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BYOMesh – New LoRa mesh radio offers 100x the bandwidth

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Re: BYOMesh – New LoRa mesh radio offers 100x the bandwidth

#101

Post by Gigachad »

KingMachiavelli wrote: post #100
Gigachad wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they are toys. For real work it makes so much more sense to use the internet. With the new satellite tech you can reach the internet everywhere. Mesh radio is a fun way to chat with radio nerds in your area. Not a serious infrastructure.

So what’s the real solution for when Starlink is too expensive and too high power? I really want to solution for remote mountaineering communication that’s not just GMRS. And what about remote weather sensors? I really don’t need a full internet connection just to send a tiny payload every 5 minutes. Meshtastic should be the obvious answer for this but in my limited experience the app(s) and code are buggy on even th…

Depends what exactly it is you want. But phones these days can communicate with satellites for emergency messaging.

I think people need to think more about what the actual scenario they have in mind is because it seems most people think of mesh radio as some backup for the government shutting the internet down. When in reality it’s almost useless for that since it’s so easy to jam or flood mesh radio.

Re: BYOMesh – New LoRa mesh radio offers 100x the bandwidth

#102

Post by Gigachad »

nubinetwork wrote: post #84
Gigachad wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they are toys. For real work it makes so much more sense to use the internet. With the new satellite tech you can reach the internet everywhere. Mesh radio is a fun way to chat with radio nerds in your area. Not a serious infrastructure.

> not a serious infrastructure I've been tinkering with the tech to make city-wide flrc meshes joined together over the internet, my estimates are that it should be at least able to support thousands of users per region.

This has been tried with mqtt bridges in Meshtastic. But it’s ultimately kind of pointless because if you are planning some kind of internet alternative, you don’t want to build something that falls over the moment the internet goes down.

Re: BYOMesh – New LoRa mesh radio offers 100x the bandwidth

#103

Post by nubinetwork »

Gigachad wrote: post #102
nubinetwork wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not a serious infrastructure I've been tinkering with the tech to make city-wide flrc meshes joined together over the internet, my estimates are that it should be at least able to support thousands of users per region.

This has been tried with mqtt bridges in Meshtastic. But it’s ultimately kind of pointless because if you are planning some kind of internet alternative, you don’t want to build something that falls over the moment the internet goes down.

I know, I'm not too worried that I can't reach Billy in Ottawa, but you should still be able to text your mother six blocks away. /shrug

Re: BYOMesh – New LoRa mesh radio offers 100x the bandwidth

#104

Post by Gigachad »

andwur wrote: post #97
Gigachad wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that day whatever is jamming starlink will just jam mesh radio too. It'll likely be even easier.

It's a different jamming scenario however. Starlink is comparatively centralised, and reliant on both terrestrial (ground stations) and satellite communication. While the terminals themselves are sparse and widely distributed, the backbone infrastructure is far less so. It's possible to target the satellites, ground stations and critical service dependencies (e.g. GPS) rather than needing to target the hundred of tho…

I suspect jamming LoRa could be a lot easier than most radio though. LoRa signals are incredibly weak and long range. A jammer which jams at a massively higher power level could cover a massive area. You can also just flood the network with messages that nodes will happily relay further for you.

Re: BYOMesh – New LoRa mesh radio offers 100x the bandwidth

#105

Post by ezwoodland »

mikeweiss wrote: post #23
jtchang wrote: post #11

Correct me if I am wrong but I thought the primary appeal of LoRa was range? Also isn't the primary factor in making long range radio go through things is the frequency? So 2.4ghz is the same frequency as consumer wifi right and thus would propagate about the same right? It doesn't seem like this would be that useful except that the protocol is LoRa so you can have higher bandwidth between two devices if they happen…

LoRa would go much farther than Wifi on 2.4ghz. Lora uses Chirp Spread Spectrum (CSS) modulation while wifi uses OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing). The first being designed for extreme range while the latter for bandwidth. At 2.4ghz you could probably get LoRa connections up to 6 miles with the right antenna height.

What makes OFDM inherently worse at long range? Don't you just lengthen your symbols and use the extra frequency bins until you have tolerable losses?

Re: BYOMesh – New LoRa mesh radio offers 100x the bandwidth

#106

Post by slow_typist »

nubinetwork wrote: post #49
nunobrito wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are more rules being broken. For example, overusing the frequency which effectively prevents others users from sending messages. In the end, won't be used.

In the EU, the duty cycle limit is like 10% per hour. North America doesn't have that restriction...

Not on the 2.4 GHz band though

Re: BYOMesh – New LoRa mesh radio offers 100x the bandwidth

#107

Post by zobzu »

burnt-resistor wrote: post #90
mikeweiss wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LoRa would go much farther than Wifi on 2.4ghz. Lora uses Chirp Spread Spectrum (CSS) modulation while wifi uses OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing). The first being designed for extreme range while the latter for bandwidth. At 2.4ghz you could probably get LoRa connections up to 6 miles with the right antenna height.

When I worked in the Trimble Navigation radio group, 2.4 GHz was tried but its real world range sucked compared to ~900 MHz and CB ~450 MHz bands of existing solutions. It's simply limitations of physics that lower frequencies propagate farther (at lower bandwidth) than higher frequencies.

even 900mhz sux vs 433. the lower the better it penetrates matter for the same amplitude.

lower than 430 you start to run into severe bandwidth issues though. and its not allowed to transmit lora/dss on 430 in the us without license hence the 900mhz

at 2.4ghz the real world usage is limited. might as well use wifi. the only advantage is short range bandwidh while keeping lora compat.

Re: BYOMesh – New LoRa mesh radio offers 100x the bandwidth

#109

Post by Gigachad »

nubinetwork wrote: post #103
Gigachad wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been tried with mqtt bridges in Meshtastic. But it’s ultimately kind of pointless because if you are planning some kind of internet alternative, you don’t want to build something that falls over the moment the internet goes down.

I know, I'm not too worried that I can't reach Billy in Ottawa, but you should still be able to text your mother six blocks away. /shrug

That works with just basic mesh radio. The internet bridges thing is tempting but ultimately a bit useless and doesn't push people to extend the mesh natively.

Re: BYOMesh – New LoRa mesh radio offers 100x the bandwidth

#110

Post by riedel »

colanderman wrote: post #76
wtallis wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue you linked to is about MeshCore using channels that are too narrow . A mesh system claiming to offer 100x bandwidth is probably not violating regulations in that particular way.

Correct. The LoRa configurations mentioned which offer 100× the speed of Meshtastic/Core operate at 800 kHz and 1.6 MHz bandwidth, which are permitted by the FCC in 15.247. As far as I know there's not actually anything particular to 2.4 GHz allowing higher throughput for LoRa than that the corresponding Semtech chip happens to support wider bandwidths. (I.e. no legal barrier.) The tradeoff is less range due to lower…

At least in Europe the 868 Band is is in contrast to 2.4 allowed only for low duty cycle applications that do not actually occupy the channel for more than 1% afaik (given space multiplexing). I also remember also that the free to us band was quite narrow by design (we built sensor nodes bit banging a PHY transceiver that were in the grey area of unenforced rules, 20 years ago .l)
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