Meshtastic

Station CmWx is a solar-powered 915 MHz LoRa node for Meshtastic, extending the local mesh into the Claremont neighborhood of Jersey City.

Hardware

The node is a RAKwireless WisBlock RAK19007 base hosting a RAKwireless RAK4631 core module and GPS and BLE modules.

• SIGNALPLUS 5.8 dBi antenna
• XRDS-RF KMR400 SMA–N cable
• 4× 6 W 5 V PV panels, connected in parallel
• 10,000 mAh 3.7 V LiPo battery

The node is configured as a client still, since the roof is not nearly high enough to make this a proper router. I chose to not set up this node with the license operator configuration so it could support encryption.

24 Watts of PV is excessive for a LoRa node, but I am not able to set the solar panels at an optimal orientation for my latitude. Instead, the node relies on the extra surface area to make up for the poor angle and achieve a chargable voltage.