I havent purchased any goTenna Mesh yet but hopefully you can finalize my decision!
When I first look at this product I could have swore the FAQ said 4 hops maximum. Now tonight while reading into this stuff I am unable to find any hop information. So is there a current known limit?
Also when figuring hops do you could the device attached to the phone or is it strictly the number in between both phones?
If the hops are more than 4 that would be awesome. I have a plan in place to drop about 8 Mesh out that will cover an area of about 15 miles continuous and link most of my family and friends together all on one network.
Yes, right now there is a 4-device (3-hop) max. Two client devices can relay through a max of 2 nodes. This is currently a software/firmware limitation that I’d love to see increase, as well. I’m hoping to eventually cover most of my town with Mesh.
It’s a firmware update so you don’t need a new device. The process is pretty simple and the Gotenna app will tell you when updates are available. My only recommendations are:
Make sure your Gotenna is fully charged.
Make sure your phone is fully charged.
Make sure your Gotenna and your phone are within a couple feet of each other until the update is finished.
It’s not recommended to stop a firmware update on any device after it has been started.
Give yourself around 40 minutes to perform the update although 30 minutes should be enough.
You can always skip an update and then start it at a later time if you don’t think you will have the time, battery life, or if you just don’t feel like it. Some phones can perform the update faster then others. I hear Iphones are faster.
For now that’s simple.
Shout = 0
Chat = 4
Group chat = 4
SOS = 4
I would be very interested in how this changes with future release of the firmware. I expect the SOS messages to be the first to get infinite hops since they are most important in an emergency situation.
We are QA’ing a hop increase at Mammoth Mountain as we speak (see more here: Mammoth Mountain (CA) ski areas - now fully Meshed!)… if all is good, then we will push a firmware update that will include increased hop count (among other things) in our next app update. But our next app update has major UI enhancements which will take a while to implement and test, so I wouldn’t expect anything major in the app stores til March or so. Thanks for your patience
Please consider my previous post of adding a Beacon to units in Relay Mode. That will let others know that it is there and in range. Thanks…Ken - W4KLP.
They’ve got it in test at the Mammoth Mountain Ski Resort installation right now. If all goes right, sometime in March for the new firmware release was the last word I heard. It is eagerly awaited here, too.
@Reslntpop Thanks for the interest!
We are actively working on increasing the # of hops goTenna Mesh supports. We expect to release support for more hops in Late April / Early May. Stay tuned.
(And the improvements in late January or so won’t be the last ones either!)