How's it going everybody? A couple of
months ago I set up a 1 W
rack wireless Laura device. You could
use this for MeshTastic or MeshCore. I
did not set it up completely correctly
and thus I was only getting half a watt,
less than a a full watt output as
promised. And there's a couple reasons
for that. There's a bit of extra
equipment you need to also power the
amplifier board on the Laura device and
I just neglected to do that. I didn't
realize it when I was putting the kit
together. So I said I would remedy it
and I have via a new kit that's
available from ZeroFox 3D. The kit's
about $52 if you want to go with the
upgraded kit or what they're calling the
pro kit, it's $12 more. And this will
allow the 1 W system to work and if you
go with the pro model, that includes a
current and voltage sensor that you
include when connecting to a solar panel
or working with that. And you can also
read that out in the metrics for your
device once you get it up on the roof.
So let's go ahead and build this Morbo
device and then we'll put it up on the
roof. It is finally time to return to
the 1 W rack wireless board and we're
going to do that via a new ZeroFox 3D
solar kit. This is a solar powered
mounting system for the rack wireless 1
W board. It has the ability depending on
your configuration preferences to be an
SMA or a type N connection. So let's
clear the the the path here. All right,
here's all of our bits. I recovered the
board. Uh we have to do a bit of
soldering. Very ingenious because there
is a wiring harness that has to plug
into the rack board to get that full,
you know, 1 W out. And here this is is
harness right here uh in in its glory.
So, how it goes in, also very ingenious.
I I brought out my uh
my very precision screwdrivers for this,
but we go in like that for the switch.
And then we route the power cords behind
behind the coax. Let's bend that out of
the way for a second.
Let's slide this guy in first cuz the
black is coming back this way.
And then this guy goes under there. Very
ingenious routing.
And then that comes through to this
side,
which is going to be used to power um
our our board, our rack board, which is
going to align somewhat like that. So, I
have a feeling this guy needs a little
header action here for mounting these
wires. So, I'm just going to leave these
I'm going to leave them unclipped for
right now, just free. And then these
guys go around as well. There's a little
connector. This is going to be
externally powered, so we're going to
take this guy up and over
like a so.
And we should probably solder in that
jumper, that header right now, too,
which goes right there. I get an
opportunity to use my Omni Fixio, Fixio,
Omni Fixio, something along those lines,
which is a helping hands of kind of a a
different
style. Pretty cool. These guys
go like that, and we take these little
claws, and they
What what what? Very cool. Very cool.
So, let's heat up our iron. So, let's do
something like that.
Maybe more down here. Yeah.
So, this guy is going to come up under
like that.
Right? It's not going to hold into
place, so I'm just testing it.
So, what do we talk about in previous
videos? We're going to
tin our iron.
And then we'll come in here and clean it
up real good.
Look at that. Look how shiny.
Okay, now, I will actually leave some
solder on the tip
and I will hold this up and under.
Okay, good.
Good enough to hold it, and then we come
in and just solder the rest of them very
quickly.
Done.
It's all we need the iron for, I
believe.
The header is in place, so let's load
our board with the wires.
White, green, black, red.
I'm just
The recommendation was to use the longer
of the black wires in the kit, so keep
that in mind.
All right, now we take our our fun
little plug that we have.
And that goes here.
Oh, it presses. It's a press fit. Now,
this is pretty fancy, so we take our our
wires here. Oh, I lost one.
Where'd my wire go?
I'm going to go underneath these guys
because there's routing
right here. Let me show you the routing.
We're going to go into this groove
and then up over the top there.
That's white.
And now here's green.
And then black.
And finally red.
And we have our plug in place. So this
kind of folds over.
That's pretty cool. This is an ingenious
little kit build, I got to say. Okay,
let's let's fasten this home. What do we
think are the right screws for this? I
think it's going to be these little
guys.
Pretty cool. That's pretty cool.
Something I have to recover from the
last build is the Bluetooth antenna.
Without it, we will have a a whole world
of a time. So it's adhesive to the side.
I'm just going to try and pry it up.
Oh, yeah, that's in there.
Oh, that totally ripped the adhesive
off. Um probably going to need to get
another one of those. Let's see if I
have one lying around in my
mesh-tastic bits box. Of course, I have
another one.
This is the long-range antenna.
This is the Bluetooth low energy. So
Bluetooth low energy, go back in here.
This is a problem for somebody else, if
not me, in the future. You know how that
goes, right?
Okay, now looking at this,
Bluetooth is going to go right here.
And then this guy goes right there.
Okay, this is our solar controller. We
know that that plug for the battery is
going to have to come in this way, so it
definitely lines up like that.
So, let me hold that there.
And we'll take some of our self-tapping
screws.
All right, red is on the bottom.
And then black is pretty difficult to
work with, so this is where you might
want to take some
tweezers.
Put a little bend in it.
All right, last board to install this
little current
sensor here.
Now, following the nice video done by 0
x 3D over on his YouTube channel, he
says put the tray, the battery tray, in
without the batteries. And let's do a
little fitment here for the wires into
the little handling troughs, if you
will.
And then we can go into the power
connector like a so.
And these guys can lay flat.
All right. Now for the part not for the
faint of heart here. We're going to take
this red wire, the one that's closest to
the
to the board.
We're going to bring that over and we're
going to snip it. We're going to snip it
right there.
All right. Now that we've snipped and
we've got this sorted out, we can take
the connector
out
along with the wires.
The battery tray comes with it.
Um okay, very important. I'm probably
using overkill batteries for this job,
but
all springs are negative, right? So into
the caddy,
negative,
negative,
negative, like a so.
Boom.
And by overkill, I mean Samsung's are
pretty nice batteries that I'm using in
this case.
All right. A bit flippy here.
I've
crimped the wires here and here, and
this one actually goes to this lower
terminal.
And this guy goes in the upper terminal.
So let's loosen those up.
Well, I messed up. So I cut this too
short. Remember, this this connector,
this wire's got to go from here to the
upper one, and I should have provided
more slack on the upper. It's a very
tight connection. So no no big deal. I
just have to uh
uh a wire here to make it fit. Then I
get to bring back my
Omni fixo. Yay! Here we go.
It's back again.
That's a thing of beauty right there.
That's beautiful.
All right, our wires come over here.
It's a fun kit to build.
>> And then this black wire goes in here,
the third position.
And then our red wire goes in the fourth
position.
And then last but not least, the two
black wires go into the top position on
this board.
Both of them together in this side.
Wow, that's a tight fit. All right.
Hold it. Hold it. Hold it. Don't move.
Don't even breathe.
All right. Uh what else do we need to
do? Well, we got to get a solar panel to
attach here, and I've got just the one.
Um let me take up the slack here for
this. We got to connect our antenna
connection.
Okay, got that.
All right, I got a 5-W inexpensive solar
panel. I picked these up on Amazon.
Uh I used it on that suction cup
that suction cup node project that I
showed not too long ago. So, they're
deadly simple. You just snip the leads
off of this guy.
And strip a little bit of the wire,
the outer jacket.
It's literally just red and black.
That's all it is, so
easy.
Okay. Now,
this needs to go into
the solar here. It is marked positive
and negative, so that's
good.
Okay, let's see how we do.
Sure, I could have built some kind of a
USB-C contraption
to plug into it, but you know, whatever.
Actually, I could have just left it. No,
it takes a coaxial. Let's see.
Charge.
The rack is here. Oh, I could have just
went straight USB-C into that. Oh, well,
that's my bad.
There is a USB-C connector.
But, okay, I think that's it.
Type N connector here.
We have a
Alpha 915 antenna.
And let's let's switch it on and see how
it goes.
That flashing red light and green light
here.
Flashing lights there.
All right, we got to secure this whole
thing up now. So, the first screw is
here in the back. This takes a
Oh, yeah, the set screws pretty much
going in good. There we go.
I am going to program this before I do
anything else. There's another set screw
in the front here and then the mounting
plate goes over the top. I'm going to
first program this to make sure it's up
to snuff to go up back on the roof and
do a bit of a firmware upgrade.
All right, last little bits here.
Excellent. Now,
let's get this on the roof.
All right, we are deployed.
Solar panel I had a mount up here
already [music] that
it's like a trail cam mount.
>> [laughter]
>> It's working just fine. So, we got solar
solarin.
And here's our
new Mando.
Mambo number five.
I left the pigtails on. Sorry, Gordo.
Got it here high up next to my discone
antenna. Heck, yeah.
Killer.
All right, so the Morbo is working on my
roof right now. Everything seems great.
I guess the best thing you can do with a
solar node is if you have no complaints
and no issues, then it's working as
exactly as expected. I give major shout
outs to the design of this whole kit.
It's really impressive the way that just
kind of everything fits together very
nicely. It's really really nicely done.
So, link is in the video description to
check it out. I also included a solar
panel that I'm using that seems to be
working fine. It's a really lightweight
one and they're relatively inexpensive.
I hope you found this video helpful and
you get another
maybe your first, but another meshtastic
or mesh core device up on the air. I'm
Josh KI6NAZ
73.