81–90 of 168 posts
Sounds like bs. Why would someone pay $50 for almost 10 years old hardware when there are plenty of well-supported and cheaper options like MuziWorks Duo / Ebyte / etc with newer LR1121 or LR2021 which combine both 2.4G and SubG bands in single and modern chip at 1/2 of the cost less? SX1281 and SX1281 are relics.
nice to not see some non-ai titles
It's either AI content or people talking about how it's not AI content but the one thing that's for certain - the comments will end up being about AI.
I’m struggling to see the value here. At $50, this seems hard to justify given the availability of cheaper, well-supported options like MuziWorks Duo, Ebyte, and other newer LR1121/LR2021-based designs. Those chips offer both 2.4 GHz and sub-GHz support in a single modern package, often at roughly half the price, which makes the SX1281 feel fairly outdated.
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It sucks how everything feels like a toy. I think meshtastic is the closest thing to a “product”. They made a bunch of bad architectural decisions that are haunting them now like how nodes broadcast its info.
Because they are toys. For real work it makes so much more sense to use the internet. With the new satellite tech you can reach the internet everywhere. Mesh radio is a fun way to chat with radio nerds in your area. Not a serious infrastructure.
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It sucks how everything feels like a toy. I think meshtastic is the closest thing to a “product”. They made a bunch of bad architectural decisions that are haunting them now like how nodes broadcast its info.
Because they are toys. For real work it makes so much more sense to use the internet. With the new satellite tech you can reach the internet everywhere. Mesh radio is a fun way to chat with radio nerds in your area. Not a serious infrastructure.
I've been tinkering with the tech to make city-wide flrc meshes joined together over the internet, my estimates are that it should be at least able to support thousands of users per region.
That stuff is good for drone warfare, mesh networks already been used in Ukraine E.g. drones geographically organize themselves into a chain with each of them serving as a mesh-network node, then each of them, including the tip of a chain, can be controlled by operators, and the whole setup is a closed network which works without requiring Internet access
> That stuff is good for drone warfare > each of them serving as a mesh-network node might have worked for a bit in the past, but is easily disrupted by jammers, and forced a switch to fiber-optic in-theater. People have learned from that and don't bother with radio anymore, even in new theaters.
Fiber optic tethers limit range and target conditions. You can't go into a forest or even an urban canyon, you basically need to run the drone along roads and fields. And you have to drag it with you, which reduces what you can carry. The fiber itself is very light weight and has a habit of getting sucked up into the props on quadcopters.
There's a lot of frequency hopping and chirp systems being used now, with a mix between analog radios mostly for FPV and digital radios or Starlink for larger ISR drones or larger gliders. Digital still gets used a lot for FPV because of how readily available it is, but good drone FPV pilots want the lower latency of analog and will take it if they can get it.
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We may see a day when the internet is not available, or when interacting with it represents an unacceptable risk. It's a good idea to know how to set up your own.
In that day whatever is jamming starlink will just jam mesh radio too. It'll likely be even easier.
Jamming is done in military scenarios too, but in that case it’s limited by the fact that a jammer is a big transmitter painting itself with a big sign that says “fire missile here.” Civilian mesh doesn’t have that fallback.
Sounds like a solution to a problem already solved by DECT NR+ -- a 5G technology that is 'subscription free'.
Doesn’t change my excitement about it a bit though. Eager to get this onto my workbench!
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The issue you linked to is about MeshCore using channels that are too narrow . A mesh system claiming to offer 100x bandwidth is probably not violating regulations in that particular way.
Correct. The LoRa configurations mentioned which offer 100× the speed of Meshtastic/Core operate at 800 kHz and 1.6 MHz bandwidth, which are permitted by the FCC in 15.247. As far as I know there's not actually anything particular to 2.4 GHz allowing higher throughput for LoRa than that the corresponding Semtech chip happens to support wider bandwidths. (I.e. no legal barrier.) The tradeoff is less range due to lower…
Thanks for educating us!
Correct me if I am wrong but I thought the primary appeal of LoRa was range? Also isn't the primary factor in making long range radio go through things is the frequency? So 2.4ghz is the same frequency as consumer wifi right and thus would propagate about the same right? It doesn't seem like this would be that useful except that the protocol is LoRa so you can have higher bandwidth between two devices if they happen…
LoRa would go much farther than Wifi on 2.4ghz. Lora uses Chirp Spread Spectrum (CSS) modulation while wifi uses OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing). The first being designed for extreme range while the latter for bandwidth. At 2.4ghz you could probably get LoRa connections up to 6 miles with the right antenna height.