Peter “Bobricius” Misenko is as soon as once more experimenting with transportable long-range communications, this time hitching his wagon to the Meshtastic undertaking with the TrackSenger — and the strong, mechanical keyboard-equipped MechSenger.
The most recent in Misenko’s long-running Armachat household of text-based communication units, the unique “Doomsday Communicator” of which was unveiled 4 years in the past. Since then, Misenko has been tinkering with the design — and the newest mannequin within the vary, the TrackSenger, provides assist for the Meshtastic LoRa mesh community.
That assist comes courtesy of a Heltec Tracker, which serves as the guts of the undertaking — operating the Meshtastic firmware on an Espressif ESP32 microcontroller and speaking with different Meshtastic units over a Semtech SX1262 LoRa transceiver. The event board’s built-in show is uncovered by means of a gap within the TrackSenger’s higher PCB layer, which offers labels for a push-button keyboard for text-based messaging.
For many who need one thing extra strong, Misenko has designed the MechSenger — a variant of the TrackSenger designed on a single PCB and that provides a bigger mechanical keyboard and a 2.42″ OLED show, appropriate for housing in a Peli-style case. “For this undertaking [it] is best [to use the Heltec] Tracker with out display screen,” Misenko explains. “You may order [the] NO SCREEN model or take away [the] display screen from [the] board. [If used in] mixture with [the] OLED show, [the] onboard display screen is inactive and darkish.”
Each the MechSenger and the smaller TrackSenger are powered by Heltec Tracker boards. (📷: bobricius)
On the time of writing, solely the Meshtastic firmware was full; Misenko has indicated that assist for his authentic Armachat platform will observe, with out giving a timescale for the discharge of an up to date firmware.
Misenko has listed the TrackSenger on Tindie, priced at $9.99 for a naked PCB as much as $108.99 full-assembled with Heltec Tracker board; the MechSenger is obtainable on a separate itemizing, priced at $24.99 for a naked PCB as much as $274.99 totally assembled. Extra data is obtainable on the TrackSenger and MechSenger Hackaday.io pages.