0:02 kill is kind of a clickbaity word here I
0:04 appreciate but it it is nuanced and I I
0:07 need to explain so recently at ham in
0:11 2024 there were over a hundred of these
0:13 little nodes these mesh tastic nodes and
0:15 if you've been following my channel for
0:17 long enough you've seen me do some deep
0:18 Dives on how to build them how to set
0:21 them up how to use them it's grown Leaps
0:23 and Bounds on the videos I've made and
0:25 I've tried to keep up with some of the
0:26 things they they've done even
0:29 interviewing a couple of the developers
0:30 I'll post a link in the video
0:31 description it was a really good talk
0:34 but what we found was there was so many
0:36 of these nodes meshing right cuz what do
0:38 these do right they occasionally
0:41 transmit hey I'm here hey I'm here let's
0:44 be friends and then they can send
0:46 information their packets packets is
0:48 just a useful term I'm using here it's
0:50 probably not the right term but they'll
0:51 transmit their little pieces of
0:54 information across this mesh that they
0:56 build out every time a new one of these
0:58 pops up they either build these people
1:01 in or they take nodes out as they stop
1:04 responding or stop beaconing well when
1:07 you have that many nodes in one location
1:10 it gets to the point where the entire
1:12 time or what we call link budget
1:15 capability of how many beacons you could
1:18 put into a second a minute or whatever
1:20 was almost entirely saturated by these
1:24 little devices saying I'm here so am I
1:27 hey I'm over here too let's be friends
1:29 what it caused to happen was when we
1:31 would try and send a message the human
1:33 beings actually trying to use the mesh
1:35 Network we weren't able to get our
1:36 Transmissions out we were getting
1:39 messages that said maximum transmission
1:41 reach or retransmission reach which
1:44 means the mesh device tried to send our
1:47 message multiple times to get it out
1:51 onto that time link Budgy thing and it
1:54 wasn't able to do it now this isn't a
1:56 failure of mesh tastic that's the first
1:59 thing this isn't a bug that we uncovered
2:00 this isn't a problem with mesh tastic
2:01 let me get that right out of the way
2:03 there's nothing mesh tastic is doing
2:04 wrong and I actually reached out to the
2:08 developers to confirm hey what do we do
2:10 in the future to handle this and of
2:11 course I want to be really clear mesh
2:13 tastic is used in much greater numbers
2:17 at places like Defcon Coachella The
2:19 Burning Man you know those big events
2:22 these huge events and also in urban
2:24 environments so the tips I'm going to
2:26 talk about today are going to be about
2:29 mesh tastic use in urban environments or
2:32 a very Dench mesh Network there are two
2:34 fundamental tips that the developers
2:36 recommended and there's a third that was
2:38 recommended by the user community on how
2:42 best to prevent this overloading
2:44 saturation and not being able to use
2:47 your messaging capability the first is
2:48 you must have
2:51 mqtt turned off if you're going to be
2:55 using just the standard Channel system
2:57 if you've got a 100 nodes and they're
3:00 all on the same channel you got to have
3:02 make sure that mqtt is turned off what
3:05 is mqtt well it is basically where one
3:07 of these guys will have a connection to
3:10 the internet via Wi-Fi or you know
3:13 whatever and it will try to bring in
3:16 other nodes from the internet that are
3:19 also mqtt enabled say in another part of
3:21 the country or another part of the world
3:25 into the node dense node Network that
3:27 you are currently operating in we had a
3:29 couple of these at Hamvention and they
3:30 worked great the first day it was really
3:32 cool we were actually seeing nodes pop
3:35 up in Texas and New York and all over
3:37 the place where people had used my QR
3:39 code remember that I made before
3:41 Hamvention and they were able to join
3:43 our Network which was fun we were able
3:45 to you know chat with people that was
3:47 the day before Hamvention kicked off and
3:49 at that time it was pretty novel and fun
3:52 when Hamvention started on Friday the
3:56 mqtt stations being somewhat aided by
3:57 the internet were getting pulled in and
4:00 it was causing all kinds of slow down
4:01 because now we've got even more
4:04 congestion and whatever the effect of
4:05 trying to bounce all this stuff across
4:07 the internet was causing through one
4:10 little poor node or multiple nodes are
4:13 like help help I can't handle all this
4:15 have mqtt turned off that's the the
4:16 first thing and if you you're like I
4:19 don't even know what mqtt is it's fine
4:20 it's actually not something that I'm not
4:22 really I'm not really an advocate of
4:24 that anyway with mesh tastic I'd prefer
4:27 this mesh to just be mesh tastic and not
4:29 use the internet in any way it's novel
4:31 for those that need it but just skip it
4:33 so the second thing and this one is
4:36 probably going to be the most important
4:39 when you spool up your first mesh tastic
4:42 device it's going to have a primary
4:45 Channel Channel Zero it's going to be
4:49 long fast so I I just did a a big deep
4:52 dive because I I I use the word uh
4:55 packet and that's not correct the term
4:59 that Laura uses is called a chirp and
5:03 that is a uh it it's basically a
5:05 pre-formulated message that's controlled
5:08 by time and it's almost identical to
5:10 satellite communication which I thought
5:12 was really cool so it's broken up into
5:14 sections there's a preamble bit there's
5:17 a sync section or a sync symbol there's
5:19 a payload and the payload could be like
5:21 hey I'm Josh's metastic I'm right here
5:23 and this is my Telemetry information or
5:26 my GPS information and there's a CRC and
5:28 CRC is just like a number value that if
5:31 you took that whole message and did a
5:32 algorithm against it those numbers
5:34 should match got it it it doesn't really
5:36 matter if you got it or not but there's
5:39 this spreading Factor right so we've
5:41 been talking short medium long or long
5:44 fast dot dot dot dot dot right so the
5:48 spreading factor is how long it takes
5:51 for that chirp to go out so if we are on
5:54 long fast mesh tastic is basically
5:58 saying hello I am Josh's mesh tastic I
6:01 can be found at this this location but
6:02 if you're using short it's more
6:04 equivalent to like the Micro Machines
6:06 guy back in the uh the ' 80s and 990s
6:07 like hello I'm Josh mtic I can be found
6:09 right here here's my Telemetry it's it
6:13 it reduces the time it takes to transmit
6:15 the same amount of information this is
6:17 important because it allows you better
6:19 use of what we called link budget or
6:21 that time in which any one of these
6:25 nodes could be transmitting right so if
6:27 you are in a highly contested mesh
6:29 network setup with lots of these
6:33 different nodes you dear viewer you
6:35 might not want to use long fast you
6:38 might not want to stick to that default
6:41 primary zero channel in fact the devs at
6:43 mesh tastic told me we should play
6:46 around with medium and fast make your
6:49 channel your primary Channel a a short
6:53 fast and then have a backup uh redundant
6:55 channel channel one channel two Etc you
6:57 can play around with it at that point so
6:58 yeah that's that's kind of the tips here
7:00 we didn't necessarily break mesh tastic
7:03 but we definitely uh bumped our head
7:05 against the ceiling of that long
7:08 spreading factor which I just learned a
7:09 lot about and if you'd like to learn
7:12 more about it a fantastic video that I
7:15 found link will be in the description
7:16 from Richard
7:21 Varner I uh I didn't I didn't expect it
7:24 would to line up right with what I do as
7:26 far as an engineer but boy it got there
7:29 real quick and I was like oh you dummy
7:31 and so that was was that was kind of fun
7:32 I find more interesting things about
7:34 mesh tastic every time I I play around
7:36 with these but yeah that that was uh
7:38 that was a cool one anyway if you found
7:39 this video helpful and and you live in
7:41 an urban contested environment and
7:43 you're like oh my God I don't know these
7:45 things don't work right maybe play
7:46 around with some of your channels and
7:49 you'll probably do a little bit better
7:51 give that a shot I'm Josh k6 naaz thanks
7:52 so much for watching and I'll talk to
