On code,
in reverse order.

The more I use AI to help accelerate coding I get a fear of being disconnected to the work. It’s been a game changer for small dev shops but it also is too easy to just let it do all the work. I fear the atrophy of the basics of coding skills in lieu of focusing on architecture. Writing code is like any other language and exercising that skill is totally different than reading and comprehension. I have to force myself to manually do the code at times to make sure I know what I’m building. It’s too easy to just let it do everything but it comes at a cost.

Meshtastic to increase location privacy on the primary channel also has the side effect that the “precise” is 15 where 32 is really really precise. It makes sense as most users sit in the public channel but be aware if your primary channel is not public, you have to go changing some settings on your own to get the fidelity you want. Also respectfully, they limit the public firmware to not broadcast beyond an hour to reduce mesh congestion. Even if you’re on your on primary channel, remember you share that frequency slot so don’t spam the air. Also it’s incredibly annoying to figure out if a node has a GPS fix. Writing a script to read that out was game changing.

Meshtastic integration for relaying of SAR teams locations without cellular with full integration into CalTopo web. That’ll be a fun project.

Using AI has drastically accelerated my work but it's not a cure all but a force amplifier. You still need to know how to lay bricks to be an architect.