Category Archives: General

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General, Personal

New Meshtastic Eliza for communication testing

Setup a new channel with auto responding feature using Eliza chatbot.
This is to facilitate users who want to test receive and response text over meshtastic.

Channel Name = Eliza
Node shortname = RF30
No encryption key

The channel will respond automatically to messages via Eliza. If a message is sent directly to the node, Eliza will also respond.

Hope this provides more interaction, especially to new users.

PS: Someone asked to integrate /eliza as the trigger word at the start of line in the LongFast channel. This has been implemented.

General, Linux, Opensource

uConsole and 5Ghz wifi

I posted this in the ClockworkPi Forum as well.

i had the issue of Ubuntu 22.04 not connecting to my 5Ghz wifi using the onboard CM5 device even though my other devices were connecting to it just fine. even after all the hardware mods with long antennas etc, i finally figured it out.

in Ubuntu at least, power_save must be off.
after loads of testing, this is the setting that would make it work reliabily.
you can set this up by using
$ sudo iw dev wlan0 set power_save off
or by using NetworkManager

$ sudo vi /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/wifi-powersave.conf
[connection]
wifi.powersave = 2

Once that is done… Wifi would be stably connecting to 5Ghz thereafter.
Hope this helps someone.

General

Singapore Meshtastic SG_923 ATIS broadcast

I’m (for now) providing a Singapore Meshtastic ATIS broadcast so as to allow new users in Singapore to be able to tune into something useful.

To begin with, some notes

  • Leave your primary channel (i.e. channel 0) to your default. Or whatever you want your primary channel to be.
  • Set the ATIS channel to whatever secondary channel you wish. In my case, it is channel 1. Use the settings provided below.
  • Below are my MQTT settings.
  • Server: mqtt.meshtastic.org mqtt.lucifernet.com
  • Username: meshdev
  • Password: large4cats

Below are the ATIS settings to tune into.

  • Name: ATIS
  • Encryption: unencrypted – fill in “AQ==” without quotes if required
  • uplinkEnabled: True
  • downlinkEnabled: True
  • positionPrecision: 12 (put in any thing you wish)
  • isMuted: false

Below is the strings / format of my ATIS broadcast which includes

  1. Timestamp:
    [YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm:SS]
  2. WEATHER = WX SGP
    TRAFFIC = TRF SGP
  3. Actual message – Weather
    [Source] [Region] [Condition] [Temperature] [Humidity] [Windspeed]

    Weather Condition abbreviation:-
    • “Sunny”: “SUN”,
    • “Clear”: “CLR”,
    • “Partly cloudy”: “PTCLD”,
    • “Cloudy”: “CLD”,
    • “Overcast”: “OVC”,
    • “Mist”: “MIST”,
    • “Patchy rain possible”: “RN?”,
    • “Rain”: “RAIN”,
    • “Light rain”: “L-RAIN”,
    • “Heavy rain”: “H-RAIN”,
    • “Thunderstorm”: “TSTM”,

      Note that if a field cannot be provided due to source timeouts it will be presented by a “-“
  4. Actual message – Traffic (information summarized from LTA Datamall)
    [Sections experiencing delays +X minutes] [Average travel time on Expressway segments] [Standard deviation of the travel time]

    This should be enough to know if driving times are normal and how long it might take for each major expressway leg. Highlighting any sections with out of normal delays

If set up right, you should hear the broadcast over your meshtastic node!

General, Linux, Personal

My strategy to backing up my media

This is not a post on how to choose a NAS box. This is also not a post to provide a step-by-step guide on how to configure one. This is also not a post on how to do enterprise backups, while some concepts apply, i’d say that this is mainly for personal backups.

This is a post to share the choices that i made to create a back up plan for my media such that i minimize the risk of losing the media that has been accumulated throughout my PERSONAL life. Some of these are irreplaceable memories of phases, experiences that are usually nostalgic and you definitely don’t want to lose them.

[This post was inspired by a conversation that i had with a retiring colleague/friend who just ventured to purchase a Synology NAS, with the goal of backing up his photos from his upcoming travels and perhaps to catalog them. As we chatted, i realized that i am repeating the comments, recommendations that was provided, to many people, many times over the years.

My choices has served me well all this while and has been running the same way for almost 10 years. I have not had major issues and failures, even though some outages has induced panic for a while, it has always been recoverable.

I hope that by sharing my backup strategies and rationale here, it will help someone in the future.]

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