Meshtastic

Flared base and very girthy

Haha, you have stumbled right into the nerd trap. Guessing you're here from the All page.

This is a community (!meshtastic@mander.xyz) for the Meshtastic project, a short instant messaging system via a mesh network built on unlicensed LoRa embedded radio hardware. Designed for pure peer to peer mesh networks to run totally off grid and allow local communication even when regular infrastructure goes down. They are very low power and the hardware is very inexpensive (the actual device inside this station cost less than $30) meaning many nodes can be deployed for network resilience.

https://meshtastic.org/

Just note that many countries and cities are moving away from meshtastic to meshcore (same hardware, better protocol) due to scaling issues inherent in meshtastic

Australia is pretty much entirely meshcore apart from some abandoned derelict meshtastic nodes

Hmm, very interesting. Being able to run true data over LoRa or any other radio/comm method is definitely cool but not really that useful to me I think, it's a little too flexible. I need more of a set-and-forget service that I realistically only use for text messages. The more complex the setup, the less likely me or any of my friends are to actually adopt it- and I'm not that crazy of a digital prepper lol.

unironically I have red, white, black, and brown ASA available to me, and a multicolor Bambu printer... Hmmmm

Depends on the orientation of the gain. Most "high gain" antennas are still omnidirectional, they're just focusing the signal out into a horizontal ring, like so:

More dB, and you get a flatter donut with more horizontal reach at the expense of vertical reception. Low-gain antennas reception area starts to approach a sphere, so those don't need to pointed up for best signal as much as higher-gain omnidirectional antennas.

Directional antennas are the ones that need to be pointed at something specific, as they have more of a cone of effect depending on the dB:

Its an omnidirectional "high gain" which is why it's in quotes.

You can use yagi or dish directionals, but they're a lot more difficult because 915mhz is fairly long wavelength and the antennas get big. I'd have to know the location of known good repeaters to know what to aim it at.

Considering! Are those booster modules us legal?

Not really? I guess the device is probably grounded via the negative wire but the casing is plastic and it's not remotely the tallest thing in the neighborhood. Hell it's not even the tallest thing on my roof. And there's a mountain right behind me.

Hey now, I forgot to bring zip ties. It's what I had.

Also, my lightning risk is very low here, there is a mountain behind me and there are taller houses around me. Hell, this device isn't even the tallest or least grounded thing on my own roof.

Yeah, it's very easy for anything lightweight or not too tall. Obvs these vent pipes are not anchored super well, but if you're using something strong like a fence pole and 2 clamps at a time, you could easily hold a 4ft aerial.

My design advice, make the clamp circle the exact size of the pipe you want to attach to. The fixed side (housing) should be an exact half circle. The moving side (clamp) should be less than a half circle such that there is about 1/8" or 3mm gap between the clamp face and the housing side face. That way you get a really nice compression by stretching the plastic when you tighten the screws and it will not slip.

Direct connect, I have a 5v PSU plugged in under the eaves on the back deck. I was going to do solar but have no way to manage a battery without getting different hardware. Will do that later.