Note the distances involved here. And these are 1watt transmitters.

Homemade Liquid Fertilizer - 4 Do-It-Yourself Options.

Its a beautiful morning

Planning 3 sites for meshcore nodes to fill in gap around me. Here's a composite coverage model of three locations that are >100ft up. Brighter red indicates overlapping coverage areas.

Anyone looking for a killer deal on panels....

Two "mesh" networks have emerged.

Meshtastic, every client device can repeat messages. It’s a true flood mesh—messages propagate through multiple paths simultaneously. This provides excellent resilience; even if several nodes fail, messages find alternative routes. The downside? Massive network traffic. Every device receives and potentially re-transmits multiple copies of the same message. De-duplication algorithms try to manage this, but you’re fighting against the basic architecture.

MeshCore takes a hybrid approach. Client devices (what they call “Companion” nodes) never repeat traffic. Only dedicated repeaters forward messages. This means:

Far less network congestion
Lower power consumption on client devices (not constantly re-transmitting)
More deterministic network behavior
Easier troubleshooting (you know exactly which repeaters are in the path)
The trade-off is you need to strategically place repeater nodes. But honestly? That’s good network engineering anyway. You want to know where your infrastructure is. Repeaters can be solar powered and placed in trees on or grain elevators.

I got this little mesh radio based on Heltec T114 module. It is compact and I charged the battery full on in once. It's been a day and half and the battery is down to 88%. Compare this to the heltec V3 or V4 that lasts 12 hours on a battery. https://a.co/d/06JDeCmR

At this point, the only reason I can think of to get a heltec V3 or V4 is if you need something to do with wifi like a "observer" node.

This is pretty cool. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLjdo7nX0d0

There will come a day when you cannot communicate with your friends and neighbors without surveillance.

This is why having an alternative open network is important.

Digital Panopticon Update: New deanonymization feature on X/Twitter.

Mobile-based accounts are locked then forced to download the app and provide biometric data.

Web-based accounts are forced to "confirm they are human" by scanning a QR code with their mobile phones (leaking privacy-compromising device information), which begins the same biometric data harvesting process.

Two hops to the next city over. Note how quickly I get confirmation that a message was delivered.

Belts, suspenders and batteries. Modern LFP batteries have a BMS inside them that monitors the condition of each cell inside. The BMS is able to disable charging, disable discharging or both. The "directional switches" inside are MOSFETs. MOSFETS are wonderful devices with one exception... when they fail, they fail shorted. This means that if the MOSFET in your BMS was to fail, the BMS could NOT disconnect your battery.

You always need a secondary means of disconnect. This is usually done with a fuse or a DC rated circuit breaker. If you use a circuit breaker make sure it is DC rated.

*it's now that something works, the true measure is how it works when something is wrong.*