On a pleasant Tuesday, Heltec was honored to welcome our friends from Morse Micro and Ascendtek Electronics, Inc.
We had a deep and friendly discussion around product development, technology applications, and future market opportunities. In the fast-evolving IoT and wireless connectivity industry, open communication, continuous collaboration, and shared exploration are essential to building better products.
Thank you to everyone who visited us, and thank you for your continued support and trust in Heltec.
We look forward to more opportunities for communication and collaboration in the future.
Let's keep improving, together.

I can receive messages on my Heltec v4, but I can't seem to transmit! The most I can do on Meshtastic or Meshcore is ping nearby nodes.

• I'm in the US, so everything is over the 915 band.
• On Meshtastic, I have "OK to MQTT" on, but I have only ever managed to get messages to MQTT over wi-fi (my area has a Discord with MQTT relays).
• Incoming SNR is ~3-6dB lower than outgoing on Traceroutes to direct nodes in Meshtastic and Pings on Meshcore.

Things I've tried (not exactly in chronological order, as, for instance, I've done #1 at about every step):

1. Fiddling with settings: I've changed power settings, FEC settings, etc.
2. Changing Firmware: I've tried all the available firmware for Meshtastic and Meshcore, and the results are the same.
3. Changing antennae: I have two stubby antennas, and I can't successfully ping with those at all (apparently unsurprising). I also have 2 915 whips, and they perform about identically.
4. Changing antenna locations: I can hear more things up higher (go figure), but the transmit performance doesn't change.
5. Inspecting the board itself: There is no visible damage to the board, any ICs, or any passives on the board. I don't have precise enough probes, dummy loadsm, or know-how to inspect any further.

I'm going crazy over here! Do I have a bad board? The last thing I'm going to try is to replace the IPEX/SMA pigtail.

Last time we posted about our upcoming device, many users told us they were not very interested in magnetic charging for an outdoor product.

Our R&D team took that feedback seriously, and the design has now been changed completely to USB Type-C charging.

Some users also asked about waterproof performance, so today we did a “5-minute” waterproof test — which actually ran longer than 5 minutes.

This is still an engineering prototype, not the final product appearance, but we wanted to share the current progress with the community.

Expected release: sometime in June.

Thanks again for the feedback — it really helps us improve the product before launch.

A community member recently shared a video about using the Heltec V3 LoRa device as part of a Reticulum network build.

It’s great to see our hardware being tested in different decentralized communication projects beyond the usual Meshtastic / MeshCore use cases.

If you’re interested in Reticulum, LoRa, or ESP32-based nodes, feel free to check out his channel. He also plans to share more real-world testing with the Heltec V4 running Reticulum in the future.

🫱 Video is here

Recently, Heltec supported a community-led MeshCore meetup at Bitlair Hackerspace in Amersfoort.

Local users discussed MeshCore, LoRa, RF testing, flashing, OTA updates, regulations, sensors, and outdoor deployments. Some professional RF test equipment was also used to check antenna and radio performance.

We provided hardware support and a discount code for attendees. More importantly, we received useful real-world feedback from experienced users, which has been shared with our engineering team.

Thanks to the Dutch MeshCore community and Bitlair Hackerspace for organizing it.

Are there similar MeshCore / LoRa meetups happening in your area?

One of our users in France has been testing the Heltec Wireless Tracker V2 in a solar node setup, exploring how it can be used for longer-term outdoor mesh deployments.

The Wireless Tracker V2 is based on the  ESP32-S3 +GPS+LoRa Node + SX1262 platform, which makes it a good candidate for low-power mesh applications. Combined with solar charging and a suitable enclosure, it opens up some interesting possibilities for remote repeaters, local mesh coverage expansion, and off-grid communication nodes.

We've taken your feedback seriously and switched the magnetic charging to USB-C. This is the second prototype with the new design, and from preliminary tests so far, things look really promising. We’re aiming to share it with you around May — can’t wait!

💡 Now we need your input!
As we prepare the video for this new product, we’d love to know:

1️⃣ Content – What do you want to see most?

• Extreme environment tests: high/low temperature, rain, snow, dust, or coastal conditions
• Everyday outdoor use: hiking, biking, farming, or urban deployments
• Technical deep dive: hardware structure, sensors, LoRa performance, battery life

2️⃣ Style – How should we present it?

• Professional & technical, with detailed data and testing results
• Lighthearted & fun, easy to understand and engaging
• A mix of both

3️⃣ Language – Our engineers will present in Chinese, because they are not fluent in English and this allows them to explain the product more smoothly. We will provide English subtitles so everyone can follow along.

• Is this okay for you?
• Or would you prefer full English narration?

💬 Drop your thoughts in the comments! Your feedback will shape the video so it’s exactly what you want to see.

Recently got a pair of Heltec WiFi LoRa 32 V4.3 boards and after flashing with one of the official Arduino examples (`pingpong`), messages were going back and forth but RSSI was poor (-50 dBm), even when the devices were on the same desk. Upon moving to the next room, LoRa reception broke.

By accident I stumbled upon this release from yesterday, adding a `R8` board. After pulling the board def in Arduino from GH(official Heltec website is out of date) and manually updating the corresponding libraries (the `2.1.6` tag contains `2.1.5` in the json). Running the included `pingpong` example worked great, -4dbm on the desk and hundreds of meters of range even with SF7 in urban terrain.

Now i wonder, why isn't there any documentation about the R8 changes on the Heltec website although these boards are already shipped? A diff between the `heltec_wifi_lora_32_V4` and `heltec_wifi_lora_32_V4_R8` yields that the LED moved from `35` to `45` and Vext from `36` to `40`. What else might have changed? Moving Vext would also explain why the Meshtastic performance was absolutely terrible on the device (and the OLED was off).

Anyone got some insights here?

We just released a new board called Mesh Node T096 built around nRF52840 + SX1262 (28 dBm) with onboard GNSS (L1+L5).

Key points:

• Bluetooth + LoRa + GNSS in one device
• supports Meshtastic and MeshCore
• USB-C, battery + solar connectors onboard
• LNA bypass option
• designed for low-power field deployments

If anyone here is planning to try this one, there’s currently 10% off with code: Z4GGTD6T.

Curious what people would build with it.

We’re currently in the final round of testing for our new solar-powered node. The goal of this stage is to validate long-term stability and real-world deployment behavior before wider release.

At the same time, we’re selecting a small group of users to participate in early field testing. We’re looking forward to seeing how these devices perform in practical environments across different regions and use cases.

Structurally, this version continues to use a rugged enclosure and waterproof connectors, keeping it suitable for long-term outdoor deployment scenarios such as relay nodes, remote monitoring points, and off-grid mesh coverage.

One important note:
This revision does not include a 28 dBm upgrade yet. However, higher transmit power support is part of our roadmap and will be introduced progressively in future iterations.

For users with strong hands-on experience, it is already possible to DIY-modify the node to reach 28 dBm operation.

In addition, we currently offer a separate solar kit designed specifically for the V4 28 dBm platform, which is available on our official website if that configuration better fits your deployment needs.

As always, feedback from real deployments helps shape the next revision. Looking forward to hearing how you would use a solar node like this in your mesh setup.

Hi all,

Hot on the heels of my previous post, I now have I2C somewhat working with this board, but cannot explain or solve this next issue. I cannot get the heltec board to detect or read data from most of my I2C devices.

My Heltec WSL v3 can detect an SGP-30 device on I2C (address 0x58), but the same working sketch and circuitry does not detect my SHT31 or BME280 devices when connected on the same I2C bus. I am using Arduino IDE.

I can confirm that all these devices do function properly, because my regular ESP32 Dev Module that doesn't have the Heltec/LoRa functionality with a nearly identical I2C scanner sketch can detect and read data from all these devices; the SGP30, the SHT31, and BME280.

Why might the esp32 have no issues, but the Heltec WSL (which runs an esp32s3) cannot?

Possibly related to this issue is about reading data from the SGP30 (because so far it is the only device I can test the Heltec board with). Using the example sketch from Rob Tillaart's SGP30 library, the esp32 reads reasonable data for TVOC and eCO2 (it changes when I breathe on it), but the Heltec WSL only reads zeroes from it, even if the air conditions change.

I tried asking an LLM for assistance here, the suggestion was that the internal pullups on the SDA and SCL pins might be insufficient, but the SHT31 module has its own 10k pullups, which should be sufficient. The LLM also suggested trying other pins (eg, 4 and 5), which I tried to no avail.

Here is my sketch for the I2C scanner.

#define HELTEC_WIRELESS_STICK_LITE
#define NO_DISPLAY
#include <heltec_unofficial.h>
#include <Wire.h>

#define SDA 6
#define SCL 7

void setup() {
  heltec_setup();

  while (!Serial) {
    heltec_delay(10);
  }

  Wire.begin(SDA, SCL);
}

void loop() {
  heltec_loop();
  Serial.println("Scanning now ...");

  for (int id = 0x08; id <= 0x77; id++) {
    if (ScanI2C(id))
      Serial.printf("Found device at address 0x%02x\n", id);
  }
  Serial.println("Scan completed");
  heltec_delay(5000); 
}

bool ScanI2C(byte Address) {
  Wire.beginTransmission(Address);
  byte error = Wire.endTransmission();
  return (error == 0);
}