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An Introduction to Meshtastic

meshtastic.org

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Re: An Introduction to Meshtastic

#71

Post by 3x35r22m4u »

lu5t wrote: post #67

If you're interested in Meshtastic, just try Meshcore instead. It's the natural hobbiest progression. Eventually you'll get tired of Meshtastic being nothing but telemetry from unknown nodes, nobody talks, it's a ghost town of weak links. Meshcore on the other hand has people actually having conversations, networks that span whole states, and diagnostic tools that actually work and are informative for describing the…

Maybe it depends? In my city, the online map shows only 2 Meshcore nodes, while Meshtastic 36 nodes.

And I've never spent time learning about it, but I'm under the impression Meshtastic is all about open-source and closer to ham radio philosophy, while Meshcore is backed by some for-profit organization?

Re: An Introduction to Meshtastic

#72

Post by wtallis »

Skunkleton wrote: post #61
neilv wrote: post #42

I'd expect a group that cared about privacy and security... not to need a cookie consent dialog like that.

My understanding is that the rules around those is similar to prop 65 rules. So unfocused as to dilute the original purpose.

The cookies used by the site appear to almost all be from Cloudflare, GitHub, YouTube: service providers that are not at all interested in enabling a cookie-free web site, and chose this route as malicious compliance. There's also one cookie to store a language preference that could be handled through HTTP headers instead.

Re: An Introduction to Meshtastic

#73

Post by thadt »

ungreased0675 wrote: post #69
repelsteeltje wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some scary applications come to mind. For instance, sprinkling a bunch of nodes + sensors in hostile territory should allow for gathering intelligence, guiding drones, setting of fuses...

Keep in mind that this is a very low bandwidth, high latency mesh network. Great for sending short text messages, absolutely terrible for guiding drones.

That’s not necessarily the case. It depends on how autonomous your drone is and what you need to guide it to do…

Re: An Introduction to Meshtastic

#74

Post by willis936 »

repelsteeltje wrote: post #63
laurowyn wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is the use case? It's primarily just an experimental system. Demonstrating that fixed infrastructure isn't actually necessary to communicate. Beyond that, it's a mixture of HAM radio for communicating with people outside of your immediate circle, and disaster prep. The best realistic scenario I can see for using it is after a sever weather event like hurricane, tornado, tsunami, etc. that takes out significant…

Some scary applications come to mind. For instance, sprinkling a bunch of nodes + sensors in hostile territory should allow for gathering intelligence, guiding drones, setting of fuses...

Line of sight needed, trivial to jam, power hungry, trivial to fox hunt. These are not boogyman devices. The real boogyman devices are the ones in space. Big militaries don't need things on earth to do any of the things you listed and way more.

Re: An Introduction to Meshtastic

#75

Post by dpedu »

lu5t wrote: post #67

If you're interested in Meshtastic, just try Meshcore instead. It's the natural hobbiest progression. Eventually you'll get tired of Meshtastic being nothing but telemetry from unknown nodes, nobody talks, it's a ghost town of weak links. Meshcore on the other hand has people actually having conversations, networks that span whole states, and diagnostic tools that actually work and are informative for describing the…

The biggest problem with Meshtastic is that discussions about it inevitably get spammed by Meshcore evangelicals.

Re: An Introduction to Meshtastic

#76

Post by TheSkyHasEyes »

varispeed wrote: post #26
Cyan488 wrote: post #8

I had never heard of this before, then last week I watched a video about it and was hooked. Now I'm seeing it everywhere! Meshtastic and Meshcore are both cool LoRa-based mesh text messaging that operate in an no-license-required band. While this limits your transmit power, it doesn't prohibit encryption - the inverse of most ham radio rules! Some cities have thriving communities of Meshtastic and/or Meshcore. You ca…

So you have the mesh and then what? Do people communicate to distribute prohibited anti-government propaganda or is it a network of people who otherwise be too shy to talk to each other by other means? What is the use case?

> What is the use case?

I worked R&D on LoRa project a few years ago. Their use case was a long-range emergency communication system for workers in remote areas(no wifi, lte or LEO at that time). Now I see a bunch of applications in this field that aren't what you describe. :)

Re: An Introduction to Meshtastic

#77

Post by derekenos »

varispeed wrote: post #26
Cyan488 wrote: post #8

I had never heard of this before, then last week I watched a video about it and was hooked. Now I'm seeing it everywhere! Meshtastic and Meshcore are both cool LoRa-based mesh text messaging that operate in an no-license-required band. While this limits your transmit power, it doesn't prohibit encryption - the inverse of most ham radio rules! Some cities have thriving communities of Meshtastic and/or Meshcore. You ca…

So you have the mesh and then what? Do people communicate to distribute prohibited anti-government propaganda or is it a network of people who otherwise be too shy to talk to each other by other means? What is the use case?

I set up my first node after the last major Verizon outage that rendered my cell phone useless as a mobile communications device. Now, when the next outage happens, with the always-on base station that I have at home, I can bring a portable Meshtastic radio out with me, paired to my phone via Bluetooth, and retain the ability communicate wirelessly back home, or with any of the other many nodes in the extensive network here in the NYC / Hudson Valley region. I also enticed a couple of local friends to install them and we often opt to text over the mesh. I see it as a thing that is fun to play around with now, but which may become critical at some point in the future.

Re: An Introduction to Meshtastic

#78

Post by prism56 »

yardie wrote: post #38

I've been using Meshtastic for years. Still have a few Heltec v2 nodes running. It's been a lot of fun. It also encouraged me to get my HAM license since most of the local meshtastic/meshcore users are also in the radio clubs. It reminds me of the early internet. In the early 90s the entire list of URLs could fill a notebook. And it was my first exposure to P2P nets. Meshtastic is a bit like that where it doesn't wor…

I tried meshtastic but there is literally nobody around me.

It's like trying to get friends to use signal. I've moved to Meshcore recently and it gets me connected to the rest of the UK. But it took me 2 dedicated repeaters.

I love the meshcore homesassitant plugin, managed to setup some alerts to send out a message on a private channel every 5 minutes if I lose power as an example.

Re: An Introduction to Meshtastic

#79

Post by barnabee »

repelsteeltje wrote: post #63
laurowyn wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is the use case? It's primarily just an experimental system. Demonstrating that fixed infrastructure isn't actually necessary to communicate. Beyond that, it's a mixture of HAM radio for communicating with people outside of your immediate circle, and disaster prep. The best realistic scenario I can see for using it is after a sever weather event like hurricane, tornado, tsunami, etc. that takes out significant…

Some scary applications come to mind. For instance, sprinkling a bunch of nodes + sensors in hostile territory should allow for gathering intelligence, guiding drones, setting of fuses...

ExpressLRS[0] (drone / radio control protocol) also uses LoRa, I wonder if anyone's tried mesh networking it…

[0] https://www.expresslrs.org/

Re: An Introduction to Meshtastic

#80

Post by para_parolu »

fiskeben wrote: post #27
varispeed wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you have the mesh and then what? Do people communicate to distribute prohibited anti-government propaganda or is it a network of people who otherwise be too shy to talk to each other by other means? What is the use case?

It runs independently of internet and power. One use case is a group of people in a remote area (hikers, hunters) carrying their own node and being able to communicate via text over several kilometres.

Or you just use iPhone satellite messaging without relying on extra devices that may not even work in mountains
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