Distance between boards?

[gcomer]

Is there any information available from the board, on how far away the neighbors in the mesh are? Or at least data that could be used to make a rough calculation of such?

[taylor]

Hello!
Do you mean the maximum functional distance between nodes in a large mesh? Each basic has a maximum range of around 1km depending on data rates. With the Basic at 20kbps you might want to stick to something like 600m. We still don't have full mesh software operating, so we're just doing hub and spoke for now.

But distance is 600-1000 meters.

[gcomer]

Was wanting to be able to tell what the actual distance was between boards when they were meshed. Basically would I be able to use multiple boards to accomplish some form of triangulation to determine locations.

Example would be if I had three boards at known locations, could I use the communications with a fourth board on a 'bot of some sort to know at least an approximation of it location in relation to the others. This being in an area where GPS wasn't available.

[taylor]

Ah! Yes, you have signal strength available, which can be used as an approximate and sometimes unreliable measure of distance. If you have one robot on a field with a few boards around it, you could likely very accurately determine the location. But if a person walked in front of one of the antennas they would change the signal strength a lot, as if the bot had suddenly shifted by several meters or more.

But generally the capability is there and the radio provides a high resolution readout for signal strength. I think people will likely build out some kind of distance estimation routines for that.