The Pheonixing of SunBird
My solar Meshtastic node SunBird was slowly losing its battery due to poor sun exposure. Here's how I rebuilt it with a gutted Bunnings solar floodlight for a bigger battery, bigger panel, and a new home on the hill.
Dean Bird - VK4DSB
Amateur radio operator, IT security professional, and tinkerer based in Bellmere QLD.
Latest posts
What was uploading my data at night? Hunting Android’s mystery UID -253
An unidentified uid:-253 was uploading megabytes of data from my phone every night. Here's how I traced Android's undocumented negative UID to Google's backup service.
Deploying my first solar meshtastic node.
Having built my version of the Solar Meshtastic Node, tested it for a few weeks and planned out possible locations, it was time to actually put it out in the world to see if we could connect people in northern Brisbane. (If there were any.)
My Radio Rig
This is my radio setup. It’s not the biggest or most expensive, but it is designed to balance cost vs portability to allow me to get out and use it as much as I can. Which I admit hasn’t been as much as I would like :(
Mapping Meshtastic Node Locations
What started as a hunt for a better spot to put one solar node ended with me building my own RF line-of-sight planning tool — and a map showing exactly where two towns’ coverage overlaps.
Solar Node - 1 Week in
It has been about a week since I have re-built my meshtastic solar node with the Heltec T114. Solar Node Build. Here are the results of how it has performed over the past week, and what I plan to do next.
Welcome — starting a blog
Setting up a blog on this site so I can post short writeups as projects come together, rather than always promoting them to full topic pages.
Expanding the TOR Transparent Gateway: Multiple LANs, Routing, and a CTF Playground
Previously I built an Alpine-based TOR transparent gateway for a single network that forced all traffic from the network out over TOR. It worked, but it was klunky became: It was a weird setup in that it existed in the same network as the actual router. It had a .2 address and the real router just kinda sat there silenty in the same room with the .1 address. Because of the way it was setup, it…
Creating a network with a TOR transparent Gateway
I wanted to build myself a network that didn’t look like it was my home network. In particular I wanted it to be able to exit somewhere else rather then my home network.