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An Introduction to Meshtastic

meshtastic.org

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Re: An Introduction to Meshtastic

#101

Post by blhack »

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…

This is bad advice. The choice depends on which is more popular in your area. For me in Phoenix that’s meshtastic.

Re: An Introduction to Meshtastic

#102

Post by celsoazevedo »

itomato wrote: post #48
srmatto wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would try to select based on the merits of the project and its adoption instead of drama. For me the team behind meshtastic needs some help behind their approach to APIs, the app releases frequently break that contract and they probably just need a little help in that area to improve it. Meshcore sounds compelling to me because it has that fixed vs dynamic target approach which I suspect is more true to the real wo…

the merits of one are largely vibe-coded by one overly enthusiastic guy.

This is wrong.

One guy associated with the project, but never a contributor to the firmware, decided to create his own vibe-coded client/app and to trademark the name of the project. The rest of the team said "no" to that and continued doing what they were doing before.

The reason Meshcore works better for texting is the different routing. It has nothing to do with the recent drama.

Re: An Introduction to Meshtastic

#103

Post by celsoazevedo »

AyyEye wrote: post #37
juancn wrote: post #23

I find it weird that the hop limit is 3 bits, wouldn't that limit the effective range a lot? Unless an intermediate node lies and doesn't decrement and retransmits anyway.

It's flood routed. 3 bits is probably far past what is practical, except in very linear low-node-count networks.

Meshcore does up to 64 and I regularly see flood messages with +30 hops. They use a different routing though.

Re: An Introduction to Meshtastic

#104

Post by goody71 »

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've seen it used by folks off-roading/overlanding for coms.

Gov/DoD/SpecOps use it to maintain radio connectivity with things like the Android Tactical Assault Kit (ATAK).

Re: An Introduction to Meshtastic

#105

Post by celsoazevedo »

pabs3 wrote: post #5
ranger_danger wrote: post #3

Comparison of Meshtastic vs MeshCore: https://www.seeedstudio.com/blog/2026/03/23/meshcore-vs-mesh...

And why MeshCore forked from Meshtastic: https://blog.meshcore.io/2026/04/23/the-split

That post is about the development team "splitting" with the PR guy that is trying to get a trademark on the name and creating their own vibe coded paid client/app.

There's a history between Tastic and Core, but it's a different one. Meshtastic doesn't scale that well in urban areas and it seems that some on the Mestastic team didn't see that problem as a priority/ignored the problem/are too stubborn. And then Meshcore is created with a different routing, works much better in practice, proving that the mesh could be much better. In countries like the UK it seems to have replaced Meshtastic in most places.

Re: An Introduction to Meshtastic

#106

Post by chabes »

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?

People will go on and on about what happens to society when the internet or cell service goes offline, but when they see an emergency solution staring them directly in the face, they wonder what the use case is.

Re: An Introduction to Meshtastic

#107

Post by [deleted] »

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?

[deleted]

Re: An Introduction to Meshtastic

#108

Post by celsoazevedo »

stavros wrote: post #10
pabs3 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why MeshCore forked from Meshtastic: https://blog.meshcore.io/2026/04/23/the-split

That article seems to be about how Meshcore split into two, with one contributor forking the code and taking the previously official website with him. There's no mention of Meshtastic.

My understanding is that the split is more superficial than that. The contributor in question (he used to do YouTube videos mainly, no contributions to the firmware) created his own vibe coded app/client and is trying to own the trademark on the Meshcore name. He controls the .co.uk site, the youtube channel, and the discord group. The firmware is still the same, created by the people behind the new .io website.

So the split is just a "the development team has nothing to do with the .co.uk site, his youtube channel and discord group", not a fork.

Re: An Introduction to Meshtastic

#109

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

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?"

Advertising services

But only if use of the network becomes popular

(Generally no one thought this would be the eventual use case for the internet)

Re: An Introduction to Meshtastic

#110

Post by celsoazevedo »

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…

> in my experience, most Meshtastic nodes are NOT listed, while a good number of Meshcore nodes are.

I don't know about online tools, but it should be the opposite when actually using it, as by default Meshtastic is much more chatty (and wasteful) than Meshcore.

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