A $35 Solar Mesh Node Anyone Can Build: The People’s Repeater [Black Flag Civilian]
The People’s Repeater is a cheap solar-powered LoRa mesh repeater you can build yourself using a $10 garden light and a small, 3D printed hub. In this video I walk through the design, do a range test, blast the repeater with pressurized water for an hour, and then show you how to build one step by step.
My goal is to get Meshcore and Meshtastic into actual neighborhoods, where ordinary people can build their own off-grid, encrypted text messaging infrastructure.
Support Black Flag Civilian & connect to the BFC discord: https://www.subscribestar.com/blackflagcivilian
FREE DOWNLOAD of People's Repeater Hub & Mount STL Files: https://www.printables.com/model/1768397-the-peoples-repeater-affordable-solar-mesh-repeate
People's Repeater Hubs & Mounts for sale on Black Flag Civilian's web store: https://blackflagcivilian.bigcartel.com/product/3d-printed-peoples-repeater-hub-mount
Parts lists (including links to specific parts) are available at both Printables and the BFC Webstore, linked above.
21 replies
I love the idea of these things, but I have no one to talk to with them.
Build some for your friends and neighbors. Then in an outage or calamity you can atleast talk to someone.
Yup… friends. I have those.
You have neighbors, build a community
I think file sharing could be a decent immediate use-case, high-speed internet can be expensive and these days we often deal with chonky files, so something like this could (with the right software setup) let you simply drag-and-drop files between households.
It would take, like, forever. Meshtastic is cool, I've been messing with it for years, but it is dog slow. It is only practical for short text messages and telemetry.
Have you tried the public channels?
I checked the map. There are 0 nodes in my town.
That doesn't necessarily mean there are no nodes. I've taken a node on road trips, and I've seen a lot of advertisements from nodes in small towns where nothing was on the official map.
Some nodes aren't listed. You could try going a high point
The only thing I see missing from their build is a wrap of some kind of sealing tape on the SMA connector. Those bulkhead connectors are sealed to the housing they're installed in but the threaded connection to the antenna is NOT sealed and will eventually corrode if/when moisture gets inside.
Slide heat shrink down the antenna lead then shrink after connection and testing.
I wonder where I could buy these lights outside US. I’ve seen them mentioned in some meshtastic builds, but I guess it’s a brand only available in the states.
Those little solar garden lights are mostly just consumer shovelware, they're not any specific brand. I was able to find some similar looking lamps on Aliexpress in a few minutes- while they're popular and easy to find in the US, I'm sure getting them globally isn't that hard either.
Isn’t getting the right size key to fitting them together with this project? If you could link them I’d be grateful ;)
I mean yeah, for this project specifically you'd need the right lights. In general you could adapt any other solar light, especially one that already has a wall mount- the hardware is so tiny it basically fits anywhere, and they all use the same lithium cells these days.
Instead of adapting (I have NO 3d modeling skills), I can just use another project where relevant parts are available. This one looked pretty straightforward (as in: not much assembly required compared to other projects), which is why I’ve asked about getting the right part.
Well, I use the term adapting loosely. There are wall mount lights where no modelling or printing is even needed- just drill a hole for the antenna bulkhead and replace the guts.
Assuming there is space for the new guts inside. If I buy something similar, But it won’t fit, I’m wasting time and money. I was asking if I could get the same thing - it saves time and money not trying to figure stuff out again. Otherwise I can just use a different model to print.
If you have access to 5v power you can do it for even cheaper
It looks like he used meshcore with a lot of the testing. I wonder how this would have changed if he used meshtastic?