Repeater Health Check

Lounge
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Hi Meshers (Meshies?)!

I searched through the posts and haven’t found a definitive answer so far.

How can we check on the health (power, signal) of a dedicated Repeater? I have had a dedicated one since I received my backer ones. I have another as a mobile repeater and people where I live are jumping in with both feet. They want to make a repeater network all around where I live. How can we make sure they are still up and running when they will be up on poles or harder to physically get to? Understanding we will need to do maintenance every 6 months or so for firmware updates.

Thank you.

Best regards,

Andy

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Why don’t we center all the Relay Node suggestions over here: Stationary relay node update suggestion so that we keep the ideas flowing in one spot that @Rahul_Subramany and @danielagotenna can track more cleanly.

I think the part about a check that it is functional is covered by the idea there but the idea of getting a battery level back in the response might be a good idea as well. Why not add to that thread.

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@AMcL awesome question! I’d LOVE to be able to check a relay node from miles away (beats hiking up a mountain! #directionalantennascanmakethingssoeasy).

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+1 to the ask for a repeater health check

I have a feeling the MOAN will get hot in the summer, so checking to see if it’s still up & running is helpful

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I love the health check idea however I have been thinking some of these “MOAN” projects might eventually want to integrate a fan or a good passive radiator. I added the battery check to my CYHM thread but is the Gotenna itself able to report it’s temperature? If it can it would be good diagnostic info.

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could you not add in a Raspberry Pie with external and internal temp/humidity sensors along with an ADAFRUIT Cellular module and then program it to send an SMS once a night?

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I was thinking about the RPI as well. I think that when the USB SDK comes out the RPI will be a great option. Without the USB SDK the RPI wouldn’t be able to communicate directly with the Gotenna but it could grab a lot of good info. There are some awesome RPI projects out there to monitor solar charging systems and they have most of the functionality built into them we would want so you wouldn’t need to reinvent the wheel. You could charge the Gotenna directly off the RPI and probably determine if a Gotenna went offline based on the fact it no longer attempted to charge itself. That would not tell you immediately since the Gotenna does not charge constantly but if it didn’t draw power for something like ~hour that could set off an alarm.

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