LoRider- the Meshatastic

Intro

This project is for the Meshtastic Device Design Challenge.

First, thing that came to my mind was what would I need a tracker for?

I live in Seoul, South Korea, and we are quite famous for many things. One of the things that we are famous for is that things don't get stolen even in public.

However, the one thing that I personally have had stolen often in Korea, were bicycles.

I ride electric bicycle to and from my lab, so it is an essential in my life and electic bikes are not cheap.

[SKIP this part if you just want to see what I made and don't care about the story behind why]

The story behind why I want to use Wio Tracker.

At first I wanted to use Wio Tracker like a "Smart Citizen Kit" to sense different things like tempereature, air quality and humidity, but I really didn't see the point of doing that because I already have a "Smart Citizen Kit". While I was contemplating, the idea, someone stole the "Smart Citizen Kit" that I had installed, and it was lost forever.

Some of my friends told me that I should have put a tracker with it.

[Back to this project]

the following list was generated by ChatGPT with this prompt, " I want the GPS to activate when the accelerometer is activated. so I can stop the GPS tracking when I park. but when the bike is jostled, or is moving, the GPS tracking can start and I get an alarm. I want this so that I don't have to manually start the GPS when I am moving, as well as be able to follow if someone is moving my bicycle. Can you organize this in a list mode like flow chart?"

🚲 (proposal)Bicycle GPS Security Flow

• Bike Parked (Idle State)+ GPS OFF (to save power).+ Accelerometer (LSM6DS3 or other seeed grove sensor such as the reed sensor) runs in low-power wake-on-motion mode.+ System is in “guard mode.”
• Motion Detected (Jostle/Movement)+ Accelerometer interrupt triggers → Wio Tracker L1 receives signal.+ Wio Tracker L1 performs: ---> Turn GPS ON ---> Send Alarm Alert (via Meshtastic → phone/app).
• Tracking Active+ GPS logs live position+ Meshtastic app/web shows real-time route of bike+ Owner can follow if stolen or being moved.
• Return to Park Mode+ Bike is manually locked/parked again.+ GPS turned OFF (manual app command or timeout)+ Accelerometer resumes motion detection standby

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📍Solution(or not)

(watch out, I was unable to do much, function-wise)

I started out by following the meshtastic documentation. There was not much to get help on the Wio Tracker L1 about additional inputs and outputs due to it not being supported at this time. which means I have to make firmware or something (which I am not yet familiar with)

good news was that the 3.3v pins available on board are high, so I was able to get some LEDs to be on. ( off is done manually by cutting the power with a switch :D )

LED

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📍GPS and Me

There were too many obstacles to achieving my goal of GPS tracking as the GPS was not accurate for the most part. I had to spend sooo much time debugging and just trying to figure out what was wrong.

Here are some things I checked and tried that you might struggle with as well.

1. First time flashing the latest Beta (stable) firmware (at this point it was 2.6.11)

• you can do this at https://flasher.meshtastic.org/
• find your device, download the flash file, drag and drop into the connected tracker folder.

• Take the tracker outside with good sky visual to get the initial positioning( this is where it all went wrong... read the photo captions)

2. Route tracking

• I took my LoRider out for a walk to see how it does with tracking.

3. On the bicycle

We didn't always have bad days. I did manage to get it to be at my location this one time while just toggling with the different device configuration on the meshtastic app. So I tried tracking it while riding on my bicycle.

• Device was set as TAK tracker as it happened to show the GPS location correctly at the time.
• It was tracking to some extent, but the GPS coordinates were still so wrong.

4. The multiple nodes

I realized that the bluetooth connection between the nrf52840 on the tracker and the phone is short range, which means I had no means of connection between the tracker (on my bike theoretically outside) and my phone (which would be on me indoors) anyway. So I realized that is where LORA comes in ( I guess?) I needed more for my mesh!

also, I got tired of getting attacked by mosquitos from stitting outside to work with GPS.

• I happened to have a couple XIAO and Wio combination kits. so I hooked them up to see if I can try communication without going outside.
• same way of flashing the firmware, select the device, and follow flash instructions. press the reset button a couple times to get into DFU mode etc.
• By changing some stuff on the meshtastic app for both devices, I was able to get them to communicate. (I don't know how to make them stop, so now they beep and send me messages constantly)
• perhaps the node that goes on the bicycle should be smaller and more incognito like being hidden in a bottle or something.

5. The Tower of Sauron

After taking a short break. I noticed that the GPS kept showing me that my tracker was 2.2km away on top of this building. No matter where I was, it was shown to be here. this also happened with my other Meshtastic nodes.

6. will it work?

I read somewhere on reddit about different features on newer firmware (unstable). But by that time I had run out of time. I was able to check that the GPS is relatively stable now, but dont have time to test them out now.

• the GPS did seem to work now that the "unstable" firmware was flashed. Pinging everywhere around the vicinity.
• used meshtastic python CLI to set fixed base for the nodes with no GPS (static nodes)

💭Thoughts

I think with the sporatic GPS log, I should be able to get accurate route or even ping on command to get position if not alerts from location change.

! Update on GPS !

Rode my bicycle in the rain to test out the device one last time. With the (unstable) 2.7.10 Alpha meshtastic firmware, GPS seem to be working

• The enclosure was on, device was attached to the front of the bicycle
• gps was a little slow in catching up at first, but later was able to be quite consistent in updating every 15 seconds as I had set it to
• whenever I was under a tree or a bridge, the gps would ping around the starting point, which was not perfect, but the updates are close enough to show me the route of movement.

• I also found out this morning, that it did pretty well with keeping up with me in the bus. I can now rely on it.

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The design.

I didn't veer too much away from the design, but had to make room for the accelerometer which doesn't necessarily need to be at a certain orientation for wanted function, but I decided to place it flat for future use of compass and direction (perhaps). To place the accelerometer, I relocated the LoRa antenna, which needs to point up. The tracker needed to be compact and easily hidden when placed on my bike for it to stand out less, but be exposed enough for the GPS and LoRa.

hero shot

• Version 1 from proposal stage

• Version 2 with the actual board

Front

• Version 1 with hopes of short antenna

• version 2. was able to keep the antenna from sticking out by making the body slightly longer which let me have more LEDs.

Inside

• version 1. compact, and room for GPS and accelerometer

• version 2. tighter room for GPS and sensor to fit and room for the LORA antenna to bend in. It gives more room for better wiring.

Back and side

• version 1. The back attachment part can be inter changeable depending on the type and location of the mount.

• Version2

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🚲 The Real Deal

assembly

• stick the LED strips on the LED pocket. (attach a slide switch on the ground to be able to turn light off.)
• find the GND and 3.3V pin and solder the wires to the LED.
• fit the board to the casing. connect the wires from the back. First the battery, then GPS and LORA.
• screw the front face (the one with the LED pocket) and the board with supporters in between.
• on the side of the casing, there are slots for zip ties. Find some pretty colored ones, zip and tie your LORA antenna to the side so that it doesn't move.
• fit the battery and its wires in nicely, and close the back lid and screw that in.

🦾Finally!

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💭Some more thoughts:

Design of the casingwise. it was a great success. Seriously, look how perfectly pretty and compact it is.

I just need to spend some time getting to know the meshtastic more.

If I use the reed sensor, I have to make sure that my bike is at a tilt when parked, and will have to work with placement and sensitivity for best results.