Thread 106554463

Any enthusiasts here using meshtastic? What are you using it for? Will this tech eventually allow geeks to create their own decentralized, non-cucked, non-corpo'd version of the internet? Freenet of sorts, if you will.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAo2sb8LpFc

It seems like a fairly cheap and relatively easy-to-set-up way to create an entirely new internet infrastructure (as long as enough people get on board with it).

Let's talk about it.

>>106554463 (OP)
That would only be practical for short ranges, a neighbourhood or small town at best
Why the fuck would I want an internet with my locals? I go to the internet to escape this hellhole

>>106554524
t. glownigger

>>106554463 (OP)
>>106554524
this
you will use this to talk to maybe one other autistic guy in your town and he will be insufferable because his fixation isn't something you care about

>>106554524
>hellhole
Muslim spotted.

>>106554538
That's what the internet was like in its infancy. Then more people adopted it and it grew into something beautiful. But then of course corporations came and took a huge stinky dump on everyone. The truth is, the internet was flooded by normies at some point, and they let it happen.

>>106554463 (OP)
Could work, but would need to be very secure

>>106554463 (OP)
I have two nodes/devices. One in 3d printed case I can carry around, another on top of my apartment building in small solar light housing.
I don't really like it for two reasons. First is you can't make static routes and use flood routing only as backup. No delivery reports, no store and forward. In my opinion it's just not usable in current form.
Second, power output is just cripplingly low, it's 100mW max for most hardware. So even in direct line of sight range is maybe 5-6km and that is with borderline usable signal. If it was 1W it would be something completely different.
I still carry one device with me when I go hiking, I'm not really interested in communicating with other people but more with tech aspect of signal propagation/range and stuff like that. Back in the day I would carry handheld radio and this replaced it.
I did recently did chat with guy on the coast of the Italy while I was 500km away on the mountain in Croatia so if you're after that it works but don't expect consistent repeatable sms like communication.
There's another project called meshcore which has more sophisticated routing options but I haven't tried it yet.

>>106554591
>Second, power output is just cripplingly low, it's 100mW max for most hardware. So even in direct line of sight range is maybe 5-6km and that is with borderline usable signal. If it was 1W it would be something completely different.
you can get 5w setups from china

>>106554598
>you can get 5w setups from china
not legal not that I care but all other nodes are all 100mW so it won't make any difference

Saving this for later, seems interesting

There's reticulum network as well, but as far as I can tell it seems to have way fewer people running nodes over LoRa.
I do like the idea of RNS supporting "dead drop messaging" aka encrypted comms via printed QR codes or what have you.

>no keys, no display, no whatsoever
wtf do these things do?

>>106554463 (OP)
>It seems like a fairly cheap and relatively easy-to-set-up way to create an entirely new internet infrastructure (as long as enough people get on board with it).
Keep in mind that it doesn't scale well with too many users, see what happens/happened in big agglos in the UK, hence why they started developing meshcore.co.uk
And on top of that LoRa itself has duty cycles limitations to respect the free bands legislation so it can't have much bandwidth anyway.
Here's your Internet replacement bro

>>106555869
There's phone program, even those with screen can run with no screen just fine and you interact with them through phone over bluetooth, most even have built in web server and wifi so you can use it directly from web browser/desktop.

>>106556142
The whole thing is still in pretty early beta, so there are bound to be lots of flaws.

>>106555762
there's a crowdsourced map for reticulum nodes
https://rmap.world/

>>106554524
>a neighbourhood or small town at best
In the pacific northwest there are enough nodes that get around 100km reliably

>>106556828
>100km reliably
maybe on top of the hills with big antennas and filters. handheld lora to other handheld lora are 10km tops with line on sight, urban environment maybe 1km if you're lucky.

>>106554463 (OP)
sounds a lot like Piratebox. And you how that turned out.

>>106556777
Damn I don't own any rural land to put one, not gonna dox my house Kek

>>106558057
you can turn gps off, enter coordinates yourself and so on...

>>106554463 (OP)
handed heltec v3's out at burning man, worked like a charm. sent messages the whole time without cell towers. probably needed a bigger battery than 3000 mah as they drew a bunch of power and they charged pretty slow.

>>106554463 (OP)
mestastic is unusable toy. please look at reticulum rnodes. it is essentially the same thing but much better and more capable

the main limitations of Meshtastic are the default hop limit and some of the insufferable community members. The duty cycle limit in some places is also getting raised and 5% was already more than enough in most cases.

LoRa works well but the software needs some work. We didn't even have a non web interface for it on desktop and the one that now actually exists was vibe coded by iToddlers anyways.

>>106554463 (OP)
I just got a couple heltec v3s a week ago to try out. There's nodes all over my city but it turns out I live in a deadzone 2mi in every direction so I can't communicate with anyone. My office is also a deadzone.
I drove out to a different area just to see what nodes I could find and could see like 100 nodes. I even upgraded the antenna to try and reach out but I can't get jack shit unless I drive right to a node on the map.
I was considering getting a private channel together so my family could talk in an emergency but it's not stable enough to work. One device runs out of battery and a whole section of my city gets cutoff.

>>106559536
Same situation as mine. Fixed it by putting solar node on top of my apartment building which is about 5 stories high. From there it can reach three other nodes around the city.
I even had idea of dropping that solar node with small magnet on the bottom on top of 200m industrial chimney with drone.

>>106559630
I live in the suburbs with no high points around, I thought about hoisting a pole up 30 feet and trying to hit the nearest node but honestly I'm moving soon and idk if it's worth it.
>solar
I tried this too with a portable solar panel and small battery pack. By no means a permanent solution but more to test if I could hit any nodes if I left it on for 48 hours.
The pack would run out of charge overnight and wouldn't power the heltec after getting juice from the solar panel. I'd have to replug it in which defeats the purpose. A bigger battery pack would be better but there's no point when I can't reach anything anyway, even after 48 hours of uptime.
>>106554993
Out of curiosity why is 5w illegal? I thought most of the chinese radios were 5w. Increasing power output was my only other idea.

>>106557819
> maybe on top of the hills with big antennas and filters. handheld lora to other handheld lora are 10km tops with line on sight, urban environment maybe 1km if you're lucky.
In the northwest ham nerds have put up nodes on high places, that's the key. There's a node on top of the highest mountain in my city that I can ping from nearly anywhere in town and it passes along the router network.

Bump

>Meshtastic
>Cyberdecks
>Faraday bags
genuine prep gear?

>>106562323
You forgot a tinfoil hat and an underground bunker.

>>106560576
>Out of curiosity why is 5w illegal?
Every band has rules and limitations, 5W chink HT is legal on amateur bands if you have license but if you use it with full 5W on idk PMR band that's illegal.
Nothing will happen if you're individual and go over power limits, no one cares but manufacturers and designers of software like meshtastic have to stick to it or they would get sanctioned.