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I'm Getting into Mesh Networks (Meshtastic, MeshCore, and Reticulum)

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Re: I'm Getting into Mesh Networks (Meshtastic, MeshCore, and Reticulum)

#81

Post by sehugg »

alnwlsn wrote: post #28
Groxx wrote: post #3

> To be perfectly upfront with you, this post will be glossing over many Meshtastic and MeshCore features, because I feel they are both non-serious solutions compared to Reticulum for reasons I will explain later on in this post. Yeah, that's the general feel I get every time I poke into Mesh*. Neat radio tech, fun toy to find other nearby nerds, instantly-obvious problems that are fatal to growing beyond being that…

It's pretty hard to imagine anyone "getting serious" with these tiny radios designed for reading gas meters and weather stations and using that to build some kind of off-grid alternate Internet. I'd almost have more faith on dragging out all the old acoustic coupler modems and building a city-wide string-and-tin-can telephone network. Of course they are not useless. My hiking/camping friends put together a fun orient…

I tried to compile something and the Pi ran out of memory

I think your beef is not with Meshtastic, but with the distro/compiler, and I am going to bet you're compiling C++ with clang.

Re: I'm Getting into Mesh Networks (Meshtastic, MeshCore, and Reticulum)

#83

Post by brk »

smlacy wrote: post #30

IMHO this article misses a couple really important points. First, if the mesh can use Internet or other transports then it will, and it will be built out in a way where these become a necessity. If all you want is a silly new way to text your friends, then something like reticulum will be ok. But if you want a serious solution for emergency response and free communication -- free as in "no one can stop me or control…

The meshcore software, and the common hardware being used, are both comically weak for anything that approaches usage at scale, especially in an emergency situation.

The range is extremely limited, and the throughput gets really bad if your packets have to travel more than a few hops. These two factors alone combine to write this off as nothing more than a toy pretty much from the start.

There are already unlicensed radios with longer range that would be a better starting point if people were trying to position mesh* as a scalable and reliable transport of any kind.

>Second, the author also misses an important piece of functionality of meshcore: If I lose power, the mesh still works.

This point isn't unique to meshcore, and it is not a guarantee. Any solar powered and battery-backed device can function without utility power (in theory). Meshcore nodes are not solar powered by default, and the same solar power concept can be utilized for any other kind of radio transceiver/protocol.

Re: I'm Getting into Mesh Networks (Meshtastic, MeshCore, and Reticulum)

#84

Post by pimterry »

embedding-shape wrote: post #79
pezgrande wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A swarm of millions of devices (that can be solar powered) could be more resilient than the "few" nodes that the "internet" architecture has. I guess that is the motivation, in theory. Internet is not neutral, and hasn't been for too long, many providers offering free Whatsapp or cases like LaLiga.

> Internet is not neutral, and hasn't been for too long, many providers offering free Whatsapp or cases like LaLiga. Not sure why people are so hyper-focused on the La Liga case in Spain, Spain done so much worse censorship, even political one, yet no one seemingly bats an eye. But some IPs getting blocks because Cloudflare doesn't follow Spanish law? Suddenly half of HN cares about it, it makes no sense... How about…

> Today, in 2026, as a Spanish resident, I still can't access https://www.womenonweb.org/. Why? Who knows anymore. Fucking money + religion owns our digital spaces now, been for a long time, no one seemingly noticed.

I didn't know about this, so I looked it up: it's because they sell prescription-only abortion medication and ship directly to consumers, where it's legally only available via prescription and medical oversight. Fundamentally they're blocked for ignoring medical regulations. There were some appeals, but the argument is that access to abortion medication is already a well-protected right, so that this is dangerous and unnecessary, and it's not possible to block that while unblocking the rest of their educational resources.

Re: I'm Getting into Mesh Networks (Meshtastic, MeshCore, and Reticulum)

#85

Post by CalRobert »

rcarmo wrote: post #64
tardedmeme wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe it's called ham radio

CB stands for Citizen's Band, and was the moniker back in the Usenet days. Yes, I know I am dating myself here.

My uncle definitely had a CB radio in his big rig, not ham, to hear him describe it.

Re: I'm Getting into Mesh Networks (Meshtastic, MeshCore, and Reticulum)

#88

Post by embedding-shape »

pimterry wrote: post #84
embedding-shape wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Internet is not neutral, and hasn't been for too long, many providers offering free Whatsapp or cases like LaLiga. Not sure why people are so hyper-focused on the La Liga case in Spain, Spain done so much worse censorship, even political one, yet no one seemingly bats an eye. But some IPs getting blocks because Cloudflare doesn't follow Spanish law? Suddenly half of HN cares about it, it makes no sense... How about…

> Today, in 2026, as a Spanish resident, I still can't access https://www.womenonweb.org/ . Why? Who knows anymore. Fucking money + religion owns our digital spaces now, been for a long time, no one seemingly noticed. I didn't know about this, so I looked it up: it's because they sell prescription-only abortion medication and ship directly to consumers, where it's legally only available via prescription and medical o…

Such a bullshit reason though, the real reason is that the church don't like women deciding over their own bodies, and the church wields real political power in Spain.

Using a VPN, and trying to use that website to "order abortion pills" today to Spain shows this error:

> You live in a country where there is access to safe abortion services. We don't provide services in your country and we therefore are unable to assist you.

You haven't been able to get abortion pills from them for years, yet the same reason for the block remains, even if that's not actually true in practice.

The block is being escalated to UN though, so it's still an ongoing issue, not like nothing is happening, just frustrating to see people complaining about minor censorship when there is so much more important censorship happening all the time.

Re: I'm Getting into Mesh Networks (Meshtastic, MeshCore, and Reticulum)

#89

Post by raffael_de »

rcarmo wrote: post #56

I’ve spent my entire career in telco and networking and loved the rise of Wi-Fi (which we used spectacularly over long distances when the spectrum was clear to show off my mates in 3G/microwave backhaul), and have been keeping up with LoRA and related stuff (got a few HelTec boards), but all the recent meshtastic/core/etc. stuff feels a bit like the early wardriving community (and CB radio): fun, full of ideas, but w…

> but without enough structure (or mass appeal) to take off

I think the most important requirement for a mesh technology to take off is a purpose that is practically relevant right now. Let's assume the mesh network exists - now what? Now you can send messages to other nerds but ... what do you even want to send as a message? That's why ham radio basically bottomed out at contests, Morse code challenges and exchanging specs ... there is nothing to say. Maybe the biggest problem of mesh networks isn't technology but society. If there is a purpose that at least serves nerds making up 0.1% of the population then that would be amazing and mass appeal would actually be more cause for trouble than desirable.

Re: I'm Getting into Mesh Networks (Meshtastic, MeshCore, and Reticulum)

#90

Post by cynicalsecurity »

dyauspitr wrote: post #42

I got into it too back in 2012. Frankly it’s not a very interesting space unless you’re trying to circumvent nation wide internet shutdowns because for everything else encrypted chat channels serve the same purpose and everyone is doing it (WhatsApp, signal, telegram etc)

I have some really bad news for you, mate.
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