Today, after weeks of prep work and unfavorable weather, I finally finished installing a Meshtastic node on the roof of our building.

Preparation

I had considered doing a full off-grid installation using solar power. But that proved a bit more complicated than necessary. Besides, I wanted to have power on the roof for maintenance, repairs and future projects anyway. So I installed some cable management along the exterior wall and placed an outdoor electrical outlet on the roof.

Planning permission

According to the Flemish regional building code you do not need a permit for placing an antenna if it does not exceed a maximum height of 5 m above the rooftop. But the codex recommends checking with your local government whether they have any deviations from the regional code. I have contacted the Edegem Department of Environment and Spatial Planning and they promptly confirmed that the Flemish regional code applies and that they do not have any local deviations.

Antenna

I had some unused gear lying around from a LoRaWAN project that I dabbled in years ago. This could easily be repurposed for a Meshtastic node.

Configuration

The Meshtastic documentation is good. I’ve configured the node in “Client” mode, as recommended. It’s using a Heltec LoRa 32 board. This board does not have a GPS module, but that’s not necessary for a stationary node such as this one. I’ve configure a fixed position and changed the position precision to 32, which stands for full precision. By default Meshtastic shares your node location with a much lower precision to mitigate privacy concerns. In my opinion this does not matter for a stationary, public service node. I’d argue it’s good to know the exact location of wide area nodes.

It took me a while before I realized what was going on because the map kept showing my nodes positions several hundred meters from their actual location. If you run into the same problem, be sure to check the Meshtastic Position Precision documentation!

The node’s name is HackThePlanet.be, to pique the interest of other Meshtastic users passing by and hopefully steer them towards this website. Its short name is HTP0.

Range

I already have great results with this setup using another portable Meshtastic node that I carry with me. The HTP0 node relays my messages to a much wider area and I have no problem using a portable node from the inside the living room of my house which is 600m away from the rooftop node.

I will do some field range testing the coming days and weeks and update this blog post with results.

Community

I receive and have made contact with the operator of the SphK / Sophior Keyserlei Meshtastic node which is located high up in the Century Building at the De Keyserlei in Antwerp, approximately 4.9 km away. I hope more nodes will appear in the future. In the mean time I’ll continue to explore the possibilities of this project.

–m