rns.recipes

I think it would be a good idea to establish a list of standard preset LoRa parameters. This is a very confusing thing for beginners and could help beginners a lot. I like the presets in Columba, but it would be good to identify which are best for a specific scenario and what range to expect in desert, forest, city, etc.

-With a Heltec V4 using the Muzi Works antenna(I think 10 dbi), I am using 914.875mHz with the Long Fast parameters: 250kHz Bandwidth, 11 SF, 5 CR, 28 TX power. I can achieve about a mile range with lots of trees and some fields between.

-I think a strong contender for first place with Reticulum, which has an advantage for speed, is Short Slow at 250kHz BW, 11 SF, 5 CR, 28 TX Power. However, the communication from the same location was spotty and messages kept dropping.

Does anyone have any successes to share or favorite parameters? Please mention the antenna and radio you are using as well as the terrain in which you are operating.

Several people have mentioned to me that the presets in Columba are not ideal (there has been a range of ways they have been described, from "could be better" to "useless"). I am happy to change them. They were just taken from Meshtastic, which from what I hear will be changing their defaults as well in the US in v2.8 with further changes in v3.0

For context, the 500 kHz change in 2.8 happened because of some conversations with advisers in this area, including Semtech, who informed us our setup was not legal in the US.

https://www.reddit.com/r/meshtastic/comments/1wcyg6z/comment/p92isoc/

Maybe the FCC doesn't care, but this is the official meshtastic reddit account, claiming Semtech themselves advised the presets are illegal. It doesn't make sense (see the blog post linked in the reddit post, https://beala.substack.com/p/the-fcc-want-me-to-use-more-bandwidth) but even if not the intent of the law, it seems to be the letter of the law. I haven't experimented with LoRa enough, but my understanding is that you will generally have less usable range with more bandwidth.

The "popular community presets" section was taken from the wiki, now present here: https://reticulum.miraheze.org/wiki/Popular_RNode_settings and I have added to it a few times as community members have requested it. But, I would really like to have useful columba presets. I just need some guidance on what they should be :)

Several people have mentioned to me that the presets in Columba are not ideal (there has been a range of ways they have been described, from "could be better" to "useless"). I am happy to change them. They were just taken from Meshtastic, which from what I hear will be changing their defaults as well in the US in v2.8 with further changes in v3.0

For context, the 500 kHz change in 2.8 happened because of some conversations with advisers in this area, including Semtech, who informed us our setup was not legal in the US.

https://www.reddit.com/r/meshtastic/comments/1wcyg6z/comment/p92isoc/

Maybe the FCC doesn't care, but this is the official meshtastic reddit account, claiming Semtech themselves advised the presets are illegal. It doesn't make sense (see the blog post linked in the reddit post, https://beala.substack.com/p/the-fcc-want-me-to-use-more-bandwidth) but even if not the intent of the law, it seems to be the letter of the law. I haven't experimented with LoRa enough, but my understanding is that you will generally have less usable range with more bandwidth.

The "popular community presets" section was taken from the wiki, now present here: https://reticulum.miraheze.org/wiki/Popular_RNode_settings and I have added to it a few times as community members have requested it. But, I would really like to have useful columba presets. I just need some guidance on what they should be :)

I was recently thinking about matching settings with near by nodes and took a look at http://rmap.world. I saw that there was a near by and took a look at their settings and realized that theirs was slightly off from mine. The main difference was the near by node was using SF8 and I was using SF7 however that has helped my ability to hear the node. I'm guessing this is because getting into Manhattan from Brooklyn can be tough with all the buildings in the way. But back to your question it seems like what we are currently using is 914.87MHz Bandwidth=125kHz SF8 CR=4/5. I will be checking with some others this evening to see what settings they are running but I believe they are prob also on SF7. I would love some coordination on this though. EDIT: I just remembered that we also have a post in the regional forum talking about something similar

daylight-hub wrote

-With a Heltec V4 using the Muzi Works antenna(I think 10 dbi), I am using 914.875mHz with the Long Fast parameters: 250kHz Bandwidth, 11 SF, 5 CR, 28 TX power. I can achieve about a mile range with lots of trees and some fields between.

Heads up: 28 dBm + 10 dBi = 38 dBm EIRP which exceeds the FCC's 36 dBm EIRP limit. Either the antenna gain or TX power can be lowered to meet the limit.

I do agree that their is a need for standardization in how we setup LoRa devices. Even as someone who has an tech finds the LoRa explanation of 'channels' and 'frequencies' somewhat confusing.

Reticulum should maybe look into providing standard channels like meshtastic or meshcore has done, and then have custom channels that you can put all your own information into. It does make you wonder whether or not you can't get anyone due to no one being around or due to poorly configured radios.

P.S. I really am liking reticulum. Very fun

Not only for the US - would be useful for other regions, too. Ratspeak at least offers presets like "LongFast" etc - but still some agreement would be needed in terms of best coverage/throughput

I would also be interested in some standards as well. I am working on building a small mesh deployment with some peers, and will be using LoRa as a failsafe backup medium. I haven't fully decided on any deployment yet, but will be basing it off the heltec v4s as a standard for my local "metro" RNS mesh.

Sorry for my harsh answer some days ago. This was totally inappropriate for our community here. Sorry Torlando.