Ups and downs, its like a difficult marriage

So when you take on any hobby you should! get used to wins and losses. Friday night at home on the super node with the yagi was the busiest ive ever seen meshtastic and the contacts were real.. not just node sniffing.

A great night, few beers and its back CB days with everyone asking for "rig checks" and "what you running" A great night was had by all.

Saturday morning comes along, now trawling Facebook and the other garbage social media is not on the top of my list. Seeing who's doing what on the mesh is.. times have changed. Its quiet, too quiet. So as you do, well i do you send "test" and... nothing comes back.. transmition failed. Hang on the solar nodes in the car and that always shows my initial send, maybe the battery is flat. And it is, ok not so bad as its fire up the emergency battery and off we go.  Ok so its receiving, but no one else is replying... like no one. Plenty of people talking but no one replying at all. Now the Rak wireless super node in the loft has a smart plug so its time for a reboot. Back online and... nothing.

Its time to connect to the solar node in the car, TX... nothing apart from the home base node... that's 20 meters away. Later ill take Enzo out for a walk as a gesture of good will.. and take the T deck with me. Now away from the house and with a clear view of the lakes it works, just and only to certain contacts.. Time to return to base and check my settings and see if anythings failed. A pair of Rak nodes fail? never.

Having been through both the settings were all messed up, mqtt on and forwarding.. now if you know me that's not something that ive done, EVER. No idea whats happened but now it comes alive again, but not as it was. Someones running mqtt  in the area and although im set to ignore im sure its still effecting the TX - channel usage was around35% all day.

This continued all the way through Sunday with little or no transmit from any of the nodes.. 2 Raks and a T Deck. Checking the settings again i found they were all messed up so took the opportunity to update the firmware on all of them. Its now improved but its still not good.

Its monday and ill log into the Airport node, hows that.. ok. Just ok. somethings still not as it should be for sure.

Friday nights mission was to go out "meshing" however now if you see a white tesla curb crawling around Blackpool with myself and ben in it with a laptop and a strange antenna its us checking settings on our fleet across Blackpool. Of course we will still be on the primary channel shouting out TEST and other stuff.

Map wise, the map continues to grow well at over 1300 users across 20 plus countries.. go and take a look. There is a vote on there  on if we should show mqtt nodes... we can but should we show them. READ the text before you vote.

Oh and the big upgrade neils becoming older daily isnt the mqtt bit, that heart attack was so last week. This new one means hes got the weight of the world on his shoulders... ;)

map.mpowered247.com

Online store wise things are moving along, Heltec kit is on the way and RAK wireless kits now have a fedex tracking number!! Hits on the website are pretty scary as plenty of people are checking to see when its go live is... we are pushing.

Also we have created a discord for the mpowered247 group. Founders are marked in yellow and the tech support crew in purple - these tech support guys are community volunteers so be nice.

Special thanks to Kilo,VektorRadio, hawkins  and Liizii for heading this very talented team of experts.. they wont thank me for calling them that.

Oh and Andy Kirby for adding to the "Founders" team - even though hes a southerner.

If you want to apply for a position as a volunteer drop me a message on discord.

Here's the link to our discord: https://discord.gg/DeAhzYksgY

Hopefully that should work or search for mpowered247.com

Happy Meshing, lets keep working on growing the community.

Mark 

AKA xraymark