Frequently asked questions

Where are the questions and answers?+

Still under construction. More questions and answers will be added here later.

What does “slow radio technology” mean in practice?+

MeshCore in Finland and Europe uses standardised radio parameters. They balance speed and range on a LoRa link. With the settings in use (62.5 kHz bandwidth, Coding Rate 8 and Spreading Factor 8), the data rate is about 120 bytes per second.

Some example transmissions:

	Bytes	Seconds
Repeater advert, ‘Viherlaakso cegy repeat’, three hops with a 2-byte path	137	1.127
Wardriving message, three hops	59	0.488
Channel message, ‘Pesonen OH6XYZ: Älkääs sit ihan älyvapaasti ördätkö 💀’, three hops	83	0.685

The channel example is kept in Finnish because its exact text determines the byte count. Each hop adds two bytes to the transmission as the path record grows.

European radio regulations allow each repeater to transmit for only 360 seconds in any rolling hour. In other words, the limit permits a one-second transmission followed by nine seconds without transmitting. Compare this with the examples above to get a sense of the practical bandwidth limits.

Finnish MeshCore settings+

Settings used in Finland’s MeshCore network, in several formats.

Companion radio

Setting	Value
Radio Preset	EU/UK Narrow
Default Path Hash Size	2-byte
Default Region Scope	fi

Command line

Replace oma_nimi with your repeater’s name and each oma_sijainti with the appropriate latitude or longitude.

set name oma_nimi
set lat oma_sijainti
set lon oma_sijainti

set radio 869.618,62.5,8,8
set tx 22
set dutycycle 10

set path.hash.mode 1
set advert.interval 0
set flood.advert.interval 30
set loop.detect moderate

region put fi
region default fi
region save

clock sync

Mobile app

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