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Description #
In this video, I unbox and set up the Heltec WiFi LoRa32 V4, the latest LoRa development board from Heltec Automation, and show you how to flash MeshCore firmware to create a Meshtastic repeater node. This device can also work with Meshtastic
This video contains affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. 🔗 Useful Links: 🛒 Heltec WiFi LoRa32 V4 board (affiliate): https://s.click.AliExpress.com/e/_c3Ri31k3 🛒 Heltec case (affiliate): https://s.click.AliExpress.com/e/_c3x2iN1d 💾 Flash MeshCore firmware: [https://meshcore.co.uk/]
We’ll cover: Unboxing the Heltec WiFi LoRa32 V4 board Comparing it to the older Heltec V3 model Heltec V4 Case compatibility and antenna setup Flashing MeshCore using the web flasher
Configuring your node as a MeshCore or Meshtastic repeater for LoRa mesh networking
Perfect for anyone building a LoRa mesh network, MeshCore repeater, or experimenting with Heltec IoT development boards.
Original Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXJtbLtyrmk
Transcript #
Hey all, today we’re looking at this. This is a Wi-Fi LoRa32 V4 from Heltec, or as I’ll just call it, a Heltec V4. Let’s open it up. Inside we have the LoRa board right here, and underneath we have a few accessories as well as a little antenna. That’s everything that’s in the package. Zoom in a bit closer — there’s the Heltec V4.
Now we’ll see if it fits into any of the existing cases that I have. First things first, this is the dinky little Heltec case for my V3. I can tell you right now, it’s not going to fit because of these — these are battery pins. It just won’t go in. So this isn’t going to work; we’re going to try a different case.
Here’s my primary repeater node. We’ll just open it up and see if we can put this inside. There’s a Heltec V3 — we’ll pop that out and remove it, and we’ll see if this fits. Okay, that seems to fit just fine. We’re going to put the antenna on, snap that on, and slide it in. Now we just drop this on, tighten everything up, and put the antenna back on. There’s the Heltec V3 — we’ll put that away. Should be able to power this on. Excellent. That’s the default firmware; I’m going to go put MeshCore on this right now.
We’re going to flash the MeshCore firmware, and that’s pretty simple. We just go to the MeshCore website, go to the web flasher, and pick Heltec V4. This is going to be a repeater, so we’ll click “repeater latest firmware”. We’ll erase the device and press flash. You’re going to pick this device right here and connect. It’s been flashed, and you can see here it’s resetting. Then you can configure it via USB once it’s started. I find generally the USB configure doesn’t really work right until you close the previous tab.
So close the previous tab and then connect. It was stuck on “please wait for a while”, so I restarted it. Okay, there we go — I just needed to reset it and then I was able to connect to MeshCore. That was a bit weird, but we can see here it’s set as a repeater. We can see the date, the firmware version, and the public key, which I’ll blur out. It says “Heltec repeater”. You set all the configuration stuff for your region — I’m in Australia, so I do that, and then you configure all the other stuff.
That’s about it for setting this guy up as a repeater. Thank you very much for watching. If you’re interested in picking up a Heltec V4 and one of these cases, I’ll put some affiliate links in the description below. If you’re interested in more MeshCore or Meshtastic stuff, I plan to upload some things on my main channel, and there might be some links in the cards around this video. Thanks again for watching, and I’ll see you next time. Bye.