I’m still working on the autonomous solar Meshtastic nodes. I really like the Heltec T114 boards I started with, but they’ve gone up in price. Repeater Guy found some XIAO nRF52840 with Wio-SX1262 nodes from Seeed Studio; they’re two stacked boards so they end up being a cubic space roughly ¾” on a side. We were able to get ten of them delivered (taxes, tariffs, and all) for $16.50 each. They include a little stick-on antenna that, in our first test, seemed to outperform other external antennas we’ve tried and would make our build simpler.
Repeater Guy is also evaluating some solar fence lights that might outperform the yard light I used, for only about $7 each in small quantities.
So we’re getting there! Less than $25 in parts and minimal construction hassle for a fully-autonomous, solar-powered Meshtastic node. At that price, I can afford to scatter a few dozen around the neighborhood. Right now, I usually see only zero or one one-hop node. I think my message delivery will go up considerably if I can get that up to three.
In other mesh news, ‘stik’, the Heltec T114 autonomous solar node I built, is ready for its trip up a 40’ or taller giant bamboo culm. That should also increase the number of one-hop nodes I can see.
—2p