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An Introduction to Meshtastic

meshtastic.org

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Re: An Introduction to Meshtastic

#81

Post by cheema33 »

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 would love to be able to get text alerts when an event occurs, from a location that is not connected to the Internet, about a mile away. The need is not critical, so there is no desire to spend money every month. And reliability of the solution does not have to be high either.

Something like this might work?

Re: An Introduction to Meshtastic

#83

Post by lu5t »

3x35r22m4u wrote: post #71
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?

Meshcore is MIT licensed open source firmware. There are both open source and closed source client softwares. You get to choose which you support. I think that's where the confusion comes in. It's no more for-profit than Meshtastic, which gets revenue from partnerships with hardware vendors

Re: An Introduction to Meshtastic

#84

Post by lu5t »

dpedu wrote: post #75
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.

true, that tends to happen when there's a better but lesser known choice for most applications; one feels motivated to share. To each their own though, there's all kinds out here. Some people like linux, some people like windows, some like to do both

Re: An Introduction to Meshtastic

#85

Post by mikeytown2 »

dpedu wrote: post #75
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.

It's because we've tried Meshtastic and MeshCore. Look at where the bytes go in the network. Meshtastic it's usually under 5% of traffic is text and for MeshCore it's over 50%. If you want to communicate MeshCore is designed to do that.

Re: An Introduction to Meshtastic

#86

Post by tclancy »

dpedu wrote: post #75
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.

Good to know. I had been teetering on picking this stuff up for a month or so. Now that I know it is yet another tech nerd thing that has an Us vs Them zealotry (or Pepsi Taste Loyalty Test), I'm sold. If I profile as iPhone, Playstation, ReplayTV over TiVo, Sega over NES, C64, videodisc over cassette (I blame my dad for that) which side should I choose? Does either one have better quality zealots (I want to be on the other side)?

Re: An Introduction to Meshtastic

#87

Post by tclancy »

BadBadJellyBean wrote: post #11
moffers wrote: post #4

I took a plunge into learning about mesh networks, specifically because I love the idea of p2p/decentralized systems of communication. To be honest, I was surprised to find that my expectations for “where we are at” with this type of technology was pretty off-base. For some reason I thought by now it would be straightforward to do a little more than text messaging over a truly public and decentralized off-internet me…

You can create a network tunnel over meshtastic with the CLI. I haven't had the time to try it but I assume it's quite slow.

It's ok, I don't read that fast.

Re: An Introduction to Meshtastic

#88

Post by Larrikin »

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…

Is there something preventing people from just setting up both?

Re: An Introduction to Meshtastic

#89

Post by terabyterex »

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?

hiking with so far you don't have cell access. cruises when you don't have cell access.

Re: An Introduction to Meshtastic

#90

Post by lu5t »

Larrikin wrote: post #88
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…

Is there something preventing people from just setting up both?

not at all, many do run both, although usually a preference for one or the other presents itself quickly
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