In the last video of our Meshtastic test for Maker series, we covered what is Meshtastic. Now let's go and set up a device. There's a limited range of microcontrollers and LoRa modules that are compatible with Meshtastic. And because of that, this series will be centering largely around the Pico and the supported wave share LoRa module for it. These two things and a micro USB cable to plug your Pico into the computer are the very minimum things you'll need. That LoRa hat will come with an antenna. For this series, we'll be using the regular Pico. There is support for the Pico W if you want to use it, but it's not really as needed in this series. So for our purpose of just sending and receiving data on a project, the regular Pico will do. You also have the option to plug in one of these little OLED screens, which can help with debugging and let you see messages coming through your device. And let's use it more as a standard Meshtastic device. Again, this is entirely optional, and this entire series will work without it just fine. Now these are the minimum things required. And depending on what you want to replicate from this series, you may need more or less hardware. And we will be covering what you need in the respective videos. Of course, you'll find all the links to everything you need on the course page linked below.

Assembly is straightforward. Screw on the little antenna and then connect it to the board. This connector can be a bit fragile, so ensure that it is correctly aligned and then click it in with a little bit of force. A very important note, do not power on the board without an antenna plugged into it as you can damage it. Once that's done, slot the Pico on top of it, ensuring that you place it in the correct orientation. There is a little marker on the hat showing which side the USB faces. Your LoRa module might also come with this little battery here. It's not very big and it's only enough to power the setup for maybe 12 to 20 hours, but it might be a good option for a backup power. It's not necessary to plug it in, so for now we're just going to leave it. And if you do want to use that OLED screen, go ahead and plug it into the following pins. Now we are ready to set up. First of all, we need to download the Meshtastic firmware, which you can find a link to in the description below or on the workshop page. Ensure that the firmware version you download is for your specific Pico variant. Once you have that downloaded, press and hold the boot select button on your Pico and plug it into your computer. A removable device should appear. And then all we're going to do is copy that firmware file we downloaded into this removable device, like so. And then the Pico is going to restart and automatically install all the Meshtastic stuff that we need. And with that, our Pico is now running Meshtastic.

But before we use it, we need to set up the LoRa module to use the frequencies of our region or country. Now this can be done in a web browser on a computer, or you can also download the Meshtastic app and do it with a mobile device. Just note that you will need a way to plug it into your mobile device. So for my phone, I would need a micro USB to USB C cable. The menus are a little different on the app as well, but it can be set up from a phone, and it's a really handy way of configuring a device out in the field. We will be sticking with the web browser method though, so we'll go ahead and open up a Chromium-based browser very important there. We'll be using Microsoft Edge, but Google Chrome will also work. org. We're going to go ahead and add a connection to a new device. It's going to be serial over the USB connection we've made, and then we're going to add a new device, and I'm pretty sure it is Comport 5. It's most likely going to be a different Comport number for yours. And then we're just going to connect to it like so. Head on over to config, and then we're going to hit LoRa, and then we're going to select our region here. This is a crucially important step, as it will set up your device to use the frequencies and transmission power levels that you can legally use. Meshtastic uses specific frequencies that don't require a license, and this can change from region to region, so it's very important that you choose the right one, or you will likely be breaking the law. And you can see we've got our US bands at different EU bands, our Japan, Australia, New Zealand, which we'll select, and we've also got Taiwan, India, all the other places. You should check your local area or region to see which one you can legally use. I'll also have a link below on the Meshtastic site for which countries use which. Once you've selected your region, head up to the top here and click Save. And that is going to restart your device and set it up in that frequency.

Now whenever you save a setting like this and your device reboots, you will most likely need to refresh your client page all over again, like so. And with that, you have your Meshtastic device set up and on the network. Now, if you head on over to nodes here, you should be able to see a list of all the other devices running Meshtastic that are in range. Now chances are you may not pick up anyone at first or it may take a few minutes. This one here that we can see is actually the other device, the test device that I've set up, and we're inside of a warehouse blocking all of those signals so we're not going to see anyone else. But if you're in a large population center and may be closer to a window or outside, you might see some people popping up here. And by default, you're going to have this public long fast channel here. This is essentially the public chat that everyone has access to by default. So if there are any people around you, drop a hello in here if you want to. By default, your name isn't going to really be anything meaningful, but you can change it up here like so. You're going to be able to set a long name and a short four character identifier like so. And with that, you now have your Pico setup with Meshtastic ready to talk to other devices. As you can see, it really helped to have a second device setup to just diagnose and see if it's all working. But in the coming videos, we're going to start doing things with this like sending sensor data and controlling hardware with messages. So you can find links to all of them below. If you need a hand with anything from this video or you just made something cool with it, feel free to drop a post on our community forums. We're all makers over there and we're happy to help. Till next time, though, happy making.