Alright meshers, I’ve been playing around with meshtastic for some time now and I’ve ended up with a good number of devices. I’m mostly in the rakwireless boat, with a pair of heltecs.
I have two RP2040 (rak11310) units that I just can’t come up with a good use for. They use less power than a heltec on full blast, but don’t have Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. If you disable Bluetooth and Wi-Fi on the heltec and turn on power saving, the heltec ends up using less power for what I can see as the same capabilities as the RP2040.
So, what can I put these units to use for? The processor is definitely more powerful than the NRF52 boards, but meshtastic doesn’t seem to need any more than the NRF52 has to offer. With power saving, the heltecs can perform equally well with less power, while also having a more powerful processor in case it’s needed.
Plug it into a computer and make it a BBS.
This is about on par with what I was thinking. If not a BBS, it could end up being a dongle for a computer. I was thinking they might make pretty good rnode endpoints, if they ever got firmware for it.
I know the Heltecs don’t have PSRAM, but what about the RP2040’s?
If so, maybe set them up as store-and-forward nodes?
Looks like store and forward doesn’t work with these. Shame, I could actually put that to good use right away. Unless of course I didn’t get it set up correctly.
That stinks.
The only other thing I can think of, if you’re developing PC apps to utilize Meshtastic, is to use them as local nodes. I’m working on some Python TUI apps and basically keep a Heltec tethered to my laptop over USB to work with that. Next step is to edit one of the case STL files to slim down the battery compartment since I don’t need it for this node and mod a clip to hang off the back of my screen.
Beyond that, I’m still new and haven’t thought up too many crazy uses yet. Hope you come up with something cool. If you do, please share.
