Since Gotenna can respond to ping by itself (without need for bluetooth-connected smartphone present) it’s a handy mechanism to track availability of mesh nodes - you pair once, GID is assigned, you disconnect phone and can continue pinging - or so i’ve thought.
I’ve a remote node, which stopped pinging today. I came to it, and it appeared to be up and powered; after a delay i was able to connect to it from originally paired handset and it started to ping again. I’ve never powercycled Gotenna and i do not believe it lost power (it was fully charged). I’ve also have not paired that handset to another Gotenna.
This brings me back to a question of identity - handsets have GIDs and keys associated; do individual gotenna units have any identity perceivable on the network? I hope so, that those two things can be dis-jointed.
In any case, is Gotenna unit expected to remain permanently paired and announce GID of last handset it was paired with? Or would this registration eventually timeout?
I suspect there is a timeout (otherwise if you never unpaired and just repaired to a new device, two Gotenna’s would be competing for your GID). If there is a timeout, how long is it?
I’m curious as well. I have 4 Gotenna Mesh units now, and would like to set up two as nodes, but wondered about the GID if I paired two using the same phone and disconnected one. I’m thinking you assign the cell number to one unit, and let the app generate a random GID for the other. Thoughts anyone?
goTenna ID or GID is set by the app. To deploy goTenna Mesh units as relay nodes, you can pair the device with your phone and then assign a random ID to it. After pairing, click on Settings-> Profile-> GID and follow instructions.
GID is permanently allocated. You will need to save this GID, if you wish to ping this node.
I could write this off as a glitch, but it was consistent:
two client nodes which could ping GID associated with relay node stopped being able to, even from 10 ft
once i’ve reconnected phone to the relay node via BT, they have regained ability to ping
i’ve disconnected phone from relay node, and things still work
i’ve not powercycled relay node Gotenna during this time
There is one more change which happened between time when client nodes were able to ping relay node GID and when it stopped. I’ve changed of GID on the client nodes from random GID to a phone number. But this change did not seem to affect another relay node i’ve; but this one is occasionally connected with it’s associated phone via BT.
With regard to GID propagation and association, i can see that it can be accompanied by time stamp, which would solve the issue of expiring stale GIDs being announced; so timeout is not required.
There is still lack of standardized terminology to describe things. Occasionally node means just Gotenna, and sometimes it means Gotenna + Phone/App; would be nice to clearly distinguish between those two entities.
@sia thanks for bringing this up. I will try to reproduce the glitch you mentioned.
Also the feedback on terminology is valid. With every app update, we are trying to standardize on how we describe elements within the app.
Ok. As long as there is no third state (formerly paired) this is good enough.
For some functionality you need node + app, which can be referred as such.
I’d love to be able to maintain multiple identities (GID’s) in single app install.
Otherwise i need potentially as many devices (or at least phone numbers) as nodes, including relay nodes.
There is a way to restore your identity to phone GID, but not to a random GID (which was assigned in the past).
Obviously i can keep re-assigning random GID’s if i need to reconnect to a relay node, but this requires changes in all clients which want to ping it; slight inconvenience i guess.
