I have had my new RAK WisMesh Tag for about 15 hours so far and really like what I see. I do like the fact that it comes with a lanyard, although I feel as though the lanyard is too long, because when wearing it, the bottom of the node came down to the top of my belt. What I did instead is that I had a short chain from a pocket watch that did not work and so I used that instead and clipped it to my belt and if the node ever falls out of my pocket it will only go down as far as my knee and then the chain will catch it. Based on the battery drain overnight, I think I should get about five days on battery with the GPS turned off, which I like considering that my old Seeed T1000-E got three days and six hours with the GPS off. Since Meshcore-open does not currently have a background service and doesn’t stay connected to the node when the app is closed, having a buzzer on the RAK makes things much nicer.

I live in an area where there is no MeshCore activity yet, so what I did is took my Heltec MeshPocket 10,000 mAh and flashed it as a room server with repeater functionality enabled, and set it in my window. It’s not a great repeater, since it’s not super high up, but it’s the first piece of infrastructure in my area, and so when other infrastructure comes online, I will turn off its repeating.