5panel.dance

As the YEG mesh continues to expand, we've noticed that communication continues to be unreliable at best, and unusable at worst. Despite there being 150 nodes and counting around the city, it's very rare that messages actually make it through to the intended destination, and keeping up a conversation is difficult. To solve this, we're following in the footsteps of the YYC mesh, and adopting their custom LoRa settings! This change will roughly double our available bandwidth, move communications to a part of the spectrum that's less noisy, and hopefully avoid "rogue" nodes on old firmwares that can cause congestion.

This change will be gradual, but we hope that by leaving a few beacons up on LongFast, we can urge more users to move to these new settings. Most of my own nodes have already been moved over, and several strong infrastructure nodes have also been moved. With enough coverage, it may even be possible to build a bridge to YYC, thanks to their resilient & well-built network!

This page is a work in progress, but these are the settings we're going to be using moving forward. Please read the below guidelines before continuing! When ready, scan or tap the QR code to apply the settings. Or, you can apply them manually, as listed below. To do so, navigate to Meshtastic App → Settings → LoRa and configure:

Use Preset = OFF
Bandwidth = 500
Spread Factor = 11
Coding Rate = 8
Frequency Override = 902.6875 MHz

The public channel is using the default Primary Channel 0 settings (Key: AQ==). The channel name should not matter, however the iOS/Android apps should automatically set the channel name for you, and we encourage you to stick with it.

Guidelines

For the time being, the following guidelines are mirrored from the yycmesh website. We politely request that you adhere to them as best you can, to ensure a positive experience for everyone on the mesh:

• Ensure you are running the latest stable Meshtastic firmware (currently 2.7.15). Running newer Alpha builds is acceptable and encouraged.
• Refrain from any MQTT uplink/downlink activity (use LongFast instead). Personal ZERO-hop usage with the official Meshtastic MQTT servers is acceptable.
• Do not use Router or Repeater roles on the public mesh. Use Client, Client_Base, or Client_Mute. (Client and Client_Base still route and repeat and allow you to contribute.)
• Some nodes may need more hops depending on location. Test with 3 hops first and increase only if necessary. For unattended stationary nodes, limit them to 3 hops or fewer.
• If setting up strategic repeating nodes (Client or Client_Base), ensure they can be reached for firmware upgrades or remote admin if needed. This avoids “abandoned rogue node” issues.
• For position (GPS) and telemetry updates on stationary nodes, limit update intervals to 1 hour or more. For tracking/vehicle nodes, use Smart Position updates.

Neither myself, nor this page, are affiliated with the Meshtastic® project. Please see their official homepage for more information.