redterminal.org Gopher Hole

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+title:  ROOPHLOCH 2024 Post 2 - LoRa transmission
+date:   Fri, 13 Sep 2024 19:50:07 +0200
+author: -fab- <fab@redterminal.org>
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<== ROOPHLOCH'24 Post 2 ==>

Because  I was  a little  unsatisfied  with my  standard setup  for
outdoor communication  (Laptop/Smartphone Hotspot), I come  up with
this second ROOPHLOCH post, this time on my Gopher hole.

<== LoRa Transmission ==>

This time  I send  my ROOPHLOCH  post from a  family park  near the
southern end  of Norf. I'm sitting  on a bench under  the shadow of
some trees. I tried at first  to send from the academic high school
here in  Norf but it  seems to be too  far away (yet)  (~840m). The
line distance is  according to google maps ~247m meters.  I need to
install some better  antennas and position them a  little better on
my balcony.

I've set up 2 USB-LoRa (Long  Range Transmission) devices, one on a
Raspberry Pi 3 at my home on my  balcony and one on my laptop on my
way.  I  wrote  two  little  Perl scripts  and  one  shell  script,
"lora_receive.pl" which runs  on the Raspberry Pi  and receives the
file,  and  "lora_send.pl"  which  runs on  my  laptop  and  gzips,
encrypts and  does a base64  on the file  and then sends  it. After
transmission the  lora_receive.pl script  decrypts and  gunzips the
file. Then it pipes the content to the "auto_create_phlog_entry.sh"
shell script which  prepares it and puts it in  my phlog directory,
builds the  gophermap and rss  feed and  then sends the  phlog diff
to  my  Gopher  server  with  rsync,  so  it  should  be  published
automatically.

I chose  two simple USB-LoRa-Adapters which  don't support LoRaWAN,
so I can "circumvent" the LoRaWAN restrictions :).

These are my first tries with LoRa,  so I'll try how far I can push
this in future. The USB-LoRa sticks  should have a maximum reach of
~5km under ideal  conditions. Although I'm only 247m  away from the
home  station I  should be  able to  go further  away. I  just need
better antennas. The other main obstacle for this is the walking. I
have to do this all by foot which I'm not good on at the moment.

<== The scripts ==>

I'll push a  git repository to my account on  Codeberg.org with the
scripts and make a follow up post on Gemini with the Link. They are
a little messy because I hardcoded some paths. I'll work on that in
the future. They're also very  brittle mainly because I don't check
the inputs, but they work if used correctly.

<== BTW: My site turns three years old this month ==>

On 12th of  September in 2021 I  posted my first Gemlog  post on my
site. It was just the first "About" page but nonetheless. A lot has
changed  since then.  I moved  from the  'foobucket.xyz' domain  to
'redterminal.org' in 2023,  and I added a Gopher Hole  and a Finger
server in January'24.  A lot of Gemlog and Gopher  posts were added
since and I'm still tinkering around with my site.

<== Going on with my walk ==>

This  time I  won't go  to "Le  Petit Café"  after my  transmission
because it's in the other direction,  and as I told you before, I'm
not good on my  feet. I think I'll go home  directly after that and
if all goes well I'll celebrate  this little success with a hot cup
of coffee! :)