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An Introduction to Meshtastic

meshtastic.org

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Re: An Introduction to Meshtastic

#181

Post by neltnerb »

celsoazevedo wrote: post #179
windexh8er wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meshtastic is horrible in a metro area. The area I live in has a huge user group and it's almost impossible to get a message across more than 3 nodes reliably. Meshcore, on the other hand, is far less popular but still has a nice amount of repeaters and it's, conversely, very good. I've since moved all of my devices to Meshcore. I'm on the edge of a metro (about 30 miles out) and have a repeater at one of the highest…

I tried Meshtastic here in London (UK), but was struggling with anything more than 1 hop away. There's no coordination, everyone's using the long fast preset, etc. Then found out about Meshcore, flashed the firmware, selected the UK narrow preset, and it's a day and night difference. Still wouldn't rely on this for anything serious because it's not reliable at all, but it's nice to be able to send a message across th…

Similarly, I put a repeater in an upper story of an apartment building in Boston and am reliably able to talk to people over 10+ hops. Right this second I'm able to talk to someone 99.5 miles away in Vermont.

We had to create different channels for different regions (connecticut, new hampshire, massachusetts, rhode island) just to keep from having hundreds of messages in a single public channel when posts are generally about local things.

Unfortunately it doesn't fix congestion issues completely, repeaters still repeat everything (and can't listen while transmitting) so packets from connecticut still put traffic onto the entire mesh all the way to new hampshire, but at least it's better organized.

It seems like there are some ideas to help with congestion, maybe making channels region specific (repeaters can be programmed to only repeat traffic with a certain region code) but for now it's shocking to me how far I can reach with a 0.125W radio.

But yeah, it's not "reliable", that's what TCP/IP is for =) Definitely a toy network for now, and a single malicious bot on the frequency band would absolutely wreck it. Or a single high power jammer sending out noise at just the wrong frequency. Definitely a fun project for people who would do ham radio if they had any interest in taking a test...

I wouldn't use it for emergencies though, it's theoretically a backup if the cell network and internet go down but the reliability just isn't there and I suspect never will be.

Re: An Introduction to Meshtastic

#182

Post by trunkiedozer »

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…

Give yourself lots of time and lots of time, oh and more time. And then more. The code is buggy and the concept as well as the code is unreliable. It’s not even as good as udp

Re: An Introduction to Meshtastic

#183

Post by prism56 »

bramgn wrote: post #178
prism56 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! I used that antenna coverage functionality to plan my repeater locations. It worked well. I just picked up a T1000-E to take on holiday next week, interested if I see anything in the air of in Europe.

Did you equip these two dedicated repeaters with a solar panel?

One is on my roof with a 12v PSU

The other is a solar panel on a traffic sign about 10km away!

Re: An Introduction to Meshtastic

#184

Post by Schlagbohrer »

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?

Useful for things like music festivals, campgrounds, having a mesh node in your camper van and another with your friends and another on your person. Imagine a large festival outside of good cellphone coverage or a camp site in the middle of nowhere. There are also credit-card sized versions which can be put in a dog's harness in case the dog wanders off (the radio contains a GPS).

Re: An Introduction to Meshtastic

#185

Post by wielebny »

RobotToaster wrote: post #164
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…

The meshcore app is closed source

Only the app store app which does not matter for usage. There are tons of other clients. Core firmware is Open Source.

Re: An Introduction to Meshtastic

#186

Post by subscribed »

subscribed wrote: post #24
voidUpdate wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is russia densely populated enough to be able to make it work? Around me I'm having trouble getting a connection to any other nodes because there isn't a critical mass of other people running mesh nodes and there's a hill between me and the next city

I have 3 permanent gateways within 3 miles of my house (the closest is That means my awful, underpowered and suboptimally placed gw tries to take part in the network - I can't even make it repeat late (prefer other repeaters), so it jusg mostly adds to the noise (and increases power use). That's with Meshtastic With Meshcore? I was unable to hear even one transmission, and I love in the densely populated region. This…

Meshcore and Meshtastic - I got them the other way wrong (was actually digging on Meshtastic github earlier that day and got confused).

I played with Meshcore, wasn't able to use Meshtastic.

Re: An Introduction to Meshtastic

#187

Post by bergie »

bearded_comrade wrote: post #180
bergie wrote: post #153

We are in the South Pacific with our sailboat, and are using Meshtastic every day to talk between ourselves and with various buddy boats. The boat has a solar-powered repeater (CLIENT_BASE) on the mast that increases communications range significantly. This all works great with no local SIM cards or other subscriptions or infrastructure needed. We plan to run experiments with Reticulum when we stop for the cyclone se…

I've always thought that meshtastic (or something similar) would be great for cruisers. Have you encountered anyone else using it?

A few boats, yes. But it is still a "new thing". Before leaving Panama I ordered a stack of cheap Heltec V3 Meshtastic boards so we can give some to our buddy boats

Re: An Introduction to Meshtastic

#188

Post by Levitating »

bergie wrote: post #153

We are in the South Pacific with our sailboat, and are using Meshtastic every day to talk between ourselves and with various buddy boats. The boat has a solar-powered repeater (CLIENT_BASE) on the mast that increases communications range significantly. This all works great with no local SIM cards or other subscriptions or infrastructure needed. We plan to run experiments with Reticulum when we stop for the cyclone se…

I just bought three SenseCap T1000-E's for the exact same purpose.

Sadly I sail on the other side of the world so we likely won't be connecting.

Re: An Introduction to Meshtastic

#189

Post by bergie »

Levitating wrote: post #188
bergie wrote: post #153

We are in the South Pacific with our sailboat, and are using Meshtastic every day to talk between ourselves and with various buddy boats. The boat has a solar-powered repeater (CLIENT_BASE) on the mast that increases communications range significantly. This all works great with no local SIM cards or other subscriptions or infrastructure needed. We plan to run experiments with Reticulum when we stop for the cyclone se…

I just bought three SenseCap T1000-E's for the exact same purpose. Sadly I sail on the other side of the world so we likely won't be connecting.

We started this trip with a summer cruise in Scotland, so who knows where we'll end up

Re: An Introduction to Meshtastic

#190

Post by szszrk »

Melatonic wrote: post #129
szszrk wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a natural direction to hop from Meshtastic to Meshcore.io as the community grows. They are implemented a bit differently. The chatty nature of Meshtastic works very well in small groups, or unknown area, when you need to talk a bunch of your friends scattered during a trip, to monitor your tracktors on a large field, etc.. Then you try to scale it to a larger city and it just completely breaks. Then Meshcore.io…

Seems like Meshtastic could be replaced by something like BitChat (no hardware needed) for smaller groups and adhoc use (like the example you give of a group on a trip) If you are going to have the setup and work of repeater nodes though doesnt something that gives actual network use between devices make more sense?

BitChat, Briar, yeah. But BT is way less capable in range. You can communicate across two hotel rooms at best. Maybe across the same bar, or empty outdoor space within small visual range. Can be useful, but often you will be able to just shout, instead.

With Meshtastic/Meshcore you are open to scenarios like "a repeater on a boat, large group scattered across large marina, nearby town and hiking areas". Or "bigger family skiing in a large resort". You can get insane distances with great reliability if you place a node strategically on the highest point around. And it costs around $100 to buy an (off the shelf) solar node that can run close to 24/7. Some folks out there have amazing use cases in the mountains.

> something that gives actual network use between devices make more sense

There are plenty of Meshcore/Meshtastic independent devices. With keyboards or touch controls and all.

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