Fair. I hadn’t considered an existing digital library as a vendor lock in.

No love for Microsoft here. Just musing over the question.

The XBox is still a popular console and has fans. A quick search tells me they are holding their share of the market. So maybe that?

Yeah, I’m an elder millennial and while I got the reference, it is before my time.

Sounds like you’re most of the way there. They’ve got an FAQ linked at the top of the page, which should get you the rest.

https://github.com/brianshea2/meshmap.net?tab=readme-ov-file#how-do-i-get-my-node-on-the-map

I’ll also take a guess at what’s left. You’ll want uplink enabled on your primary channel. OK to MQTT in LoRa settings, and MQTT enabled in in MQTT settings. I think you also need Map Reporting set there but can’t recall for sure and the FAQ isn’t clear on that one.

Re: nodes on meshmap. Since the post is 6 days oid, so you might’ve already learned this. Meshmap shows GPS enabled devices that are both able and are configured to share their location over MQTT to the default server. Which, in my personal experience is a pretty small percentage. About 10% I’d guess. So might be closer ones your area.

I’ve got an OpenBSD based router with ~4 hours of battery backup. If I ever stopped futzing around with it, the uptime would be fairly close to when the last version update was. (They’ve got a release cadence of about 6 months).

Note: This ended up being WAY more than I was thinking I’d write when I hit reply. But I had fun writing it up. So /shrug. Imma post it.

… EVs, which can be charged at home using solar.

… have some solar on the roof, charge an EV with it

From the phrasing of these I assume you mean using solar as a sole means of charging an EV, as opposed to using them to offset your grid tied usage. Which might not be what you meant, but in case someone else reads this (I’d hazard a guess you already know this stuff), and makes that same assumption, I felt like adding some clarification.

Depending on your needs, solar is not always practical for charging an EV. An average EV uses 0.35 kWh per mile (0.21 kWh per kilometer if I did my conversion correctly). Say you had a 30 mile/48km daily commute (I further averaged results I found for average American and European daily commute distances to get that number). You would need 10.5kWh (30 * .35) of power to recharge.

Using the low end of a daily kWh generation estimate I found for a 400w panel (1.6kwh a day) you’d need 7 panels. Lots of environmental factors in play for solar so definitely give or take on that one. Said panels are about 80"x40" (2 meters x 1 meter), so fairly substantial.

And solar isn’t good at delivering a predicable and controllable amount of electricity over a long period of time which your EV expects. So you’re going to need batteries attached to your solar system. Minimally enough to hold however much power your system accumulates before peak output, as well as to contain any power generated above what’s being delivered to your car during the peak. And this assumes you can plug your car in for an extended period of time right in the middle of the day. If you don’t have that luxury, say you’re at work in the middle of the day, then you’d want to store that entire day’s worth of power until you could use it.

Then there’s charging. The limit here is probably whatever bottleneck there is in your system. Either the max continuous discharge rate of your batteries or the max continuous output of your inverter. A 3.6kWh charger, which would require a 220-240V inverter rated above 3,600 watts seems ideal as that would be about 3 hours of charging to recover the 10.5kWh I came up with earlier. For 120V countries (or if you want to buy a 120v inverter/ev charger, I suppose) you also have the option of a 1.4kWh charger with a 120v inverter rated above 1,400 watts. It would take about 8 hours to recharge 10.5kWh. Or, if for some reason you wanted an even slower system. I have a Bolt and I know it can do 8 amp charging, which works out to about 960 watts, and about 11 hours charge time.

Of course, if your range needs are lower, the system can be scaled down. Unsurprisingly, the less electricity you need the more feasible it is, right?

Edit: And environmental factors can be a big impact. I have a small solar setup (~1kwh) and something as simple as it being overcast the whole day has a huge impact on how much it generates. Most EV’s have quite a bit range, so not like one cloudy day is going to be a big problem in this scenario I’ve laid out. But a cloudy week? Might start to be a problem.

If you want a novel but obsolete portable storage format, you could check out MiniDiscs. You’d need a working recorder that supports Hi-MD for data storage.

I believe them to be more reliable than Zip discs, though I no data to back that. But still, it’s 20+ year old equipment with mechanical components, so equipment failure is just a matter of time.

Working recorders can also be a bit pricey.

Not on Voyager but I just had to re-authenticate.

I like 95-00. That’s also the period in time in which I liked Windows, so there’s certainly a correlation there.

This made me wonder, since the TV series came out a long time ago. Generation X ended ~1980. The original Dragon Ball series started in 1986. So there are Gen X that were kids (not that you have to be a kid to watch it, but that’s the most likely audience) when it aired.

Just musing over that particular thing. I feel it’s safe to say it’s generally outside of Gen X culture.

I was just explaining the cause of the fuzzy position, but sounds like you’ve already got your head wrapped around that.

Agreed, I imagine most people (myself included) don’t want their exact location sent over a public channel.

That fuzziness is probably the default behavior.

In Radio Config > Channels > Channel 0 (LongFast, probably) there’s options for position enabled which will report a general area within a radius(?) of the slider a bit further below. There’s also a toggle for precise location which does what it says on the tin. But everyone with the same radio settings and channel 0 settings (likely almost every other meshtastic node in the area) will also receive your precise location, as I understand it.

My kneejerk thought is perhaps fixed position is set for some reason?

Would be Radio config > position > use fixed position if so.

Thought I’d pop in with a followup. Maybe useful if someone with similar needs stumble across this.

I did buy one of these are set it up via uTag. I am using a non-Samsung phone. I was unable to initially connect to the smart tag. This is a known issue https://github.com/KieronQuinn/uTag/blob/main/app/src/main/res/raw/faq.md#adding-a-tag-in-smartthings-is-not-working. I tried clearing the cache, force restarting, and trying again a few times without luck. But it occurred to me l also have a Samsung phone kicking around so set it up in SmartThings there, and now it works fine on my current phone.

It mostly meets my requirements and I’m happy with it as a solution (thanks for the suggestion!). But there is a possibility of encountering issues if you don’t have access to a Samsung phone.

I opened the post to read more about the creepy house. Getting to look at the very cool crafted sign was a nice and unexpected surprise.

I’ve gone down that rabbit hole since!

I don’t think the SeeedStudio T1000-E would be great for this specific use-case. It looks a bit bulky for a keychain attachment, and having to charge it every other day would be a hassle. The devices I originally posted about last for months on end on a battery/charge. And while it has a buzzer, It’s not yet clear to me how I would trigger that remotely.

Like I mentioned in a reply to non_burglar, I do have a potential use case for these, and meshtastic looks fun to play with besides. So I’ve ordered some meshtastic gear.

I was under the impression that they didn’t specifically require Samsung devices, so the uTag mention is very useful. I will more than likely go with this, thanks!

I mean, I was already resigned to something that is limited to a bluetooth device that’s in range since I refuse to use Google’s service and I don’t love the idea of being locked in to any other similar vendor owned solution. So for my purposes it seems to fit the bill.

I’ve only just started digging into Meshtastic (I previously had a vague awareness of the existence of mesh networks but no specific knowledge) but it is looks like just my kind of hobby. I also do have a potential use case for it. On a recent trip, my partner was having trouble with her eSIM. There were a couple of instances where we were apart but not a long distance from each other. If I’m understanding how this works correctly, this would fill that gap.

I’ll research the device but at a glance this looks great!

The find phone functionality is more of a convenience. I can also do this via FMD (FindMyDevice) https://fmd-foss.org/

I updated my post to indicate it as optional.