Tom M0LTE M0LTE

Mailcast across many sites: relaying, more transmitters and signing

Oct 15, 2026

A discussion paper for comment.

Summary

Mailcast could run from many transmitters, fed over HF or QO-100 or local VHF/UHF links rather than the internet, including NPR or other media, with no site at the centre. Its pieces already work like interchangeable parts: a listener rebuilds a bulletin from any large enough set of fountain-coded pieces, whichever slots they came from. Nothing in that idea ties a piece to one transmitter. Today the only transmitter is GB7RDG, M0LTE's node in Reading, which started the experiment; it is meant to become one site among several.

INA226 module: PCB layout fault prevents current measurement

Item

Marketplace: eBay UK
Item number: 336783638649
Seller: pacific_harvest
Listing title: "INA226 INA228 Voltage Current Power Monitor Module I2C Sensor Alarm New"
Board received: red module with an INA226 (VSSOP-10), R010 (10 mΩ) shunt, two 4R7 input resistors, a filter capacitor, a 5-pin header (ALERT/SCL/SDA/GND/VCC) and VIN/GND/GND/VOUT screw terminals.

Goal

Read water consumption data from my Thames Water meter, so that I can feed it into Home Assistant, my smart home system of choice, for consumption monitoring.

Approaches

Read it via RF

This is most desirable; it's already smart.

	#!/usr/bin/env python3
	"""fwd-on-heard - start BBS forwarding when a partner's first hop is heard on HF.

	For every enabled forwarding partner in linmail.cfg whose ConnectScript starts
	with a connect on one of the watched (HF) ports - e.g. 'C 3 !GB7WEM-7\|C uhf gb7cip'
	- watch that port on linbpq's AGW monitor. A frame from the hop station heard
	after a quiet gap means the path is probably open, so log in to the local sysop
	telnet port and, if mail is queued, issue 'FWD <bbs> NOW' (the Start Forwarding
	button; ignores FWDTimes). One heard station can serve several partners.

	# credit https://github.com/JeffWDH/bm6-battery-monitor/blob/39bb89a095f0714d84d05e595099f28ec44647fe/ESPHome/bm6.yaml

	# first you need to find the BLE mac address of the BM6:
	esp32_ble_tracker:
	text_sensor:
	- platform: ble_scanner
	name: "BLE Devices Scanner"
	# read off the mac address in the esphome logs. Device name is just BM6

	# then you can configure as follows:

	nmcli con add con-name WiFi ifname wlan0 type wifi ssid foonet
	nmcli con modify WiFi wifi-sec.key-mgmt wpa-psk
	nmcli con modify WiFi wifi-sec.psk myownpassword
	nmcli con up WiFi