Sydney, the Oxford White 2024 2dr Badlands 7MT

[Brian_B]

Just came across this today and have to say that's an impressive install!

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[JoHo]

My bro booked a ski trip to Snowbird so dropped by Moab on the way to meet up with him. Left after work and drove 5 hours to find my first camp at 11pm. Heated up my steak fajitas with the air fryer and ran the heated mattress pad on a moderate setting all night. Battery showed 80% capacity in the morning so I might have overdid it a tad.

 

[JoHo]

How about an accessory that really matters?
Are you staying properly hydrated throughout your adventures? Inadequate hydration contributes to physical/mental fatigue and suboptimal decision making. Setting it up for convenience makes it much easier to stay ahead of it. The cupholders is where I put my morning protein smoothie on my way to work, it's not nearly enough for a day of travel in the high desert. A 1L water bottle rolling around in the passenger footwell really isn't within reach after everything else down there tumbles around. I have set up a 3L bladder in a Molle pouch attached right to the back of the seat and the tube is tethered to the roof on a bungee. This keeps an ample supply of water within close reach all the time with no lids to unscrew and doesn't get in the way of when not in use.

 

[JoHo]

Something I noticed on my last trip is that most of the time I was using the setup in the back of the vehicle, I would dig out my bluetooth speaker and set it up in order to have some music while I cooked or lounged around. Beyond just being another random device that I make sure to charge up before I go, then pack in some bag full of other stuff that isn't used at the same times, it also becomes a thing that I am unpacking and repacking multiple times a day and making sure I didn't leave it somewhere and with a longer trip I will start to wonder how much battery life is left as well. I decided this is another dumb thing in the context of always using it in the same place I have a basically bottomless battery taking up a major portion of my trunk. I decided that I wasn't really getting back much practically usable space by uninstalling the speaker pods so I decided to reinstall them with a twist. The still aren't connected as far as the infotainment system is concerned but I set up a small bluetooth amp inside the pods which is powered from my auxiliary battery. It has a power switch but is also automatically powered down when the vehicle is on. The bluetooth indicator light from the amp is piped to the outside of the pod next to the switch. While I had the power hub open, I upgraded the light strip across the top of the cargo area to be dual color. I didn't think I would have major bug problems but even in the dry Moab area, that much white light attracted a lot of bugs but switching to a red rechargeable lantern eliminated the problem. Now I have white and red built in and also running off the central aux battery.

 

[Homebrew_One]

Put together my Meshtastic module today. Installing will have to wait since it is raining and I do all the work on the actual Bronco outside. The insert had to be printed a second time since several features didn't work right the first time around. That really wasn't surprising considering how much geometry I crammed into a 3 inch part without good design data on the components going into it. the result turned out great. The attached antenna in the photos is for testing, when installed, that will be a coax cable to an antenna outside.

For your Meshtastic set up do you have any pointers with antenna and routing? Is there anything that you would change or do different?

I just built my first node and have been running in my Bronco on the dash and etc.

I currently do not have a good plan or placement and your post is pretty much the only thing that I have found with putting a mesh in a Bronco.

I am kind of thinking of mounting the node under the side view mirror and running the antenna out to a ditch light mount set up. Another possible idea that I had was to get someone to print out a case for a node and mount it above the windshield.

 

[JoHo]

For your Meshtastic set up do you have any pointers with antenna and routing? Is there anything that you would change or do different?

I just built my first node and have been running in my Bronco on the dash and etc.

I currently do not have a good plan or placement and your post is pretty much the only thing that I have found with putting a mesh in a Bronco.

I am kind of thinking of mounting the node under the side view mirror and running the antenna out to a ditch light mount set up. Another possible idea that I had was to get someone to print out a case for a node and mount it above the windshield.

My antenna is opposite the factory AM/FM antenna, you can see it in the recent picture on the front of the vehicle sticking up next to the door mirror. the cable routes past the big grommet. If you have an automatic there is much better place to run wires in at the much smaller grommet that is also higher up but I have clutch lines going through there. I built this setup in the first month of having Meshtastic hardware and I think the location is good but if I knew more, I would have looked into other hardware options. it seems like there are other boards that are better suited to a vehicle mount than the WisBlock. using an N-mount antenna rather than SMA might also have been a better choice but I also didn't want to drill that big of a hole. No matter what board you use, I would mount the board inside and connected to constant power and mount the antenna outside.

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