Source note: Solar Meshtastic GPS node on ESP32 — power and mesh behavior¶

Raw path: raw/processed/2026/solar-meshtastic-gps-node-esp32-long-term-outdoor.md

Summary

Short build/field-test notes (Reddit/thread excerpt style): ESP32 + SX1276 LoRa + OLED + GPS with ~2500 mAh battery and small 3.7 V solar panel; order-of-magnitude active vs duty-cycled current; reliance on Meshtastic sleep/duty cycling for multi-day runtime; informal experiment where two “office” nodes query a third GPS node—observed staggered replies consistent with mesh broadcast/retry behavior. Includes comment thread note about TP4056-class charging.

Claims worth carrying forward

• GPS + ESP32 Meshtastic builds are power-hungry without aggressive sleep scheduling.
• Multi-node queries on a mesh can produce non-deterministic response ordering/timeouts—design UX and diagnostics accordingly.

Downstream pages

• Meshtastic
• Smart agriculture, Meshtastic, and LoRaWAN