Beacon etiquette

Mesh nets only work if everyone is a polite neighbour on the air. A few rules of thumb that keep YEG mesh from becoming chatter spam.

Position beacons

• Mobile (vehicle / portable): every 5–15 minutes is plenty. Faster only when you're moving fast and tracking matters.
• Fixed: every 30–60 minutes. Your position isn't going anywhere.
• Off the air: when you're parked at home and you've already beaconed once, mute position. The mesh already knows where you are.

Hop limits

• 3 is the firmware default for a reason. Keep it there unless you genuinely need more.
• Setting hop limit to 7 "just in case" is the network equivalent of leaving every light on in your house.

Public channels

• Use Public / LongFast for discovery and brief chat. Move long conversations to a named room or DM.
• Don't bridge Discord/IRC into a mesh public channel without consent.

Telemetry

• Battery voltage every 5 minutes is fine.
• Environmental sensor every 30 minutes is fine.
• Telemetry every 30 seconds is not fine.

When you're testing

• Use a private channel or a room for range tests, not Public.
• "Test test test" 200 times on Public will get you politely asked to stop.

When in doubt

Ask in Discord. Operators here are friendly and have opinions.