcore firmware for Heltec and Rak boards, that has emphasis on extreme power saving, in particular for repeater nodes.

I am cobbling this together rather quickly right now with the intention of tidying this article up later on when I am on days off, however I thought this would be good information to get out there right away.

As mentioned in another article here describing my trials and tribulations of creating a repeater from scratch, I decided to use a Heltec V4.3 board which is a little power hungry for a repeater running off solar. I ran across this very popular firmware which is a customization of the vanilla Meshcore firmware and a very good one at that. One really nice feature about it is being able to flash it over the original firmware keeping all your settings and keys etc… (good to export a backup first to be safe though). In order to do this, you just need to choose the correct variant you want the upgrade one and you can you use the regular Meshcore flasher choosing custom firmware, browse to it on your computer then flash it making sure that erase flash is not checked. Another bonus is this can also be done OTA method the same as the original Meshcore firmware so that is a nice feature too.

I flashed my Heltec V4.3 companion with this and it went very smoothly, I am definitely going to flash it to my repeater next when I am days off and the weather cooperates.

Below are some links about it and following that a bit about flashing my Companion, I will also update this article after flashing my repeater.

Included the first link which is slightly dated but has a fairly decent description about what it is.

https://nodakmesh.org/blog/easyskymesh-power-efficient-meshcore-firmware

The link directly below gives a good explanation of what can be achieved in power savings for a Heltec v4.3 board.

https://rdumesh.org/heltec-v43-easyskymesh-power-saving/#:~:text=The%20Heltec%20V4,a%20repeater.

https://github.com/IoTThinks/EasySkyMesh/releases

First thing about the EasySkyMesh files, there are two types one type upgrade is the one you want the other is fresh install which is the one you don't want if you want to keep your settings as it wipes everything.

There are quite a few files there so it is a little confusing at first, you want the BLE ones for a companion that you want to use the Meshcore app on your phone, in the list some of the file name are cut off, however if you hover over them you can see the full description to tell if it is upgrade or fresh install, I notice that the upgrade ones have smaller file size too (also you can verify the file name after downloading too).

Apparently the ones that just say v4 and not v4.3 will autodetect the board version being used, however the 4.3 ones are only good for a 4.3 version board.

I initially used the one highlighted in green with femon, however my noise floor was too high for my liking around 85 to 88( it was between 89 to 95 before on original firmware), so I flashed it with the external LNA off the one highlighted in yellow “femoff” and it went down to -110.

One thing I didn't know, is both Meshcore and EasySkyMesh Companion firmware lockout CLI from the Meshcore app, the repeater versions you still can however, this is why I had to flash the femoff variant as I could not do it over cli, I was able to connect to it using terminal mode on my PC however and make changes like on the repeater, however the LNA commands are not in there (something about saving space both firmware merged it) so you just need to flash the firmware with the LNA setting you want.

Here is a link about getting into CLI mode for a Companion, Repeaters and Room Servers are still able to directly access this from the App.

https://nodakmesh.org/meshcore/cli-guide

pebble_hf

Pebble HF

Just when I thought I had enough distractions I ran across this, a very inexpensive and easy to assemble QRP kit that can output up to 5 watts on 20 M (apparently a 40M one is in the works too), does phone, CW and digital modes.

CRKITS is distributing to all non-US countries (I e-mailed Adam Rong the owner of CRKITS to see if he ships to Canada, he has verified this now). Adam is a likeable and interesting fellow, you can also check out some of the stuff he has on his site: https://crkits.com/

“My kits will be slightly different. You need to print your own case with the files from Print Your Own Pebble HF Case - Ham Radio Duo. I will offer the rest, including the PCBA from the same factory and all the through hole parts. The unit price is 50 USD including shipping. Please PayPal directly to rongxh@gmail.com and leave your ship to address (non US address only). I will place order once I have at least 10 kits order on hand. After order placed to the factory, it will take about 10 days to ship. I will keep you guys informed in this group.”

I couldn't resist so ordered one already, so hopefully getting it soon. VA7ILO

https://pebblehf.com/#purchase

https://youtu.be/v6cWHiaaO9w?si=htnMgKzbYWTdCStu

early_computer_made_from_ferrite_cores

Early Computer Made from Ferrite Cores

https://ethw.org/Milestones:Parametron,_1954

Sun Coast Amateur Radio Club Society - blog

va7ilo_meshcore_repeater_build

VA7ILO Meshcore Repeater Build

ic-7300mk2_remote

IC-7300MK2 Remote

printed_references

Printed References

school_amateur_radio_club_network

School Amateur Radio Club Network

cyd_ham_dashboard

CYD Ham Dashboard

reactos_attempt

ReactOS Attempt

Download ReactOS

Virtualbox

Install ReactOS

Install Firefox

Attempt #1

Attempt #2

Attempt #3

Attempt #4

Attempt #5

Attempt #6

To Be Continued...

easyskymesh_firmware_for_meshcore

EasySkyMesh Firmware for Meshcore

pebble_hf

Pebble HF

early_computer_made_from_ferrite_cores

Early Computer Made from Ferrite Cores

Sun Coast Amateur
Radio Club Society - blog