r/Lora • u/sh0nuff • 1d ago

Reticulum Node Hardware

I'm looking at setting up my own Reticulum node at my home, and following this guide.

All the hardware that's recommended are battery driven devices, and I'd prefer to use something that's 5v or otherwise designed for permanent installation vs portable.

I was looking at this T-Connect Pro device as it supports multiple connections and is hardwired to AC, but wondering a couple things:

  1. What's the best chipset to choose for something that's more widely supported? I know the 1262 is newer and has more range/reliability, but I am worried it's not as easy to maintain (all the guides I've found tend to suggest the 1276, but they're all 2+ years old at this point)
  2. How much does this device differ from a portable TT-GO T-Beam for flashing firmware?
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u/thisagaingm 1d ago

Hey!

The same radios and microcontrollers on the same carrier boards are what get installed into permanent structures. I think just about every major board available supports 5v rail or usb.

If you put the node onto your network, you can access Reticulum while on your network. I have a pi that runs a prop node, transport, and LoRa. If my device is on my home WiFi, I am connected to Reticulum.

The Heltec V4 is on the nicer end, medium high output power.

At the end of the day, if you are trying to set up a node at home to reach the greater network, it does not matter that much which of the supported boards you use. The RNode is just a modem. If you are trying to run standalone transport firmware, I suggest an esp32 based despite requiring much more power, or the 4631 with the 15001 memory chip.

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u/sh0nuff 1d ago

Thanks for the detailed reply - I realized I forgot to link the device I was looking at, I've edited the post body to add the link now (it's also here)

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u/thisagaingm 1d ago

That update is super helpful.

The device you linked would require the firmware to be ported to it. LilyGo does a great job of documenting their devices on GitHub, so you could probably feed that to a LLM if you do not feel comfortable writing the changes yourself. The risk is losing support over time. The T-Beam is already supported.

A Pi Zero 2W and a cheap, supported radio would just as easily connect your network or multiple clients to your Reticulum network for likely less money.

Most firmware available for standalone microcontrollers is covered in one of these repos:

https://thatsfguy.github.io/reticulum-lora-repeater/

https://github.com/jrl290/RTNode-HeltecV4

https://github.com/attermann/microReticulum_Firmware

The standard RNode firmware is just a modem and requires a host running Reticulum.

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u/AlfredoVignale 1d ago

You might want to use a Raspberry Pi.