War Drive 4

🎉 WarDrive #4 completed before (a late) dinner

I drove much of Vashon’s outline this late afternoon. The image above shows what my app showed at the end. Updates from your radio show up near real-time (~15 seconds), across the world via the map described next.

Anyone can now review coverage for mapped portions of Vashon and (soon) Maury Islands at: MeshMapper.net

If you zoom in fairly far, you can click on a square and see what repeaters the mapper’s radio was able to connect to. Many are over 30km away! Other nerdy data is also shown for the data wonks out there.

For instance this screen capture shows from the south end of Vashon I reached repeaters south of Corvallis. I’m doubtful this is real, giving my simple setup and beta status of the software, but it is still pretty amazing!

Radio signals from a $50 setup supposedly reached from Tahlequah to repeaters in Corvallis & Junction City, OR!

Do it yourself

I used a very simple set-up:

• a $27 cartop antenna (https://amzn.to/4snxZDl), and
• a Heltec V4 (https://amzn.to/3OtXHHo) (or pretty much any companion radio, no GPS necessary)

Install the MeshMapper app on your cell phone, and use it instead of the MeshCore app when you wanna war-bike, war-hike, war-sail, or war-drive. Pretty fun!

Details on using the app are forthcoming on our mapping page.

For technical questions about MeshMapper, go to their Discord server.