“This is a mapper for the Helium network. It checks available hotspots, signal strength, quality, gps location & sends to the Helium server.
This is a project that maps hotspot info & sends to the helium server using the TTGO T-Beam rev 1.1. It is delivering data to mappers.helium.com and cargo.helium.com using the Helium API. This project took a lot of playing around and most of the core code was taken from several sources noted below.
I looked at all the existing mappers out there and what it would take for me to build one with gps and lora. It would have been a good amount of work. So I decided to go with the TTGO T-Beam that has wifi, bluetooth, and a integrated 18650 battery holder. Running a ESP32 (ESP32 DOWD-Q6), it has a ublox Neo 6 GPS module, a SX1276 lora wireless module, and a TP5400 charge controller. Perfect for what I need. The specific version is the rev 1.1 which I believe is the newest.
The main purpose I wanted to make a mapper was to record signal strength and range of my own Helium Hotspot, a Sensecap M1. It helped a lot with my antenna placement. I was able to make a adjustment and actually get data on the change.
I browsed around the internet and found a couple programs that use TTN (The Things Network). I tried these & I couldn’t get them to work with the T-Beam rev 1.1. This is a modified version that supports it and I added a option for OTA upgrade, “airplane” mode, & transmit interval. I used the 2.8dbi antenna that I used to had on my Sensecap M1 centered at 915mhz.
There are two parts to the program. The Arduino program runs on the T-Beam and the decoder file gets put in the Helium console to, you guessed it, decode the payload.”