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Meshtastic Begin

What is Meshtastic? “An open source, off-grid, decentralized, mesh network built to run on affordable, low-power devices”… It’s a system of small Long Range (LoRa) radios that form a mesh network to provide text communications. It allows texting from your phone (or computer) even without the grid. If the power is out, all your computers are offline, the cellular networks are all down… you can still communicate. Meshtastic does not require the Internet, the cell networks, or any other grid-based things. (Also, Read the Docs!)

The details of how it technically works are explained very well by Austin Mesh: Can you explain it like I’m five years old?

So my old pal Matt got me interested in this because we live close enough that we should be able to use it between our houses. We haven’t yet, but we’re still working towards that. There do not seem to be other nodes in the area, which is crucial to a mesh network…

So in the meantime as we experiment and figure things out and test antennas and different hardware, there is research and reading and learning to be done. And testing, and building solar-powered nodes that can live 25 feet up and there is 3D printing and messing around with electronics, and… it’s been a nice distraction that we hope will be useful someday when others join us.

So for now, I am dropping this post here to say we are here, join us. If you’re in Milwaukee or Wauwatosa or close by or in the Greater Milwaukee Area, let me know. There is also a Meshconsin group, and a map of nodes (with many missing of course) and a Discord server.

And in future posts I’ll explain a bit more about the photos and screenshots in this post, so Stay Tuned!

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A 50 Year Old Raleigh Bike

I’ll just admit it, this post is mostly to share photos of an old bike. This is a 1970’s Raleigh 3-speed bicycle. I don’t know the exact year. I rode it today for three miles and I nearly kept my normal pace.

The shifting isn’t perfect but the brakes are good. It feels pretty solid. It’s not as smooth as my Trek 7200 Hybrid but it’s 50 years old and has skinnier tires and no suspension. I just rode around the neighborhood for around 16 minutes. Also, it was 25 degrees F when I was out.

It’s got a three-speed internal hub shifting thing. I tend to ride in low gears a lot, and even in first gear the one hill I went up was a little difficult. (My wonky knee didn’t help.) Still, for tooling around on a fun ride, this thing is just fine.

There are no lights, the reflector is angled all weird, no phone holder, no 3D printed mount for a Meshtastic radio, no top bar bag… just a bike.

There is a bag (appears to be “fake” leather) and a bike rack on the back. The bag is probably also original, and the rack is probably also from the 1970s.

The sticker with info is all scratched up… I tried to identify it when I got it but gave up after some searching. (Feel free to keep looking and let me know!)

Yeah, you know its got fenders! I’d say this bike was well maintained but it may also be that it was just not ridden in the past 20, 30, 40(??) years. I don’t know. I’ll ask around. It was in my mom’s garage so it probably belonged to a family member.

Update: It did not belong to a family member. Years ago my brother helped my mom clear out the garage of someone who passed away and they got the bike at this time.

The shifter works… mostly. It didn’t always shift smoothly and sometimes I was not sure what gear I was in.

It looks like Wares is gone now… Support your LBS!

The Raleigh is from England. Yes, I have a British bike! You should hear its accent. (LOL)

Oh crap! I better renew the bike license… Actually, I should list this on Bike Index and you should list all your bikes on Bike Index!

I am probably the first person in 50 years to take a self portrait (aka “selfie”) using the bell on this bike. I am both proud and ashamed at the same time.

P.S. I put new tires on this bike in 2025!

Keep on pedaling!

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Rugged Box Silicone Gasket Seal (Part I)

Here’s the short version, I used CHANGTIKEJI Silicone Mold “Super Elastic Liquid Silicone” to make these seals / gaskets for the rugged box(es) I 3D printed. There’s a smaller size available as well. I have not used it but it should be the same thing. Keep reading for more!

I’ve mentioned these Rugged Boxes before which are based on Universal Parametric Rugged Box by Rainer Backes, and the design allows for a gasket to seal the lid and bottom, and the suggestion is to print it with TPU, a flexible filament but I’ve been making a ton of silicone molds lately, so I gave it a go. And it worked!

Here’s the box with the seal rendered in orange…

You can export each part separately, so here’s the seal on its own. Again, you could print this in TPU, but the TPU I’ve tried isn’t very soft or flexible, so why not try silicone?

I make a little frame and differenced out the seal (after filliping it upside down) and then I printed it.

Here’s the print. (And another frame for another box off to the side. The silicone doesn’t stick to the PLA plastic so it peeled right out. I should note two things. First, I should have done the silicone pour on an even surface. In the past I’ve used a level and shimmed up a piece of flat stock to make sure the mold is nice and level so the silicone fills the mold without unevenness.

Second, I don’t have a photo of this, but after the silicone was set I grabbed a razor blade and scraped it across the top to clear off any little overflow strings and give a nice clean edge to the casting.

Here’s the seal in place after the silicone was fully cured. This CHANGTIKEJI “Super Elastic Liquid Silicone” is very soft and rubbery, which is a good thing, but it may not be the best thing… I sort of wish there was a way to “glue” it into place, but you can’t exactly glue silicone, because it doesn’t really stick to anything! I do have an idea for that…

I think next time I’ll make the mold slightly smaller so there is some stretch when placing it into the slot of the box. The one thing I don’t like with this one is that it easily falls out. If this is a box you open a lot you’ll probably get annoyed with it falling out on occasion. On the other hand, if this box is outside and rarely opened, it would probably be fine.

You’ll notice that there is a nice layer of silicone showing between the lid and the bottom of the box. There is a parameter named TSealHeight and while it is set to 0 for a default, I tried it at 1 for this box. So the seal has a “T” shape profile to it. I think next time I’ll try the 0 value again which will make the seal thinner and it should not even be seen when the box is closed.

Anyway, this was a great experiment, and very successful! I’m working on an outdoor box next, and a good seal will be important. I’ll most likely use ASA or PETG instead of PLA for the next one.

If you try this using the silicone I mentioned let me know how you get on. (My daughter originally bought some for a school project and I ended up liking it and ordering my own.) I’ve used Smooth-On silicone in the past and it’s worked well sometimes and not as well other times, that could be due to the scale I was using at the time. This stuff is a 1:1 ratio and when we measured in grams it worked great. We even did some large pours and measure in ounces (not as accurate) and it turned out just fine.

See Also: Rugged Box Silicone Gasket Seal (Part II) and Rugged Box Silicone Gasket Seal (Part III).

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Bern Major MIPS Bike Helmet

I got a new helmet. My old helmet (as seen here) was probably 17 years old and when I asked how often a helmet should be replaced people told me every 3 to 5 years! (And yes, I do know that if you are in a crash and your helmet sustains any impact it should be replaced.)

So yay, new helmet! I was looking at the Bern helmets because a friend of mine used to have one and I remember a nice brim on the front. Since I ride early in the morning I occasionally get blinded by the rising sun, and I typically just tilt my head way down and stare at the road, but I figured trying a helmet with a brim might be a good idea.

The photo above shows the brim flipped down. It’s really easy to flip it up or down with one hand while riding.

I head read about this MIPS thing for helmets and it seemed like a good feature, and this Bern Major helmet has it, so hooray for extra safety.

I was a bit unsure about size… I should note I did not try this on at a LBS but did order it online directly from Bern. My head measurement came in just at the top end of Medium, so I ended up going with Large just to be safe. I don’t know if this was the best option but I went for it.

So when I got the helmet the fit was okay, but I just felt like it should have been a little more snug. I didn’t want to return it and get a Medium (though Bern does have a really nice return policy) but instead I grabbed a foam pad kit from Amazon for $8. I added two strips along the sides and the fit is much better.

The Bern Major MIPS helmet was listed on their site as a “Barn Deal” and was $65 USD. I got a discount as a first time customer knocking it down to $55.25 USD and then with shipping added in it went back up to $67.25. (So the discount pretty much covered the shipping cost.)

Update: I just checked the price in May 2025 and it’s at $97.50. Is it because of tariffs? Who knows!?

Update: I just checked the price in October 2025 and it’s back to $65.00. Pricing is nuts in 2025.

I’m pleased with the helmet. It did take a few days to get used to it compared to the one I had over a decade (oops!) but next time I’ll probably visit a local shop and try a few options. I really do like the visor though, so we’ll see if I still do in a few years or if there are other good options.

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Lino-Style Relief Print

I’ve been using this 3D Printed Printing Plates method for almost a year now, and one of the issues I’ve had is that most of the designs tend to avoid thin lines, and the reason for that involves the limitations of 3D printing. Thin lines get delicate because of how 3D printing works. (There are some workarounds but they are… complex.)

The other issue is that I really like the look of linocuts, including chatter, but since I am not carving away materials in a reductive process there is no chatter, unless we add chatter.

Here’s an illustration of a cassette audio tape I did in Procreate. Instead of drawing it like I normally would, I flooded the layer with black and then erased to get white, so this is sort of a reductive process since I am taking away ink (or pixels, as it were) which is somewhat similar to carving away materials.

I have not perfected this technique, and I think there are some good possibilities with it. I’ve noted before that I don’t carve linoleum for a few reasons, mostly arm pain. Besides that though, the digital to analog process offers a few great advantages. You can resize things, you can easily fix mistakes, you can make multiple plates since they are 3D printed (so iteration is built-in), and they are extremely cheap. Most of my 3D printed plates are less than $0.75 USD.

Once I finished the Procreate drawing I exported it to a PNG file, brought it into Inkscape, and then created a vector file from the bitmap file. Since this is a “rough” style of art I wasn’t too concerned with anything being precise, but it looked like a pretty good translation. From there I used the method outlined in How I 3D Print Printing Plates to make the 3D file to print.

Here’s a render of the 3D model of the printing plate. I usually use 1mm for the bottom flat part and 2mm of “raised” art which has worked well for previous designs, but I’m also wondering if I can get away with 1.5mm or 2mm for the flat part. It’s worth testing and easy to do!

The reason for changing the flat backing plate versus artwork ratio is to help those thin lines be a little stronger sine they would not be as tall. Hmmm, something to consider!

This is what the sliced plate looks like before sending it to print. I printed it on my Bambu Lab A1 mini 3D Printer which is a small printer and actually perfect for these small plates.

Ready to print! Here’s the first print along with the printing plate all inked up. I’m using my Provisional Press for this. I love the Provisional Press because it’s under $200 USD and works great for my needs.

Finally, here’s the print framed. (Yes, I 3D printed the frame.) I like where this is going, and will definitely be working on this idea in the future. I think part of what gets me excited is that I am still figuring this stuff out as I go, and there is learning and exploration as part of the process. Always room for improvement, and always new discoveries and surprises along the journey.