Random Wire Review issue 114

November 22, 2024: Thanksgiving edition! POTA antenna project is underway. New/old CW key. Challenges installing ASL3. Is the Beelink T5 a good 3040 replacement? Special commands for ASL3 nodes.

Dell Wyse 3040 on top of Beelink T5 mini PC for size comparison

Welcome to the Thanksgiving edition of the Random Wire Review. No matter how you feel about Thanksgiving, I hope you’ll find something this season to feel thankful for.

There will be no Random Wire issue on Friday, November 29th because of Thanksgiving. The following week is the annual conference my nonprofit association puts on for all of our members in Washington State, so I’ll be far too busy to write anything meaningful. What does this mean? No Random Wire issue on Friday, December 6th. I expect to resume publishing the Random Wire again on Friday, December 13th.

.-. .- -. -.. --- -- / .-- .. .-. . / .-. . ...- .. . .-- / -... -.-- / -.- .--- --... -

Topics in issue 114

• RF RADIO:

  • POTA Performer Antenna Project is Underway

  • New Old Sideswiper Key

• ALLSTARLINK:

  • Challenges Installing ASL3 on a Dell Wyse 3040

    • Problems and solutions for the 3040

    • Installing AllStarLink 3 and Allmon 3

    • Additional packages installed

    • Repeated the install to a 5060

    • Struggled with LAN/WAN connection to nodes

  • Is the Beelink T5 Mini PC the 3040 Replacement?

    • Issues with the 3040

    • Beelink T5 Mini PC overcomes these issues

  • Special Commands for ASL3 Nodes

    • My getip.sh script

    • Adding a custom announcement at boot

  • Speaker Volume Control

• MESHTASTIC:

  • New Heltec T114 device

  • Two weeks with e-ink display

• COMPUTING:

  • Content Delivery Network Issues

There is a lot packed into Random Wire Review issue 114! QRV?

.-. .- -. -.. --- -- / .-- .. .-. . / .-. . ...- .. . .-- / -... -.-- / -.- .--- --... -

POTA Performer Antenna Project is Underway

In Random Wire Review issue 113, I shared information about an easy-to-build vertical antenna called the POTA Performer that can be made directional by orienting a couple of radial wires. The simplicity of this antenna appeals to me so I’m gathering the bits I need to make one.

The shortened parts list for my “build” looks like this:

• Chameleon 17-foot telescoping whip. This whip is listed as out of stock at Chameleon but DX Engineering has them for $70. Amazon has a 17-foot telescoping whip with a brand name I’ve never heard of for $75. I already have a 17-foot whip but I need to figure out the correct adapter to mount it on the CB antenna mount (the threads don’t match).

• K&F Concept 64 inch/163cm Camera Tripod. I ran across a durable camera tripod at GoodWill for less than $20 so I purchased it to use for this antenna.

• Aluminum tubing to insert into the tripod. I considered just using the column already in the used tripod but I think the aluminum tubing will be stronger, so I ordered one length.

• 3 Way Aluminum Cb or Ham Antenna Aluminum Mirror Mount with Stud to clamp to the aluminum tube. This arrives any day now. Update: it arrived but was missing some of the required nuts and washers. It is now in the exchange process with Amazon.

• 18 Gauge Silicone Wire Spool 100 ft Orange Flexible 18 AWG Stranded Tinned Copper Wire arrived on November 17th.

• Mueller clips for the ends of the radials are taking the longest to arrive. They should arrive next week.

• A Nylon Spade Quick Disconnect Connectors Kit for making adjustable radial lengths arrived on November 17th.

• Electric Fence Fiberglass Posts will be the last items I procure. I’ll get everything else done first.

.-. .- -. -.. --- -- / .-- .. .-. . / .-. . ...- .. . .-- / -... -.-- / -.- .--- --... -

New Old Sideswiper Key

I picked up a lovely old key recently. It’s a sideswiper (also known as a cootie key).

It seems to work, at least mechanically. I have a lot of practice ahead of me to feel comfortable using Morse Code.

One ham I know uses an iambic paddle as a sideswiper instead of squeezing the two paddles. I had not heard of that method before. I doubt it would have occurred to me to try that with an iambic.

.-. .- -. -.. --- -- / .-- .. .-. . / .-. . ...- .. . .-- / -... -.-- / -.- .--- --... -

Challenges Installing ASL3 on a Dell Wyse 3040

One of the reasons I have a few extra Dell Wyse 3040 thin client machines is for fresh installs of AllStarLink. My ASL node 588412 has been running ASL 2 for quite some time. I wanted to upgrade to ASL 3 and decided that a fresh install would be the cleanest way to accomplish this.

Problems and solutions for the 3040

But of course, I ran into some problems. Previously, I had made a bootable USB thumbdrive for installing Debian 12. It’s been a while since I went through the installation process and I forgot a few key steps.

BIOS password was set

One 3040 device was purported to be brand new, never used, and yet the BIOS was protected with a password. Eventually, I found a couple of standard admin passwords and the one that worked was Fireport. That allowed me to disable the admin password in the BIOS.

You must disable UEFI in the BIOS

I forgot to disable UEFI in the BIOS settings. After installing Debian 12, the 3040 could not see a bootable medium so I could not get it to boot into Debian. Finally, I went to a few trusted sources online and learned (again) that I needed to disable the UEFI network stack in the BIOS. After doing that, I was able to install Deb 12 but the 3040 still would not boot to Debian.

Graphical expert install

I ended up going through the installation routine several times. Eventually, I switched to the expert install routine because I needed to tell GRUB to install to EFI (the Extensible Firmware Interface). That choice was not presented until I used the expert routine. Once I did that, the 3040 booted cleanly to Debian 12.

Installing AllStarLink 3 and Allmon 3

The steps to installing AllStarLink 3 are well described in the instructions for installing Debian 12 and ASL.

Allmon 3 installation also has a set of instructions that I glanced through but didn’t really read carefully. That ended up costing me time. My takeaway? Treat the instructions like a recipe and follow all of the steps.

Had to install curl

Installing curl was easy: sudo apt install curl

You may have to install PHP

My minimal installation of Debian 12 did not include the PHP coding language and Allmon 3 requires PHP. David Gleason NR9V covers this in his AllScan installation instructions so I installed PHP using his example, i.e.:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install php unzip -y

Could not log into Allmon 3

I feel like a dunce as I write this because I did not realize I had missed a step when installing Allmon 3 and it caused me quite a bit of frustration. Various instructions for installing Allmon 3 speak to making sure that the password is the same in /etc/allmon3/allmon3.ini and /etc/asterisk/manager.conf. I made sure — over and over and over again — that the passwords were identical, yet I could not log into Allmon 3.

The part I missed is described under User Management. There is a default user and password already set. You must use the included password utility to set a new password:

$ allmon3-passwd [enter your allmon3 user name]
Enter the password for allmon3: [enter new password]
Confirm the password for allmon3: [enter new password]

I made sure to change the stanza heading ([admin]) in manager.conf to match my new allmon3 user name.

Finally, I removed the default allmon3 password:

$ allmon3-passwd --delete allmon3

When I restarted Allmon 3 (sudo systemctl reload allmon3) I could finally log in, even as I was muttering to myself about the need to follow directions!

Additional packages installed

Firewall

I installed the Uncomplicated Firewall (ufw) as an easy-to-manage firewall on the 3040. (I like the instructions by Digital Ocean for configuring ufw.)

Tailscale and xrdp

I installed Tailscale (instructions here) to make it easier to remote into the machine and xrdp (sudo apt install xrdp) to provide a remote desktop window. (Knowing I was going to install xrdp, I had installed the Mate desktop when I installed Debian 12.)

Backup

I also installed rdiff-backup and wrote a simple bash script to automate backing up the allmon3, asterisk, and allscan directories. I just have to remember to trigger the backup whenever I change something in the Asterisk/AllStarLink configuration.

Repeated the install to a 5060

I want more RAM and storage for my ASL node. More RAM and storage are desired conditions that are not required to run ASL. To that end, I bought an old Dell Wyse 5060 thin client with 8 Gb of RAM and 64 Gb of eMMC storage. The 5060 has four times the RAM and four times the storage of the 3040 machine with 2 Gb RAM and 16 Gb eMMC storage.

eBay provided a not-quite-perfect device

As with some eBay purchases, the 5060 arrived with a few issues. First, there were no screws securing the cover. Fortunately, I have plenty of tiny screws and was able to easily fix that problem. Second, the plastic faceplate on the case was slightly cracked but this isn’t easily seen and it doesn’t affect the functioning of the device. For the small amount of money I paid for the device, I can overlook a hairline crack.

Struggles with LAN/WAN connections to nodes

I did struggle a bit getting nodes 588411 (running in a virtual machine and connected to my SIP phone) and 588412 (newly installed on the Dell Wyse 5060) talking to each other. I could connect 588412 to 588411, but 588411 would not connect to 588412. Having this problem for two nodes behind a single NAT (Network Address Translation) router is a well-known issue. The AllStarLink wiki provided the advice I needed to get those two nodes talking.

I struggled with accessing node 588412 from outside my LAN. Node 588411 on the virtual machine is reachable from the internet. Node 588412 used to be reachable but now it’s not. I’m scratching my head on this one. I can’t tell if my port forwards aren’t working correctly or if I misconfigured something on the 5060 device. I’ve enabled logging on the ufw firewall but I haven’t found any results that make much sense. Of the two nodes, I’d really like 588412 to be reachable from the internet because it is my on-all-the-time node on my desk.

Bindaddress and port forwards

I resolved the problem with node 588412 not being reachable from the internet. All of the “bindaddress” entries (found in iax.conf and manager.conf) were 127.0.0.1. I changed those to the actual IP address of the node on my network. Then I changed my IAX port to 4570 (and updated the server entry at AllStarLink.org) and added that to my port forwarding rules and allowed it in the UFW firewall. I forwarded port 5060 to the node’s IP address and allowed it to pass through the firewall. And then I rebooted the machine, expecting success, but was chagrined to find I still couldn’t reach the machine from outside my LAN.

I scratched my head a good long while about this and spent some time confirming that my configuration was correct. And then I took a break to let the problem simmer in the back of my mind. Eventually, I remembered that I had set a lot of port forwards in my router and some of those were undoubtedly out of date. After spending time cleaning up unused and out-of-date port forwards, node 588412 could then be reached from the internet. It was a conflict in the port forwards that had caused the impasse.

By the way, a good tool for checking to see which ports are open (or you can specify a single port number) to the outside world is https://www.ipvoid.com/. This service helped me narrow down my issues by proving to me that the ports I needed were visible from outside my home network. That information pushed me to think more deeply about my firewall settings and the port forwards in my router.

My advice: avoid the 5060

The 5060 platform has been running around the clock for a few days and I’m happy with the performance, but I’m not happy with the heat it generates. I’ll try a different platform soon (I did, see the Beelink T5 below), but for now, the 5060 is doing the job.

My advice? The 5060 is capable but there are better options. For example, the Dell Wyse 5070 thin client easily runs AllStarLink and also seems to run cooler than the 5060. The same goes for the Dell Wyse 7050 thin client.

.-. .- -. -.. --- -- / .-- .. .-. . / .-. . ...- .. . .-- / -... -.-- / -.- .--- --... -

Is the Beelink T5 Mini PC the 3040 Replacement?

The price of good Dell Wyse 3040 thin client machines has been going up. By good, I mean in good condition with 2 Gb of RAM and 16 Gb of eMMC storage. Finding one in this configuration with a factory wifi card installed is becoming uncommon.

Why would I want to try a different machine for an AllStarLink node? Because there are issues with the 3040 platform. I’ve been on the hunt for an affordable machine about the same size as the 3040 and affordable. (Hat tip to David Gleason NR9V for alerting me to the Beelink T5!)

Issues with the 3040

While I do like the 3040 platform and have several (yes, I’ve contributed to the higher prices we’re seeing!), there are some issues to overcome. Each of these poses potential stumbling blocks as you try to convert the 3040 to amateur radio use.

RTC battery will be old

First, the RTC (Real Time Clock) battery in any used 3040 is likely to be several years old and will likely need to be replaced.

You can make your own inexpensively with a CR2032 battery, per David Gleason NR9V in a Facebook post:

Replacement CR2032 batteries with solder tabs are widely available for around ~$1 and can be soldered onto the existing 2-pin connector and wires in about 5 minutes: Carefully pop open the bottom cover of the 3040 (there is a screwdriver slot at the back), measure the battery voltage at the 2-pin connector, and if less than ~2.9V, carefully unplug the connector and pull the old battery off the PCB, cut the wires where they connect to the battery and solder them to the new battery, wrap everything in electrical tape, and stick back onto the PCB with double-sided tape.

DisplayPort may present challenges

The High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) has become the de facto standard for computer monitors. The 3040, however, only comes with older DisplayPort ports. I’ve had sporadic issues connecting to my HDMI monitor with a DisplayPort-to-HDMI adapter. It turns out that there are active and not active adapters. Look for the DP++ marking on the package or the cable end.

Once I learned this, I bought an active adapter and had no more issues connecting my 3040 to my monitor. But what this means is you’ll probably need an adapter, and not just any adapter: you’ll need an active adapter. I labeled mine with a piece of tape to make it easier to find the next time I need it.

BIOS changes are required

Configuring a 3040 machine to allow installation and operation of Debian linux means having to change the computer’s BIOS settings. It’s easy to miss one of these and have to go through the installation steps more than once.

And along this little journey into the BIOS, you may encounter an administrator password set in the BIOS. There are two standard passwords, one for root and one for the BIOS:

• root password is admin

• BIOS password is Fireport

Occasionally, though, you’ll encounter a machine that has a custom admin password set. To overcome that, there is a push button near the battery labeled PWCLR1.

Power switch LED may not work well

The power switch on the 3040 has an LED in it. Why is this important? Because error messages consist of different patterns of LED flashes. If the LED is dim or not working, you’ll be very challenged to figure out what is wrong when your 3040 doesn’t boot properly.

Your 3040 probably won’t come with a power supply

Most of the 3040 units I see on eBay don’t include a power supply. Finding the appropriate power supply adds a step and increases your cost for an operable platform.

I guess I should add that the 3040 product line was manufactured in two phases. The older machines use a 5V 3A power supply. The younger machines use a 12V 2A power supply.

RAM and storage are not expandable on the 3040

The RAM on the 3040 is soldered to the motherboard. Most of us probably don’t have the tools and skills needed to desolder the RAM chips and solder in new ones.

The eMMC card on the 3040 may be replaceable with a larger one; I haven’t tried it.

Wifi is hard to find on the 3040

A few years ago, 3040s with embedded wifi cards were not uncommon. Today, I just don’t see many 3040s outfitted this way. You can purchase and install an aftermarket wifi card, but the easier solution is a USB-to-wifi adapter. However, you’ll have to figure out which adapter works with the Linux kernel your 3040 is running. I’ve purchased several that purported to work on Linux that just didn’t.

3040 CPU is not as capable

The 3040 uses an Intel Atom® x5-Z8350 processor with four cores and a 2 Mb cache, operating at 1.44 GHz, burstable to 1.92 GHz. Power consumption is 2 watts. RAM speed is up to 1600MHz.

The Beelink T5 uses an Intel® Celeron® processor N4020 with two cores and a 4 Mb cache, operating at 1.10 GHz, burstable to 2.80 GHz. Power consumption is 4 watts. RAM speed is up to 2400MHz.

So…the 3040 has more cores, less cache, a higher base operating rate, a lower burst rate, slower RAM, and consumes less power. Blah blah blah. Most of us mere mortals probably can’t draw a meaningful conclusion from this comparison. Fortunately, there are services that make thorough comparisons, and what they say is the the N4020 in the T5 is as good, or better, than the Atom processor in the 3040.

• https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Celeron-N4020-vs-Intel-Atom-x5-Z8350/m1134763vsm143924

• https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Intel-Atom-x5-Z8350-vs-Intel-Celeron-N4020/2774vs3683

• https://versus.com/en/intel-atom-x5-z8500-vs-intel-celeron-n4020

• https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-intel_celeron_n4020-vs-intel_atom_x5_z8350

What does all this mean? It means in the real world, there isn’t a lot of difference in processor performance, at least from what I’ve seen. The T5 seems to have smoother video signal processing, compared to the 3040. The overall experience of running Debian 12 linux on the T5 definitely feels quicker and smoother that on the 3040. The bottom line is the T5 is not going to have any trouble running AllStarLink.

The T5 is a compact package, almost identical in length and width and a little shorter than the 3040:

Dell Wyse 3040 thin client on top of Beelink T5 mini PC

Beelink T5 Mini PC overcomes these issues

Allow me to address the cost difference between the 3040 and the T5. I picked up my Beelink T5 from Amazon for $89.99. That’s about twice what I see good 3040 units in good condition going for on eBay.

But consider:

• The BIOS battery in the T5 will be new.

• The T5 has two HDMI ports so you won’t need a DisplayPort-to-HDMI adapter. A short HDMI cable is included with the T5.

• When I installed Debian 12 on the T5, I did not need to make any changes to the BIOS.

• The appropriate power supply is included with the T5.

• RAM in theT5 may be expandable. In the system diagnostics for my T5, I saw four RAM banks but only two were populated with chips. UPDATE: RAM is said to be soldered directly to the motherboard, so expansion is not available.

• The storage in the T5 may be replaceable. Note, though, that the T5 has twice the RAM and four times more raw storage than the top-of-the-line 3040.

• Wifi (and Bluetooth) are built into the T5.

• The T5 has VESA mounting holes, meaning you can (with the appropriate bracket) easily mount this slim little computer on the back of most computer monitors.

Beelink T5 sits under the ANR100 audio interface

Cost difference

I won’t do the math on this because there are always deals to be found on the bits and pieces needed to outfit a 3040 platform. The cost difference between an old 3040 and a new T5 grows smaller as you consider what you need to add to the 3040 to make it usable. Then factor in that you are getting twice the RAM and four times more storage with the T5, plus wifi and Bluetooth are built into the T5.

These are the reasons I spent $90 on a new, sleek, and very capable little platform for my desktop node 588412. The reviews on Amazon are a bit all over the place, but the platform has only received 20 reviews. That’s not much of a sample. So far, I’m tickled with how this device is running AllStarLink 3!

CPU temperature and memory usage

On the T5, I’m seeing CPU temperatures of less than 35°C (95°F) with up to 7% CPU usage and 46-47% free memory. When AllStarLink is not receiving or transmitting, CPU usage drops to around 4%.

This graph shows temperatures and memory usage. The left part of the graph represents the system idling and the right part shows node 588412 listening to the ROC-HAM net on node 47620.

I’m impressed enough with this device that I pushed it a little harder by installing HamClock. (Running HamClock raises CPU usage to about 40% and CPU temperatures bump up to about 43°C.) The screenshot below was captured on my laptop which was viewing the HamClock page over my LAN on the T5.

HamClock does load up the T5 noticeably. In the graph below you can see the temperature change of the CPU after I killed the HamClock process. (I was able to use AllStarLink and HamClock simultaneously on the T5.)

By the way, if you’d rather have a standalone HamClock device, check out the Inovato Quadra.

UPDATE ON THE QUADRA: Inovato’s owner (Michael) is facing medical issues that force him to curtail his business. He and his family are filling remaining orders. If his online store accepts your order, it will be shipped. Here are his closing comments in the message I received on November 17th:

It has been an honor and pleasure to help bring the fantastic HamClock by Elwood Downey to more hams. I am sorry this plug-and-play HamClock appliance will come to an end. But remember you can always make your own using a Raspberry Pi. See the excellent tutorial by G6NHU for step by step instructions.

It’s easy to forget that amateur radio is not just a hobby but also a community. The support and caring by our fellow radio amateurs is often incredibly meaningful. I’m sure many of us send our best wishes to Michael. I certainly do.

In what ways is the 3040 better than the T5?

A few aspects of the 3040 are better than the T5:

• The 3040 consumes less power.

• Pressing the 3040’s power button initiates a clean shutdown of the machine.

• The 3040 is a proven platform with great reliability.

Obviously, I think enough of the T5 to invest some money in one. It is working quite nicely for me. I’ll keep some 3040 units on hand just in case, but I think the T5 could be the 3040 replacement many of us have been waiting for.

.-. .- -. -.. --- -- / .-- .. .-. . / .-. . ...- .. . .-- / -... -.-- / -.- .--- --... -

Special Commands for ASL3 Nodes

David Gleason NR9V has posted instructions on how to enable DTMF commands that will announce your local IP address, your WAN address, turn wifi on or off, and even reboot or shut down your node. Note that these commands are for AllStarLink 3 only.

The beauty of David’s approach is that DTMF commands can work for radio-based nodes and for radio-free nodes. For a radio-based node, DTMF commands are issued through the microphone or handie-talkie keypad. For a radio-free node, the AllStar Favorites Management & Scanning Web App provides an easy-to-use built-in DTMF function.

I enabled all of David’s special commands for my node 588412. I did have to monkey a bit with the shell script that announces the local IP address. It turns out my node has three addresses: the IPv4 address, an IPv6 address, and a Tailscale address. The getip.sh script returned all three addresses and nothing was announced.

My getip.sh script

My alterations to the getip.sh script were made to only return the IPv4 address, using awk to parse the information:

#!/bin/bash
echo SET VARIABLE result `ip -4 -o addr show enp1s0 | awk '{print $4}' | cut -d "/" -f 1`

Note that there is a backtick before “ip” and after the numeral “1” in the bash script. When bash sees a backtick, it will try to execute what is inside the backticks as a command. In my bash commands, the Ethernet connection name follows the word “show.” It may be different on your machine.

Adding a custom announcement at boot

While I was fiddling around, I added an announcement to my node. When it boots up, I hear this announcement: “Welcome back, Thomas KJ7T.” To do this I enabled the rc-local service and added the following lines to the /etc/rc.local file:

#!/bin/bash
sudo asl-tts -n 588412 -t 'Welcome back, Thomas, K J 7 T.'

After creating the rc.local file, I changed the permissions to make it executable:

sudo chmod +x /etc/rc.local

In Debian 12, rc-local isn’t enabled, so I also had to enable it:

sudo systemctl enable rc-local
sudo systemctl start rc-local.service

I like how this sounds and it clearly lets me know I’ve successfully powered up or rebooted the node!

Of course, the ability to use the text-to-speech (TTS) engine depends on a bunch of required steps. Those are included in the scripting instructions for adding special commands that David shared in his AllScan group on Facebook.

.-. .- -. -.. --- -- / .-- .. .-. . / .-. . ...- .. . .-- / -... -.-- / -.- .--- --... -

Speaker Volume Control

The volume of some stations coming into my desktop node over AllStarLink is louder than others. My node sits in the corner of my sitting desk and I spend most of my time at my standing desk about four feet from the node volume control. I know that doesn’t seem like much, but it’s disruptive to keep turning around to reach into the corner to adjust the volume. Since I often listen to nets while I’m working at my standing desk, reducing this minor disruption is significant to me.

I bought a volume control device and an audio cable so I can control the speaker volume from my standing desk. Such a simple thing but it makes a big difference in my comfort. I use AllScan on my laptop to control connections with my desktop node and use the “inline audio volume control attenuator” to control speaker volume. The attenuator does actually attenuate the signal so I have to turn up the volume on the AllScan ANR100 device, but it works great for me.

.-. .- -. -.. --- -- / .-- .. .-. . / .-. . ...- .. . .-- / -... -.-- / -.- .--- --... -

Meshtastic

New Heltec T114 device

Around the time Random Wire Review issue 113 came out, I received a new Meshtastic kit from Heltec with the revised rev 2.0 T114 board. Just as before, it did not come with a battery and when I went to order the same battery I used before, it was no longer available. After some hunting around, I found a pair of 1,100 mAh LiFePO₄ batteries in the Rokland store that looked like they would fit.

I placed my order with Rokland on November 12th and the batteries shipped the next day. The USPS delivered the small box on Tuesday, November 19th.

The space inside the T114 case is very small. Last time I stuck a battery in there, I had to squish it just slightly for it to fit. The Rokland battery is just a few millimeters longer. Those couple of millimeters mean it did not fit. I ordered the wrong battery and it cannot be made to fit.

I did find a shorter battery on Amazon with 1,000 mAh capacity. A pair of them should arrive by mid-December. Fingers crossed.

On the positive side, the first T114 device was a great performer with the battery. It proved to be small, light, and responsive. The problem with it was the T114 board. This second T114 uses the revised version 2.0 board so I’m expecting great performance from it once I get it configured with the appropriate battery.

Two weeks with e-ink display

The Meshtastic node with e-ink display I bought on Etsy has some interesting quirks.

Pluses

The price is very right at $55. It’s uncommon to find a good ready-to-go node in a case at this price point.

The node comes with a brief instruction manual that provides the default settings of the node as sent to the customer. This is a blessing when you have been fiddling with settings for a while and have forgotten what they were when you started!

Battery life is very good. The 3,000 mAh battery certainly helps. The display appears to draw relatively little power, extending how long the unit will run on a charge.

The case appears to be robust. I haven’t dropped it but it feels rock solid in my hand.

Minuses

The behavior of the e-ink display is odd. It flashes multiple times from time to time. I see this when booting, rebooting, and navigating the screen. This appears to just be how it works. It’s still new enough to me that it is still rather startling to see it happening.

The display pauses. I’ve turned off all of the power-saving features but the screen still pauses. With power-saving on, the LoRa radio shuts off after a time. With power-saving off, the LoRa radio and Bluetooth appear to continue to function, even though the screen doesn’t update. I haven’t figured out how to keep the screen alive.

I’ve been using this node in the pickup truck as I drive around. As long as I wake it up when I get in the truck and make sure it is connected via Bluetooth to the Meshtastic app on my phone, it works fine. To be fair, my other nodes with OLED displays also need a button tap to wake them up (“resuming”).

.-. .- -. -.. --- -- / .-- .. .-. . / .-. . ...- .. . .-- / -... -.-- / -.- .--- --... -

Content Delivery Network Issues

What is a Content Delivery Network? Says bunny.net:

A Content Delivery Network (CDN), as the name implies, is a network of servers for the purpose of delivering website content. Although web servers are primarily responsible for serving a website’s content on the World Wide Web, a CDN can improve user experience by decreasing the distance between a user and the content (resulting in lower latency and improved throughput).

I had an interesting development occur at work. The hosting company for one of our two websites uses a CDN with content servers all over the globe. A few weeks ago, I learned from one of our users who works for state government that she was blocked from accessing one of our sites.

Investigating, I discovered that one of the CDN servers was located in Lithuania and the state employee’s laptop was prevented from accessing websites in that country. I went a few rounds with our hosting company before finally turning off the CDN service. Then I went shopping for a new CDN vendor and found bunny.net. Bunny lets me limit the CDN servers for my site to North America. Our website traffic is relatively low so I estimate my monthly cost for the new CDN will be $1. That’s right, a buck a month.

A side benefit of making this change is the website is noticeably faster. I offer this tidbit in case any subscribers publish a website that is used by government employees who may get blocked if the content gets served from a foreign country. I had not given that any thought but now that I’ve experienced it, I know it’s a real thing.

.-. .- -. -.. --- -- / .-- .. .-. . / .-. . ...- .. . .-- / -... -.-- / -.- .--- --... -

I’ll say 73 to all (and if you run across someone who says 72, check out what that means on QRPer.com). Best wishes for a thankful Thanksgiving season. Be well, one and all!

https://www.qrz.com/db/kj7t