Bircom

Bir Paragliding Community

Welcome to the Bir Paragliding Community site. Discover how we’re leveraging technology to enhance pilot safety and improve search and rescue efforts.

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Background

Our trials in the Dhauladhar Range have shown that LoRa Mesh and Trackers are highly effective for tracking pilots and providing communication where cellular or satellite coverage is unavailable. Unlike satellite communication—which is heavily regulated and illegal for private use in India—LoRa technology offers a free, license-free solution.

LoRa (Long Range) is a low-power, long-range communication technology operating in the unlicensed ISM band. When paired with the Meshtastic app on Android and iOS, it enables pilots to share their location over a decentralized mesh network, with each device extending the network’s range.

Over the past few months of testing, we’ve had the pleasure of sharing our findings with the local government participants who play a key role in supporting paraglider pilots. Their enthusiasm for enhancing safety is inspiring, and their continued involvement will be instrumental in advancing Tracker usage for pilot safety. Given that this is a community-driven initiative, their participation is invaluable. There have been discussions about potentially making these LoRa Devices a requirement for pilots flying here, though the outcome is still to be determined. In the meantime, pilots visiting the Dhauladhar Range would benefit from bringing these affordable Meshtastic Trackers along.

LoRa Base Stations in Bir

In late 2023 and early 2024, community partners set up solar-powered LoRa repeaters across key points in the Dhauladhar Range, ensuring continuous coverage even with low pilot activity. Base stations in Bir and Dharamshala collect location data and send it to a central server. We are currently working on secure, long-term data storage and privacy protection measures.

With the Autumn Season of 2024 approaching, we are upgrading our infrastructure and improving our understanding of managing these devices and data.

FAQ

I’m a pilot, how do I get started?

  1. Purchase a Meshtastic device that operates on the 868MHz frequency band. We recommend the T-Echo from LilyGo. You can buy it from hubtronics in India at a discounted community price, or from another vendor of your choice. Meshtastic Devices that work

    Note: Your Meshtastic device may need flashing the latest firmware, double tap the up button after plugging it in a computer and get the latest from https://flasher.meshtastic.org.

  2. Sign up at https://flyxc.app/devices, enable tracking, enable Bircom and enter your device UUID. You can find your UUID from our tracker, search for your node or locate it on the map. Please note that new ID is generated which you will have to update on flyxc if you change LongName or ShortName in your device.

  3. Install the Meshtastic app from the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store.

  4. Follow the app’s instructions to pair your device.
  5. Download a configuration file for your meshtastic device from the tracker configuration
  6. The downloaded configuration sets the Bluetooth pin to 123456. For your own safety and security, please change the pin from the settings section of the meshtastic app.
  7. From the meshtastic app, import the downloaded configuration file into your meshtastic device.
  8. From the meshtastic app, send a message on LongFast, and see if it shows up on the map at http://tracker.bircom.in, in addition to the telegram group
  9. Check if you’re visible on https://flyxc.app/ and https://skylines.aero/tracking. This requires that you have a GPS fix, so make sure you’re not indoors.
  10. If you are flying anywhere other than Bir, enable mqtt on some of the internet connected nodes, all the nodes in your mesh will show up on https://tracker.bircom.in.

How do I contribute to the community?

  1. Join our Bir Paragliding Community Telegram group at https://t.me/BirParaglidingCommunity
  2. Volunteer to set up a LoRa base station in your area, drop us a line on our telegram group.

I want to know more about the meshtastic setup in Bir

  1. Checkout our presentation
  2. Flyxc Paraglider Pilots see yourself on Flyxc live.
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