LoRa APRS Tracker (Part 5)

I should clarify. I was expecting to be picked up by one of the closer ones, either my own one or GM4CCN-10, just 26km away, good path.

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Nothing shown on mine, but it is in a rather compromised location right now!

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The great unknown is what RX antennas that folk are using on their i-gates, height above ground, feeder types and lengths etc. In the loft, or up a tower. There are so many variables.

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Very fair point! However, itā€™s quite possible that the packets were indeed being picked up by your igate. The one that shows on APRS.is is the first one to submit the packet. That may not be the closest. Depends on internet latency and other confounding factors.

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My LoRa iGate is fed by a small (Ā¼wave on 2m) dual band mobile whip mounted outside on a home made bracket. So far Iā€™ve picked up one tracker - mine!

I expect to be able to pick up trackers from Ingleborough G/NP-005, Whernside G/NP-004 and Pen Y Ghent G/NP-010, but I donā€™t think a LoRa 430MHz tracker has been on those hills yet. Iā€™m hopeful to take my tracker up those hills given reasonable weather and a free time opportunity.

73, Colin

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I was about to say that about mine and then noticed that a certain M1BUU is currently in Ilkley and being picked up by my iGate.

I took my tracker up G/NP-028 yesterday. It was picked up part of the way up (until the track, Keighley Road). The signal seems to have no trouble getting through trees and houses but as soon as the hillside is in the way thatā€™s it.

Rombaldā€™s Moor is near Leeds Bradford Airport so, on the summit, each time an aircraft came near I pressed the button for the tracker to send a beacon in the hope there might be an aircraft reflection, but nothing was picked up by my iGate.

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If you do that right you should be able to get 800km with your tracker :slight_smile: (Assuming planes and iGates in the right place.)

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Things are rather different on this side of the Pennines. This is all the igates and digis that have gated my tracker in the last 24 hours.

image

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Same here Colin (M1BUU), this is the first time any of my iGates or digireapeaters (and I have one or two scattered about) that have been picked up by anyone other than myselfā€¦I blame the lump called Kinder Scoutā€¦

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I blame the six SOTA summits that surround my house! Now, if I could only get an i-gate on one of themā€¦

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Now thereā€™s an ideaā€¦

Dave

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Maybe you canā€™t get on setup on a fine Cairngorm Munroā€¦ but Iā€™m sure thre are community broadband projects running in your part of the world. There are a few Iā€™ve come across in the Borders South of me. They tend to have some strategic repeater sites that are well sited. Might be worth enquiring to see if theyā€™ll let you put one on their sites.

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There was a plan for one. They ran out of money or something, wnich is why Iā€™m on three miles of copper and it takes all night to upload a youtube video.

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I was out testing LoRa stuff yesterday.

I now have a functional mobile igate operating. This is a great way to add some instant local coverage. My igate uses a T-Beam connected to a mag mount 1/4 wave antenna. This connects to a mobile router on O2. The simple 440 MHz 1/4 wave antenna appears to perform far better than the much longer 2/70cm antenna that it replaces.

The tracking side of things worked pretty well with coverage being provided from igates as far as 120km away.

I also did some tests of APRS2SOTA from the hill. I had no reliable mobile phone coverage but it was easy to get the latest spots using APRS. On my return I noted that the APRS connection for the spots was being provided by Benā€™s igate, over 120km away: it worked perfectly. It seems that LoRa igates using Richā€™s Github Repo do have messaging enabled by default. The new licence conditions make all this interconnectivity much easier to implement.

I have now got a blank Wiki set up so that we can share information. I will report back when itā€™s working.

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SOTA LoRa Wiki here. Setting up and using LoRa APRS for SOTA

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Thanks for the wiki. The link to setting one up is currently private.

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I think I have that fixed now. There are several pages on the Wiki but they are very basic at present. Hopefully others will contribute.

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Anyone managed to get one of the Heltec trackers to do messaging on Android (using APRSdroid, most likely)?

Iā€™m trying to figure out where the breakage in my set-up is. APRSdroid talks (in its config) about selecting a paired device for Bluetooth purposes, but nothing Iā€™ve tried has persuaded my phone to see my tracker on Bluetooth. The tracker configuration menu (reached via a series of carefully-timed (or else just plain lucky) clicks of the ā€œPā€ button) has a Bluetooth option which defaults to OFF on my tracker, but Iā€™ve tried with it in both OFF and ON states, and the phone (when asked to scan for Bluetooth devices) always returns with nothing found. My best guess is that the phone is fine but the tracker is not actually producing any Bluetooth signal.

In other news, I notice that my iGate (using another GPSr-less Heltec device) reported tracking @M0VAZ (as M0VAZ-8) on Worcestershire Beacon G/WB-009 yesterday evening. No messaging involved, apart from positions, but I think a SOTA first for my iGate.

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Have also been trying to connect with APRSDroid but same result as yourself.

Now have a solar powered digipeater, and also a separate igate operating in West Cumbria. Plan is to place the digipeater on a high hill once I have proven it can operate reliably for a while.

Only picked-up myself so-far though.

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Processing the button is polled and it doesnā€™t work too well because some of the other activities in the loop (such as processing the GPS info) is quite slow. It needs rewriting to use interrupts.

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