Left a mesh radio running unmaintained for one week
I took the mesh radio which I built inside a tupperware and left it mounted, unmonitored, for one week in Los Angeles.
I did not leave the tupperware on my balcony. My own apartment is in a very "surrounded" location, and I don't think I can see anything from my balcony besides other units in my complex. LoRA radio waves are highly line-of-sight dependent, and are blocked by many buildings, so I didn't think leaving the radio in my home would be a good test. So I left it somewhere else for a week (with permission).
In the week it ran unmonitored, it collected 209 nodes in its node database. This is a ton! During the first week I had a mesh radio, I drove it all over town, left it running while I drove down the freeway multiple times, and crossed 300 nodes. I thought that this number had been grossly inflated by my mobility and that leaving a node in one spot would get me a lot fewer. So hitting 200 on a node that doesn't move is more than I expected.
The node is functioning as a Client node. Although it wasn't monitored, I didn't mark it as an unmessageable node because, if I was able to find it with my other node, I wanted to try and send it texts from another part of the city. I ended up not having enough time to do this, so I still have no idea where in the city I can see my unmonitored node from!
Another thing: I built this unmonitored node as a plug-in node without a battery because I didn't feel great about having an exposed circuit board and an li-ion battery sitting around unmonitored inside a tupperware (I'd also ruined the waterproof seal by drilling holes in the side). If I had a job right now I'd probably be thinking about buying a fire-safe housing so that I could put a battery in this thing and mount it somewhere interesting, but that's not in the budget right now.
The main issue with this experiment is that I am still having a hard time getting my two nodes to talk to each other when they are in the same room. Not sure what that's about, but it seems relatively common for this kind of radios. There's a bunch of advice about it online that just hasn't yet worked for me. The nodes can see other nodes in common and have the same channel settings, but they just don't see each other most of the time. I plan on testing again soon - I gotta walk up and down the street near my mounted node and see how far away I have to be before they start talking to one another.
Anyway... this continues to be fun! If you're interested in goofy radio shit, this isn't a bad hobby, and it isn't expensive. Each board in my two radios cost $15 USD and came with free antennas and SMA connectors. I bought a larger antenna for the mounted node, but it cost only $9 USD.
I am thinking right now about what it would take to mount a radio on my bicycle! I might be fun to mount a large antenna on a bike rack, head uphill, and see what I can find...