Ah, interesting. I have USB hardwire kits for my dashcam but they’re not on a timer. I’ve seen the T-Echo, definitely something I’ll be purchasing in the future. I’m carrying a T-1000E right now.

You might be surprised at how many nodes are in your area. The vast majority probably aren’t broadcasting their position to meshmap. It’s usually only routers or permanent clients that people publish there.

I’m doing something similar with outdoor nodes. This enclosure looks good and the top review used it as a meshtastic node. IP65 ABS Enclosure

Just keep in mind that anything above 3 dBi is going to be directional. A 10 dBi is very directional, so unless it’s a fixed antenna and you have very little elevation change between stations I’d go with a 3 or 2.5 dBi omni antenna.

I’ll second Rokland. This is a good one if you want some portability. 2.5 dBi Flex

I was about the same with default v3 antenna (1 km). Even a cheap sub-$10 one will get you 3+ km.

Is it a 2.5 wavelength or a 2.5 dB omni? A 2.5 wavelength is much larger than 33 cm and will have dead spots.

But in general it will be harder for it to hear a transmission from the internal T1000-E compared to any significant external antenna.

It looks like that first link just references the original article. Seems to be an AI generated summary, too.

This is about where I am as well. G2 Base station is ordered, and I have some heltec-V3 clients to play around with. A box of T1000-Es to hand out to the kids will be next. We’re in a Louisiana river delta so the land here is mostly flat, just trees and some <5 story buildings in a city of ~200,000 people. Hopefully we can get some good range with the mesh and grow pretty quickly. I’ve only seen two other nodes so far.