Continuing today's amateur electrical repair theme with some meshtastic fiddling.
Firstly, I finally got around to installing an external antennae on my T-Deck plus. I followed Ray J's video tutorial on disassembling and reassembling the device and it all went pretty smoothly. The most fiddly part was probably aligning the power and reset switches with their plastic overlays.
I think one of the coolest things about this upgrade is the fact that you're not just installing a single new aerial but an SMA socket which means you can swap out the antennae for even more sensitive/larger ones later without having to open the device back up again.
I also flashed the latest GUI firmware onto the device. This firmware is still in very early development so it's a little bit tricky to get working. I've written up some notes on how the process currently works in my digital garden.
Earlier today I also installed a heltec node in my loft and cable tied the antennae to one of the rafters in my roof. That's improved my range and connection stability but not a huge amount. I've also bought yet another longer antenna to see if that helps.