Hi
I just did some testing with my new RPI gateway with 868mhz RFM69HW and dipole antenna, located at the top floor in my 3 floor house. Walking around with a battery node (also HW, but wire antenna) I tested every corner and floor of the house and the connection is solid everywhere, no need for repeater nodes.
Just for fun I took the node outdoor and was a bit surprised when I discovered that I had quite good connection inside my garage as well, that is some 60m away and with houses in between that I was certain would block the signal (see picture). So, it seems I don't need the RFM95 system I planned for the garage after all! I'm very pleased with the result :)

@NeverDie I use the NanoVNA-H. It's originally an open source project so there is a lot of info about it and how to use it, and it's cheap.

• https://nanovna.com/
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THc5ZTxQUSg

I like the pogo-pin programming adapter!

Yes, you are probably right. I both cases the RPI still have connection with the router and the deamon is (apperently) still active but not communicating.
I have a wifi mesh network, and I have seen that clients are sometimes disconnected and reconnected. That might have something to do with it.

Thanks, and thanks for the tip, I will try to use MY_RFM69_NETWORKID.

@electrik I made the gateway dipole from some 1.4mm solid copper wire that I pulled from a cable. After tuning it with an antenna analyzer, I ended up with each element 80.4mm long for 868mhz. This is a bit shorter that the teoretical length, I'm not sure why.

I just did some more testing, took my node (with a push button) and mobile phone for a late walk. At 160 meters away from my house the connection is still good. At >180 meters away it randomly lost connection. The gateway and node was by no means in line of sight, there were houses, bushes and trees in between.

This is of course not very scientific as the range depends on a lot of factors, but the result is pretty good anyway :)