I’ll ping you sometime if/when I drive to Ryde… In the meantime, I’m working on the following:
A “lunchbox” node with a at least one panel, a reliable battery
Meshtastic (LoraWAN) using the $20 TTGO Meshtastic board with a GPS and display - THIS LOOKS PROMISING
Gotenna mesh, still working out how to make it automatically start after a power failure. I see solutions involving putting a wire clip over the power button, feeling uncertain about this
Will also ensure bitcoin transactions can be relayed using TxTenna if I can
I use a DFRobot FIT0601 6W plastic panel, buffered through a generic 6Ah USB power brick. 100% uptime for more than 14 months and still going - through summer, winter, bushfires, rain, blackouts etc. Never had to touch the power button.
Meshtastic is not LoRaWAN, it’s LoRa proper, with a mesh protocol on top.
The downside with Meshtastic is that it only supports relaying within private networks at the moment, there’s no self-building “network of everyone” like with goTenna. I understand this is due to bandwidth conservation concerns.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s still awesome, just don’t expect it to be a drop-in replacement for good old goTenna just yet.
It might be easier to run the python TxTenna if you’re building a fixed relay station with something other than goTenna. But if they have an Android SDK it should be possible to port the TxTenna app too.