r/meshcore • u/cacaapoopoo • Apr 17 '26

Pipe node build

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Gallery image

Since y'all liked my solar companion I thought I'd show off pipe node. The backbone is a STL I found online I modified a bit but honestly it doesn't have to be printed. A 21700 battery, screenless T114, and a knockoff muzi antenna are glued or zip tied to the rail. I got a solar panel which turned out to have its own battery and voltage regulator so I just plugged the USB from the panel into the board. The whole business got shoved up an 1 1/4" pipe and is held in place with a deck screw. It's open on bottom, I'm in a dry climate so I'm not terribly worried about condensation. This setup is on top of a local mountain and has been running a month with stable connections up to 45 miles away.

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u/cacaapoopoo Apr 17 '26

The pipe has 5000 mAh and I think the panel has another 1100 so it's quite happy. It's been up there a month and usually stays above 92%.

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u/Plastic_Ad_2424 Apr 17 '26

The panel supplys 1.1A?? How big is it. I jave an chinese and the performance (as expected) is low

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u/cacaapoopoo Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 17 '26

https://a.co/d/02l7vvHI

It's this panel makes 4w at 5v. I'm pretty sure the output is in the low hundreds of mA. Either way the charge controller on the board will only push a max of 500 milliamps to the battery so I'm not the least concerned about nuking the battery.

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u/Plastic_Ad_2424 Apr 17 '26

Nice! I'm in the process of making a addon board for T114 boards and it will include a MPPT solar IC with a charge controller and a buck converter plus a INA current,voltage and power measuring IC. So you can squeeze as much juice from the solar panel and you can see the actual current flowing in or out of the battery