I am currently in the market for a few meshtastic trackers that are pre-made (made Heltec 114 trackers before, but it was quite finicky for the airsoft team). And was wondering if the L1 Pro trackers have known performance metrics in forests.
The use-case would be that the airsoft squad would carry trackers on person (some with phone some without). And that nearby the base one of the trackers would get slung up a tree to act as a relay (still in client mode).
Would also love to know what battery life I can expect out of them when they are put into semi active movement.
Picture is of the terrain with mesthastic nodes (114 boards) in ATAK using the meshtastic TAK plugin.
I would just add that I made up various meshtastic nodes with XIAO units and placed them inside pill bottles with neod-magnets on the base then used a 3/4 inch PVC pipe with a mating magnet. the unit was pushed up into the crotch of a tree. This worked very well for temporary… Only problem is LoRa is strictly line of sight… I always say it will transmit to the moon if you can see it… not sure that is 100% but definatly have pinged off aircraft at crusing altitude and seen those aircraft relay messages from states away…. if a tree branch or trunk is in the way… the relay will probably not happen to/from that direction… I would recomend maybe installing a flag pole so you can run the unit up and down…
I would recomend the Meshtastic Device - SenseCAP Card Tracker T1000-E at one time seeed produced a kit that came with multiple units/ and a case with multi charging bank… at this time i cannot find the link
Cheers thanks for your reply, yeah I got the relay tracker up in a tree for that. Reason being we are going for the lt1 instead of the t1000 is the better battery life and easier flashing. Saves is carrying another cable we can forget.
Maybe I should look at a whip antenna at the same time since vertical difference is not that much.
Interesting! I wanted to use a drone also, you could make a glider drone with solar + batteries that are still under the EU weight categories for licencing that last for about 8 hours during the day on one charge if its sunny. But EU law requires permanent supervision which is not doable.
There are several devices, most of my teammates got the 114 board currently but they are a hassle for me to put together. We use it for airsoft during large events where there is spotty network/no direct LoS with our radios for communication so we throw in some relay nodes in the tree. And we use it to be able to track each other with the GPS position and also Message each other in Meshtastic/TAK for updates/chatting.
Thing is, it is usually in a forest with limited charging infrastructure so we tend to run stuff from powerbanks and use cables that are multi purpose.
all of my seeed gear are perfectly able to transmit range tests every minute for atleast 2 days…FYI
I would think if you locate relays high and everyone knows where they are, you could position to find a LOS… that would make the game interesting… a commander who would be responsable for maintaining LOS with a relay and relays deployed in LOS of each other. also with meshtastic and 7 hops everyone in earsight would relay.. might even clog the spectrum. I assume you use private channels between teams?
Ah it’s just that every team has their own Comms network. The event is 600 Vs 600 Vs 100, and within those teams you have different squads which run their own channels. Our squad would be on medium fast for instance with a 3 hops max.
So you are looking at squad level communications and movement, possibly platoon (30-40 guys) and a HQ channel for the squad leaders.
