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    00:00:03
    Now this is my garden shed and since breaking  into that is probably not that hard to do, I  
    00:00:10
    want to make it a bit more secure by installing a  definitely not over the top light curtain barrier. 
    00:00:17
    This thing works with infrared LEDs and as soon  as we power it all with 12V, we can have a look  
    00:00:24
    at the trigger pin to find out that it is low  when there is nothing interrupting the barrier  
    00:00:30
    and it gets pulled high to 12V when someone gets  through there which I want to get notified about. 
    00:00:37
    It's pretty simple stuff; the only problem is  that my WiFi network doesn't reach my garden  
    00:00:43
    shed meaning I can not simply use an ESP32 like  I did before to publish data to my HomeAssistant. 
    00:00:52
    Now the distance to the shed is around 20m  and thus there are certainly some decent  
    00:00:57
    wireless communication methods out there  I covered before that could do this job. 
    00:01:03
    But I decided against all of them because  viewers have been asking for a while now  
    00:01:08
    about Meshtastic which is an open source  project that creates an off-grid long  
    00:01:14
    range communication platform utilizing LoRa. And I have been using LoRa in previous videos,  
    00:01:21
    but it has been 5 years and back then the  selection of Dev Boards was very limited and  
    00:01:27
    the overall experience felt a bit complicated. So in this video let's try it again with  
    00:01:34
    Meshtastic to see if I can secure my shed this  way and to ultimately find out whether it is the  
    00:01:41
    future of LoRa communication. Let's get started!
    00:01:54
    When it comes to awesome electronics nowadays,  then you are pretty much forced to get familiar  
    00:01:59
    with programming. But don't worry about  that because my sponsor Boot.dev makes  
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    also launched the training grounds where you  can grind infinite challenges to give you as  
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    much practice as you want. And I think you already  noticed that the game comes with some seductive  
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    description to get 25% off your entire  first year. I wish you happy learning.
    00:03:03
    Let's begin with the hardware and If I remember  correctly, back then most popular was this RF95  
    00:03:10
    board for which there certainly is example  code available and it also works pretty well. 
    00:03:17
    Nowadays though you pretty much only see  this SX1262 which in direct comparison  
    00:03:24
    does certainly offer some nice upgrades. And when you either search for LoRa or Meshtastic  
    00:03:30
    on any shopping site, then it is kind of crazy  how many choices and options you have nowadays. 
    00:03:38
    So for testing I got myself two of  these Heltec ESP32 LoRa V3 modules and  
    00:03:45
    one Heltec Wireless Tracker with GPS Module. After receiving all of them, I firstly had to  
    00:03:52
    assemble the modules without GPS though which  luckily was pretty straightforward and easy.
    00:03:59
    But after reading some text on the  OLED; I suspected that Meshtastic  
    00:04:04
    was not yet installed on these things. So I headed to the meshtastic website  
    00:04:10
    which is super well made for an open  source project and gives you tons of  
    00:04:14
    information without overloading your head. And on this site I found a link to a web  
    00:04:20
    flasher where you can find a very  long list with supported hardware. 
    00:04:25
    And luckily for me, my specific module is also  there; meaning time to plug it into the computer  
    00:04:32
    and upload the meshtastic firmware. And yeah; it seems like that worked  
    00:04:37
    perfectly fine and thus I repeated  this procedure for the second module. 
    00:04:43
    Next we have to install the Meshtastic App  on my smartphone which I then used to pair  
    00:04:49
    the modules with my phone via Bluetooth. And after then setting my region to the  
    00:04:54
    EU with a transmission frequency of 868MHz, my  modules were more or less done with configuring. 
    00:05:03
    Now we can enter our communication channel  and send a message which the second LoRa  
    00:05:09
    module then received without any problems. This makes off-grid communication possible  
    00:05:15
    between these two modules and if you  are wondering people out there reached a  
    00:05:20
    maximum distance between modules of over 300km. Of course that will not be possible in my flat  
    00:05:28
    terrain covered with trees and structures. So I was curious how far I could go between  
    00:05:34
    modules before things do not work  anymore and to make that test happen,  
    00:05:39
    I firstly needed one LoRa module to publish  its received messages to my HomeAssistant. 
    00:05:45
    To do that I simply connected it to  my WiFi network and then installed  
    00:05:50
    a premade HomeAssistant integration for  Meshtastic through the Community store. 
    00:05:56
    There I simply had to enter the given IP  Address of my LoRa module and badaboom badabeng,  
    00:06:03
    we not only receive messages through the modules  and phone app, but also through HomeAssistant. 
    00:06:10
    And with that preparation out of the way; I placed  the receiver module outside on my terrace and then  
    00:06:16
    started walking away from it with the transmitter. From time to time I stopped, recorded my GPS  
    00:06:22
    position and sent a message home and if that  immediately got published on HomeAssistant,  
    00:06:29
    I knew that I was still in reach. And just like that I kept walking and  
    00:06:34
    sending data around for a while until of course  it all stopped at a final distance of around 700m. 
    00:06:43
    I even repeated this test with the receiver being  indoors next to my HomeAssistant Raspberry Pi and  
    00:06:49
    to my own surprise, this test delivered pretty  much the exact same max distance of around 700m. 
    00:06:57
    And of course this range is definitely  sufficient for my shed; but if you are  
    00:07:02
    wondering you can extend the distance further  when there are more meshtastic devices in your  
    00:07:07
    area that can pass forward your message. One downside though is that the security of  
    00:07:13
    your messages is not the greatest even though  you can encrypt your communication channel. 
    00:07:20
    So far that means Meshtastic is probably the  easiest and a really modern way to try out  
    00:07:26
    LoRa and send around important information  like GPS without scaring off beginners; but  
    00:07:33
    how well does it work for my shed alarm system? I mean for that to work, the meshtastic device  
    00:07:39
    would have to monitor a specific GPIO pin  and if that pin changes its voltage state,  
    00:07:46
    it needs to send out an alarm message. And truth be told Meshtastic does support  
    00:07:52
    a lot of different hardware inputs and outputs;  also the one I am looking for which is hidden  
    00:07:58
    behind the detection sensor configuration. So I took apart one of my modules and  
    00:08:04
    defined pin 42 to monitor for which I also  activated its internal pull up resistor. 
    00:08:12
    That means the pin is usually pulled up  to 3.3V and if it gets connected to GND,  
    00:08:18
    it should send out an alarm message that  apparently arrived at the LoRa receiver side,  
    00:08:25
    but it was nowhere to be found in any  communication channel or HomeAssistant. 
    00:08:30
    I actually tried for hours finding this  message, but ultimately had to give up. 
    00:08:36
    Don't worry though because RadioLib  does exist which is the one radio  
    00:08:41
    library to rule them all and it  was also used to build meshtastic. 
    00:08:47
    And even better, someone used this library  to create one specifically for the Heltec  
    00:08:52
    ESP32 LoRa module meaning it maybe took me  10 minutes to create a fitting transmitter  
    00:08:59
    and receiver sketch which firstly only sends  over the alarm message when it gets triggered. 
    00:09:06
    Afterwards it got a bit more complicated  though on the receiver side since I needed  
    00:09:11
    to connect to WiFi and publish the  data through MQTT to HomeAssistant. 
    00:09:17
    Eventually though I got it to work and by  using the MQTT integration in HomeAssistant,  
    00:09:24
    my LoRa board showed up as a binary sensor that  tells me when an alarm got triggered meaning I can  
    00:09:31
    use that to automate an alarm siren or similar. Of course my project was not done here yet  
    00:09:38
    because I still needed to add a transistor  circuit to my LoRa board so that the 12V light  
    00:09:44
    barrier trigger pin can safely interact  with it and then mount it all inside my  
    00:09:49
    shed which ultimately worked beautifully. So in conclusion I feel like Meshtastic is  
    00:09:56
    not only suitable for simple communication; but  also a bit more advanced stuff like many people  
    00:10:03
    on the internet are already showing off. But then again if you want full control,  
    00:10:09
    interact with several other things, the best  security or the best low current consumption  
    00:10:15
    in deep sleep mode, then going the RadioLib  route is probably the best thing you can do. 
    00:10:22
    So no; meshtastic is not the solution  for everything but overall we can say  
    00:10:27
    that LoRa nowadays is definitely a whole  lot easier and approachable and we will  
    00:10:33
    see when I will use it again the future. Until then, don't forget to like, share,  
    00:10:40
    subscribe and hit the notification bell. Stay creative and I will see you next time.

    Description:

    Click this link https://www.boot.dev/?promo=GREATSCOTT and use my code GREATSCOTT to get 25% off your first payment for boot.dev. Sign up for Altium Develop and see the difference: https://www.altium.com/asp/youtube (AD, Paid Promotion) Previous LoRa videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItZwa1AdrpU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YJHcGQnpAk You can get the shown components here: (affiliate links) Amazon.com: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F4XPYLXR?th=1&language=en_US Meshnology Website: https://goo.su/cfMWSE Heltec ESP32 LoRa V3: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005009981175064.html Heltec GPS LoRa: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007074175365.html Light Barrier: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005008464226585.html Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/unsupportedbrowser Twitter: https://twitter.com/GreatScottLab Instagram: https://www.facebook.com/unsupportedbrowser TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@greatscottlab Discord: https://discord.com/invite/zuAvkAuhsY Support me for more videos: https://www.patreon.com/GreatScott?ty=h In this video we will be having a closer look at Meshtastic and LoRa. Now LoRa is a long range wireless communication method that I previously used around 5 years ago. Back then the selection of dev boards was limited and the available code and software was not the easiest. But now we get Meshtastic which apparently makes LoRa easy. Is that true? We will find out in this video by making my shed a bit more secure ;-) Let's get started! Websites that were shown in the video: https://flasher.meshtastic.org/ https://meshtastic.org/ https://github.com/meshtastic/home-assistant https://github.com/jgromes/RadioLib https://github.com/ropg/heltec_esp32_lora_v3 https://github.com/beegee-tokyo/Meshtastic-Sensor-Network https://github.com/sandeepmistry/arduino-LoRa Thanks to Boot.dev for sponsoring this video 0:00 My Wireless Problem! 3:03 Hardware Overview 4:07 Flashing Meshtastic 4:43 Configuring Meshtastic 5:18 My Range Test 7:20 Meshtastic for my DIY Project? 8:37 RadioLib Alternative 9:45 Verdict

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