In The past month, a few repeaters have been added to the network. They are expanding the downtown bubble a bit, but we’ve still got more to do to get the mesh into a useful state.

From my house in South Lexington I regularly receive traffic from TN and NC, however, due to my antenna placement, I’m unable to reply. The towers in Nicholasville are a huge help for getting us connected to other states.

We have two things we need to do to grow the network.

1. We need newcomers to add repeaters to their home, work, etc. Even if they aren’t in ideal locations, they will help us all get connected. The higher the better (2nd floor, attic), however, it’s all about progress, not perfection, so put a repeater wherever you can and move it later.
2. We need a few high altitude repeaters added to the network that have a clear line of sight to the downtown Lexington area and Nicholasville so we can get connected to our friends down south.

If you need help getting started or want to join our discord, drop me a note.

We’re finished with our new settings test and have decided to revert back to the standard US settings.

We’ll be testing out new hardware to see if we can get more bang for our buck and post the findings here, so be sure to check back soon.

In order to improve our coverage due to the cityscape and rolling hills, we’re experimenting with some new settings, so, if you’re on the default settings and don’t hear anybody, that may be why.

Here’s what we’re trying:
Frequency: 910.525 Mhz
BW: 7.8Mhz
SF: 5
CR: 5

We’re still testing, so please check back often to see how we’re progressing so you can change to the latest. Once we get the optimal settings nailed down, we’ll publish and will no longer make changes to the configuration.

Testing completed. the settings we tried didn’t make a difference so we’re sticking with the standard US settings.

We’ll be experimenting with antennas and other hardware and will post the results here.

Lexington MeshMapper

Using the MeshMapper App, we’re able to drive around with our companion unit while the app checks for coverage in the area. Want to help us check the network? Reach out to find out how.

To make it easier to see how our network is progressing in real time, we’ve added Lexington to MeshCore Analyzer.

As we continue to grow and test our Meshcore network, we created a couple of channels for the area.

• Note: These were previously setup as private channels. They have been re-created as hashtag channels so that anyone can join. You’ll need to re-add these if you were using the private channels.

LexKY Chat is for general Chat in Lexington and the surrounding areas.

LEXKY Test is used for general network testing of new repeaters and devices in the area.

The community recently discovered that the Heltec V4 has a significant bug, which could be contributing to some of the repeater connectivity issues we’ve been having. We’re currently in the process of replacing V4 repeaters with RAK Repeaters. We should know if the change makes a difference in a few days (fingers crossed).

Here’s our current and predicted repeater setup.

We’re making progress getting the repeater network built up. We just installed point I and P, and brought B and E back online.

We’re able to get messages from downtown Lexington to Man O War near Richmond road. Our next goal is to either connect A to P via a repeater or two or via a couple repeaters in the Nicholasville Rd Area and add repeaters in the Harrodsburg Rd area to get a connection to downtown. If you’d like to help with those or other spots, we’d love to hear from you.

Legend:

Dots

Green: Online

Yellow: Offline at the moment

Orange: Possible Additions (unless better spots are found)

Lines

• Dashed
  • Green: Theoretical Repeater Connectivity
  • Black: Borderline/Possible Repeater Connectivity
• Solid
  • Green: Tested/Confirmed Repeater Connectivity
  • Red: Line of Sight is blocked by terrain, no connectivity.

We’re in the process of getting a MeshCore network setup in Lexington, KY.

We’ve been experimenting with settings and learning what works best for the area over the past few weeks. We’ve currently settled on the Standard US settings with a couple of tweaks.

If you are having reliability issues with your companion or repeater, change your cr setting from 5 to 8. This is compatible with the network. It’s a bit slower, but is a bit more reliable. As the network gets established, you may be able to change back to 5.

If you’re using a Heltec v4 as a repeater,

Using the Command Line in the MeshCore App, type the following
set int.thresh 14
set agc.reset.interval 12

This helps with handling noise.

We’ll post more as we learn what works for our area.