Created my first meshcore solar powered repeater. Using the lilygo t-beam supreme and a overkill solar panel. All mounted on a din rail in a waterproof electrical cabinet.
It also included some more monitoring, using a esp32c6 running esphome with zigbee and deep sleep. Because i want to keep track of the solar performance.
It was a lot of work to get running, from soldering, 3d printing but also some little firmware changes. I even tough i burned out the lora module by running it without the antenna sometimes. I couldn't test it because i only had 2 other t-beams that where 443Mhz. Today, after buying a hot air station and some soldering i now have 2 board that work with 869Mhz (swapped the sx1278 with a sx1262). Now i am just waiting on the last 869Mhz module so i can modify my last board.
A little cursed i think but it the new module didn't have the same footprint so this also works.
firmware
I like how easy the firmware is to edit, when you have some arduino experience. I added support for the 443Mhz t-beam, made it possible to connect via the app and via the home assistant integration at the same time and created a custom sensor that controls 2 relays, so i can control them remotely. But for some reason the screen just wont work, i tried using the example arduino sketch, different versions and all, none work. I do know the screen is functional because with the test firmware from lilygo it does work.
range
I haven't really tested it with the new antenna, but when i let it run for some time using the stock one, i got contacts from over 125km away, which did really surprise me. I hope with this new antenna that i can also send messages not only receive them.
Some more pictures
Thats really cool. How high did you mount it to get that range?
The first test was just indoors laying on my desk, that is also why it suprised me so much.