Good one Paul

I ordered four WisBlocks the day before yesterday and four 8.5 dBi antennas yesterday. I'm a ham radio operator so I feel guilty not making my own antennas. Your little Yagi looks great. A three element Yagi should have around 7.5 dBi of gain. My goal is three solar powered boxes mounted to PVC masts on the roofs of houses so my brother, sister and I can text with Meshtastic. They're each 2.5 miles from me in a typical rolling suburban terrain. I'll design and 3D print custom PETG enclosures for the WisBlock, solar panel, battery and antenna.

I picked up a couple of these and have been having fun finding other nodes. I ordered 5 more including Tbeams and T Echos.

Great Yagi 👍🏻 but the Polarisation must be Vertical. You lost a lot of Signal between horizontal/vertical Antennas. Greetings from Switzerland

Very informative video. I haven't done any HAM radio "like" stuff in 10 + years and found Meshtastic interesting and for those very same reason you did. I picked up two of the Heltec V3 and had a devil of time trying to get them programmed. The difficulty came down to the fact the browser your using can't be off chute Chrome version, its has to be Chrome. Up until your video I had only suspicions about the antenna that came with the Heltec. I'm in a Condo, and put one unit in the loft and walked around the neighborhood. The furthest test I got was maybe a 1000 ft. Depressing, but then your video explained it. You have to buy a name brand antenna or make your own, in order to do anything useful with the Meshtastic. Amazon has a lot of sellers selling total crap, and those rating you find for the vendor can be fake, bot generated. Again Thank You for the good and helpful information.

A great watch for a Meshtastic newbie,thanks a lot,I do like some of your case designs,the loft one and longer design look just great for my needs as I navigate my way into this field of interest 👍🏽

Nice video! - thanks for sharing.

Good video. Hope You make more of these.

Nice video, keep up the good work.

Well said. I am MSEE and HAM N8VY and I agree with what you say. Vertical orientation of YAGI is wise to couple with other vertical antennas.

well done paul

Great advice about antenns and very informative. Your Yagi looks great but horizontally polarised and most users will probably be using vertical whips.

Quick comment on your EXCELLENT yagi antenna... You will want to have the elements in a vertical orientation. Since all the duck antennas are vertical, you will want the same polarization of the RF. (Unless you are installing all antennas in your mesh horizontally... but vetical gets you more omni directional coverage)

Following now , good overview

Good man. I have one on order, as well as a RAK WisBlock

I have 6 of these with 3 WisBlocks on order to turn into repeaters. I am planning to use my systems with ATAK, which would be awesome in the field or hiking. If you are using Meshtastic, and have not checked out ATAK, which is free, you should. You will need to side load the Meshtastic forwarder plugin to make it work. I do have that link on one of my videos if you want to get this setup.

It would be interesting to remove the cover on the antenna with bad swr, i just opened a couple of mine, they have coiled wire, looks legit, but i don't have a vna atm, so can't check centre freq Easiest way to remove the cover is to get sidecutters between the plastic and brass as if to cut, gently squeeze and the cover will start to come off, a bit of wiggling does the rest ;)

Very good point concerning the antennas SWR. I'm in Belgium and we use 433 Mhz. Could it be that the "bad" antenna is made for that? I have a question... I like your "loft" box and the 220vac to 12vdc conversion, and then the 12vdc to 5vdc board. Couldn't a 12vdc cigar plug to USB adapter like I have in my car to charge my phone, do?

Got 2 heltec v3 I'm playing with currently, and a t beam and rak wisblock on order

PLA is ok for beta testing a print but I use PETG for the actual print. Higher melting point for outdoor use and stronger overall.

I've noticed a significant shift in state of tune with certain antennas when they are presented above a counterpoise. It is maybe not a justifiable test to expect the grounded internal surfaces of a NanoVNA to replicate a real life counterpoise scenario.

Regarding the loft node, why not power it with a small 12v lead acid motor cycle battery (or bigger )connected to a trickle charger. That should keep it running for quite a while if the mains power disappears.

With the bandwidth they are more or less useless. Mainly for a data-message, not conversations. Maybe use them for a status output, if you're availability for CB/Ham as an example. Maybe use to trigger devices, like pumps on a farm,.

Neat video, thanks for posting. That Yagi looks ruddy brill, do you have any details regarding how to make one for 868?

Nice video. Do you have a link to the IPX/SMA adapter shown in the PiP. All I can find on amazon is pigtails with the female end.

I have found that when I have the LoRa plugged in to the power brick or PC usb port the battery actually charges.

Very good and informative video, great little cases and antenna, where can I get the 3d printer files from?

If you are prepping for SHTF then there is no point in a mains power supply as the mains will be unreliable. Far better to look at a solar cell and a battery. Some US people use a IP 6x box and a big solar panel (A4 ish size) and use this to charge a pack of 6 - 12 18650 batteries in parallel If your house has barge boards right up to the ridge of the roof then use a plastic box as an apex finial on the roof -inside you put the electronics, outside you put solar cells. Can a printed enclosure be truly waterproof??

You guys picked a bad time to make videos on these😂 with Chinese New years nothing is shipping until the 21st at best. And everyone else is out of stock

Where can you get an SMA female to IPEX MHF1 male connector? 4:55

Good 2 see you back... tqbfjotld

I have a lot of these mini whip antennas and they vary a lot and some are really really good but you have to measure it first. Such Stepdown converter can cause a lot of HF noise that you don't want to have. I'm well experienced with lora and flarm on 868mhz but meshtastic currently disappoints me. Even with very good setup, cavity filter, low loss antenna cable, vna measured 9db coli antenna I don't receive any nodes from a high tower in Germany even I know that it's in line of sight of a node 80km away. And 80km isn't that much for lora even with sf9/125 mod. I receive flarms 300km away with gsfk mod with 25mw so it's not on me.

they need cases pain in the ass open circuit boards for most people

The yagi antenna is amazing where’s the .stl ?

If you can send messages on that you do not need a ham license if it works like a phone

It can't exactly be shut down, but it could very easily be jammed.

I like it because you can play DOOM on it 🤠

I love meshtastic but it isnt safe for private communication for regular communication with no reason for private then meshtastic really shines

Can you sell me some of your nice cases ? I don't find them on your Ebay shop.

If?

sadly the software is still basically in alpha, buy the more people get into it, the faster it'll develop