RAKwireless Unity enclosure mounts

I’ve been delving into the interesting world of Meshtastic of late, on the 868MHz as this is where most of the activity is in the north east of England.

Thankfully it looks like there is a now UK provider of RAKwireless components but prior to that I’ve been hitting up Aliexpress for the various boards.

While perusing I noticed a Solar Enclosure with integrated antenna which I thought I’d grab and try out. I like the idea of mounting a node up high and not having to worry about a power supply.

To be honest, I don’t think the solar panel on there provides much power from the meager rays we get here, even in the UK “summer” - I’ll leave that for another post.

In haste I hadn’t realised that the mounts used to attach to the enclosure were available only as extras. They’re not expensive but the lead-time on these from the US or China can be long. I ordered a “Type G” Magnet Mounting Kit (magnets not included!).

What I found was that the 20mm magnets which fit in the provided slots were not strong enough. I increased my magnet size to 30mm which were much better but they kept detaching from the mount.

There was only one thing for it - print my own!

A look at Thingiverse and Printables found that someone hadn’t already done this work for me - boo!

I mocked up a few initial versions to get the size and spacing right but this is version 1 alongside the RAKwireless one.

After a day of being attached to my metal bookshelf the enclosure fell off, leaving the two magnets attached to the bookshelf. Time for version 2. I decided that the magnet should be on the other side of the mount so I didn’t need to worry about adhesive or them detaching.

I’ve not yet, made these available to download while I figure out how likely I am to get sued if I do. Watch this space.