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The idea of these radio mesh network things is great. The reality is terrible because radio waves need line of sight unless you've got a repeater. This is compl

The idea of these radio mesh network things is great. The reality is terrible because radio waves need line of sight unless you've got a repeater. This is completely impractical when hiking, or in a city filled with buildings. They end up with crazy short range between devices and you need an implausibly long string of them to get from a person off the grid to a mesh point on the grid. The only exception to this being someone high on a hill with no bumpy bits of other hills between them and whoever has the other mesh point that happens to be on-grid. Gotenna couldn't make this work with all their $$ because of the simple physics of radio waves. Yes they sell devices that technically do what they claim, they just fall flat on their faces when they encounter hills, or buildings... or anything that isn't flat. I think if you want to make something that actually works, you should drop the "consumer" and make having a ham radio license a requirement. Then use the GPS to find the closest public repeater. Their locations are pretty well mapped at this point. Use the most appropriate of the many ham radio digital packet systems for whatever wavelength you're broadcasting on and choose the appropriate part of the spectrum that is designated for digital packet use. Also be a good radio citizen and try other frequencies if the current one is in use. I understand that the ham license is pretty much a deal breaker for adoption BUT it's what's required to use the decent frequencies and access to repeaters. As this seems to be an open source kind of project and not a "hey lets sell bajillions" kinda thing, that seems like a plausible option.

sliken 7y ago
Dunno, I think one of the biggest weakness of various ham related technologies (and yes I have my general) is the assumption that everyone is online all the time. Trying to communicate with a few dozen people is very inefficient with amateur radio in general. It's usually voice, usually assumes everyone is doing nothing but listening, is listening continuously and has perfect reception. God forbid someone is driving, hiking aggressive terrain, or a group of 10 people is online only 60% of the time each. Most of the cheap ham stuff assumes a perfect repeater already to do the heavy lifting, which is nice when you have it, but very frustrating when you don't. I do wish that ham or consumer devices supported digital modes, peer to peer, store and forward, push, pull, query, etc. Js8call supports this, so you can do things like ask when someone was last seen, leave messages on 3rd parties, ask 3rd parties to forward, etc. So even if each radio is online part of the time, and parties that want to talk can not directly hear each other things work just fine. It's amazing to even think about, communicating several magnitudes below the noise floor, power levels so low that hams are proud when they get less than 1 watt per 1000 miles! Imagine standing on the west cost of the USA, shining a 5 watt flashlight at the sky, having it bounce off the sky, to land, and again into the sky, and again to the last to someone 1000s of miles away... and they can decode your signal. Amazing stuff. I do wonder what the smallest package you could fit a 1 watt bluetooth connected HF radio in to enable any phone to talk js8call.

sliken 7y ago

Dunno, I think one of the biggest weakness of various ham related technologies (and yes I have my general) is the assumption that everyone is online all the time. Trying to communicate with a few dozen people is very inefficient with amateur radio in general. It's usually voice, usually assumes everyone is doing nothing but listening, is listening continuously and has perfect reception. God forbid someone is driving, hiking aggressive terrain, or a group of 10 people is online only 60% of the time each. Most of the cheap ham stuff assumes a perfect repeater already to do the heavy lifting, which is nice when you have it, but very frustrating when you don't. I do wish that ham or consumer devices supported digital modes, peer to peer, store and forward, push, pull, query, etc. Js8call supports this, so you can do things like ask when someone was last seen, leave messages on 3rd parties, ask 3rd parties to forward, etc. So even if each radio is online part of the time, and parties that want to talk can not directly hear each other things work just fine. It's amazing to even think about, communicating several magnitudes below the noise floor, power levels so low that hams are proud when they get less than 1 watt per 1000 miles! Imagine standing on the west cost of the USA, shining a 5 watt flashlight at the sky, having it bounce off the sky, to land, and again into the sky, and again to the last to someone 1000s of miles away... and they can decode your signal. Amazing stuff. I do wonder what the smallest package you could fit a 1 watt bluetooth connected HF radio in to enable any phone to talk js8call.