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Large construction sites present the same communication challenges as wilderness SAR operations: large area, no existing infrastructure, frequently changing layout, and need for resilient communications that works when cellular is congested or blocked by metal...

Oil and gas facilities, mining operations, and remote industrial sites often operate in areas with no cellular coverage, where reliable communications are safety-critical and where the cost of conventional radio infrastructure is prohibitive for widely distrib...

LiFePO4 vs LiPo vs Lead Acid for LoRa Deployments Choosing the right battery chemistry for a LoRa mesh node is one of the most consequential hardware decisions you will make. The chemistry determines cycle life, safe operating temperature, charging behaviour,...

Battery Sizing for LoRa Mesh Nodes Correctly sizing the battery for a solar-powered LoRa node prevents two failure modes: undersizing (the battery dies overnight or during cloudy periods) and oversizing (wasted cost and weight). This page walks through a syst...

Battery Management Systems and Protection Circuits A Battery Management System (BMS) is the electronic circuit that protects lithium cells from conditions that cause permanent damage or fire. Understanding what a BMS does — and detecting when one has failed —...

Choosing a Solar Panel for LoRa Nodes Solar panel selection involves matching the panel's output to the node's energy needs while accounting for real-world efficiency losses, geographic location, and physical mounting constraints. This page covers panel techn...

Solar Panel Mounting and Orientation The mechanical installation of a solar panel is as important as the panel selection itself. A correctly sized panel pointed in the wrong direction, partially shaded, or insufficiently secured will fail to meet its energy b...

Charge Controllers: PWM vs MPPT The charge controller sits between the solar panel and the battery. It regulates current flow to prevent battery overcharge and manages the charging profile. Two fundamentally different control topologies are in common use: Pul...

Wiring a Solar Power System for LoRa Repeaters Proper wiring is the difference between a reliable 5-year solar node and a fire hazard or intermittent failure. This page covers the complete wiring path from solar panel to LoRa load, including fusing strategy, ...

Monitoring Battery State via Meshtastic Telemetry Meshtastic and MeshCore both include power telemetry features that allow a node to report its battery voltage and charge level over the mesh network. This page covers enabling these features, configuring volta...

Reading Network Statistics in the Meshtastic App Understanding what your Meshtastic network is actually doing requires knowing how to read the statistics the app surfaces. The mobile app (Android and iOS) and the web client all expose channel utilization, air...

Using the Meshtastic Python CLI for Diagnostics The Meshtastic Python package ships both a library and a command-line interface (CLI). The CLI is the fastest way to interrogate a connected node, export its configuration, watch live packet traffic, and run one...

Mesh Topology and Path Analysis Knowing how your messages travel through the mesh is essential for identifying bottleneck nodes, optimizing relay placement, and diagnosing delivery failures. Meshtastic exposes hop-count information in every received packet, a...

Common Network Problems and Solutions Meshtastic networks are remarkably self-organizing, but they are not self-diagnosing. When the mesh stops working well—messages drop, nodes disappear, delivery becomes unreliable—there are a small number of root causes th...