Which one did you get ?
Dave
2 Likes
I’m using the Heltec WT too! with that case working well!
Ricardo CA2RXU is making a lot of improvments on that controller in the next times!
73
Julian
4 Likes
Yes, this shows how the number of nodes has grown over the last six months:
From this map, which shows only the LoRa nodes.
4 Likes
Heltec v3 for iGate. Heltec wireless tracker for the tracker.
1 Like
Like Julian (IN3JIB) posted above, I’ve found this case for the Heltec Wireless Tracker to be pretty good:
If you have access to a 3D printer here are all the design files:
https://www.printables.com/model/616628-heltec-wireless-tracker-case-for-meshtastic/files
Alternatively Tony G is selling the case here:
https://3dchicken.co.uk/products/heltec-v3-case
and here:
https://www.etsy.com/shop/QuantumShadow3D
The case is designed to take a 3.7V 2000mAh 103454 Li-Ion cell, which can be sourced from Amazon:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08214DJLJ?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details
or Aliexpress:
The connectors are different - JST-SH 1.25mm and JST-PHR 2mm - so a bit of soldering is required.
It’s a bit larger than the previous case I’ve been using, but the battery is a twice the capacity at 2000mAh vs 1000mAh:
If you can 3D print your own, the cost is around £1.50 for the filament (ASA) and takes about an hour.
Dave
3 Likes
I now have my tracker and RX iGate up and running. The iGate is currently in the loft powered by a USB power bank so obviously I need to set that up in some permanent fashion. I haven’t yet got a case and battery for the tracker so I’ve put that in a plastic box with another USB power bank. I took it for a walk at lunchtime and I was pleased to see my route on aprs.fi when I got home.
Here are some notes on how the installation went. Hopefully it might help anyone else setting this up.
Installing the iGate with Ricardo’s web installer was very straightforward. I had to install the CP2102 drivers but the installer gives you a link for those. On first boot the iGate creates a wifi hotspot. I connected to this with my phone, set up the SSID and password for my wifi access point and rebooted. Now I was able to connect from my PC and complete the configuration.
The tracker was somewhat harder! There is no web installer for this yet so I had to install platformio (I already have VSCode). When it came to importing the project you have to select the board type but the Heltec Wireless Tracker is not listed. Eventually I found the post by M0JKS earlier in this thread that explains what to do. You just select another board (I chose the Heltec Wireless Stick) and then you edit the platformio.ini file to set the default board type. Having got past this I could complete the configuration and upload the firmware. But I could not get the final step of uploading the filesystem to work. It just wouldn’t upload. Ricardo’s instructions say there is a bug in VSCode and closing and reopening it would fix it. But however many times I restarted VSCode, my PC or the board it just wouldn’t work. Then I managed to go down a massive rabbit hole of my PC no longer recognising the board at all and it wouldn’t recognise a Raspberry Pi Pico either. This was eventually fixed by uninstalling USB controllers in device manager. I still couldn’t upload the filesystem though.
Eventually I discovered that it’s necessary to put the Heltec board into boot mode for it to accept anything over the serial port. To get it into boot mode you hold the user button and then press the reset button (or you can hold the user button while inserting the USB cable). I was then able to upload the filesystem and the tracker was running.
Fairly quickly it picked up the time and then the date from a GPS satellite but it stubbornly insisted I was at lat/lon 0/0. Checking Ricardo’s GPS page suggested that the onboard GPS antenna would struggle to pick up satellites while indoors especially on first power up. So I put the tracker and a USB power bank in a plastic box and left it outside for a while. I don’t know how long it actually took to get a fix but this worked and it now had the correct position. I’d left the iGate on my desk but it hadn’t received a signal from the tracker until I brought the tracker back upstairs. I guess leaving the antenna horizontally on the desk was probably never going to work too well!
Ricardo @CA2RXU, thanks for your excellent software but I think the documentation could do with a couple of improvements. First, if your board is not in the list when you import the project, just edit the platformio.ini file. Second, to upload the filesystem you need to put the board into boot mode - this will depend on the board so perhaps the Heltec wireless tracker is the only one where you need to do this.
6 Likes
nice comments for improvements on the guides
I hope to have soon the web installer for tracker to avoid all the VSCODE explanations and guide too
ESP32S3 boards (mostly heltecs) need to get into boot mode for flashing it.
take into notice that the tracker sends when moving, if you Stand still it will send only once 15 mins
5 Likes
That’s a decidedly non-trivial process, not helped by needing vscode… Somewhere along the way the screen went black, and I can’t figure out how it might be brought back to life. Time to go up the garden with a shovel and pickaxe, 
3 Likes
Hi Rick, Ive been having the same problem, with a T-Beam Board. it won’t accept the filesystem image. VSC on my windows pc will not install Platformio. My Mac laptop did and all is ok till I get to upload system file image. it reports green success, but board reboots to f/w screen
I am going to wait patiently till Ricardo has issued the webinstaller.
2 Likes
VSCode has been quite happy to report success with program upload and with Filesystem upload, but the device itself says absolutely nothing, but instead displays it’s best impression of the darkness of the void. There’s a bright orange LED alight beside the User button,and a pale white one alight beside the Reset button. No other sign of activity at all.
4 Likes
Which board have you got ? Are you building it for the right board. If you have a Heltec LoRA V3 board, that you are trying to set up as a iGate or digirepeater, use this repository:
and in platformio.ini set “default_envs” to “heltec_wifi_lora_32_V3” like so:
If you have a Heltec Tracker then you need to use the “LoRa_APRS_Tracker.git” repository:
https://github.com/richonguzman/LoRa_APRS_Tracker
and in platformio.ini set “default_envs” to “heltec_wireless_tracker” like so:
If you are tying to configure the Heltec Tracker board, then you need to tweak data/tracker_config.json to include your callsign and set the APRS frequency to 439.9125MHz.
If you are trying to configure the Heltec V3 board, you now no longer need to edit the data/igate_conf.json file. It can all be done from the web interface.
Either way, once “default_envs” is set in platformio.ini, you need to hit the PlatformIO:Buld button (Big Tick icon) on the bottom tool bar:
Once compilation is complete (You will see SUCCESS in Green), click the right arrow button next to the tick:
This uploads the elf binaries to ESP via the USB (RS232c at 115200/8/N/1)
The final step is to upload the config. To do this click the Alien symbol on the left hand panel:
This will give you a selection of boards to upload the config for. Select the correct one (for example “heltec_wifi_load_32_V3” for the Heltec V3 board or “heltec_wireless_tracker” for the Heltec Wireless tracker board:
then select “Upload Filesystem Image”.
3 Likes
John G3WGV and I installed a LoRa igate on John’s tower. First indications are very positive. It should provide excellent coverage in the North Pennines (Cross Fell area). It may possibly work on some eastern Lakes tops although that’s not an optimal direction from John’s QTH.
7 Likes
Thanks. It looks (far as I can tell) exactly like the one in this post → LoRa APRS Tracker (Part 3) - #13 by M0JKS
The box it came in describes it as:
HTIT-Tracker
433~510
LoRa WiFi BLE GNSS
Though I had (I thought) selected the correct board, the first time I ran the build and upload it tried to use what I guess is the default board, and gave me some red FAILED messages. I re-visited platformio.ini and hunted down “heltec_wifi_lora_32_v3_GPS” which looked like the best match at the time. I put that in as the default, and that, after a fresh build, allowed me to upload code. However, the filesystem upload failed. Finally, I found mention of “heltec_wireless_tracker” and set that as default, cleaned and re-built the code, and got green SUCCESS messages for both code and filesystem uploads. However, somewhere along the way the device’s screen stopped displaying anything, and there seems to be nothing I can do to get it to come back to life.
What I think I need now is a way to reset the board to factory conditions, or reload the bootloader, or otherwise get back to step one.
Or maybe a new board…
2 Likes
It must have heard me. Without my doing anything apart from going out for a couple of hours plus and leaving it un-powered, it came to life (with my call sign and so on) when I plugged it back in to have another look. It’s presently sitting on the windowsill trying to see GPS satellites. 
5 Likes
Ricardo will you publish here when that is available please. I’ve not been able to use your current software (and had to resort to a G3CWI’s kind support to get the tracker running
3 Likes
It took quite a while (hours rather than minutes, probably not helped by only seeing, at best, half the sky) to get its first fix, but it is now reporting a good position. Of course,because it’s LoRa and all the iGates in this area aren’t, nothing’s showing on the map. I guess setting up an iGate is the next step. 
3 Likes
Yes, as you say, in your area you will have to provide your own igate. There’s a chance that if you do so and it’s on 24/7 from a reasonable location others might be encouraged to adopt LoRa. Fortunately it’s really cheap and easy to set up an igate.
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This website shows just LoRa APRS stations: https://lora.ham-radio-op.net/
If you click on a station and select coverage it shows a coverage map for that station which is neat. It’s based on where it has picked up trackers so for new stations it will take a while for it to expand to its full range.
5 Likes
I’ll probably initially use the white stick, so it won’t be 24/7 as I’ll need the stick if I want to use 2m or 70cm, but the rest of the time an iGate could have it. I’ve a 70cms colinear stashed somewhere that could be pulled out to do the job if I can find some where sane to fix it where I can get the requisite power to it and it can reach the WiFi.
Interesting. There’s too much geography between me and the Newport one over the Severn. Likewise the Cheltenham, Hereford and Leominster ones. The rest are probably too far away, though it might be interesting to go up the hill and see what gives, as Hereford’s has a faint splodge of coverage up there.
3 Likes
So I set one up, eventually. Temporarily just sitting on a bedroom windowsill.
Though we’re quite high up, the house is in a bit of a hollow with some quite high houses surrounding it.
So far I think it’s picked up one signal, from near Clee Hill.
I had a bit of play around over the weekend, and it seems like it can access the wifi from the area around the pole at the bottom of the garden that my current HF antenna is slung from (though not that high at the moment. I’ll have to look into a battery supply and perhaps a small solar panel to charge it as well as some sort of antenna.
I should have a tracker coming this week, so I should be able to get a better idea about coverage, though I’m not expecting it to be great!
6 Likes