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Meshtastic: Open-source, off-grid, hiking, climbing, GPS mesh communicator
- bitxbitxbitcoin 6y agoPatiently waiting for my T-Beam to arrive so I can try this out. This is an open source alternative to the popular GoTenna devices and if any HNers can point me to other options in this space I'd love to try them all out.
- GNU_James 6y agoIsn't the radio modem proprietary with a blob? https://archive.is/lEfpQ https://archive.is/lEfpQ
- duckfang 6y agoI believe so, yes. But in all seriousness a line has to be drawn somewhere about open source'ness. For example, there's a few ways to remediate that. My preferred is a reference Gnuradio flow that, with an SDR, allows for communication with their device network. Secondarily, open firmware would be good... but with open firmware still results in closed silicon (and not everyone has access to a fab!). Closed source isn't always enough to run me away. Closed and closable interoperability does.
- bigiain 6y agoYeah. Things get a little fuzzy this close to the hardware. The “open source” project is a (platform.io) project that runs on the ESP32 (or a few other similar enough) microcontroller. It controls the LoRa (totally closed) firmware on the LoRa components (and GPS as well). Even your Gnuradio setup has similar black box firmware underneath that it relies on (unless you’ve got to extraordinary lengths to ensure the machine it’s running in has no propitiatory firmware for things like disk/ssd controllers, USB controllers, battery management systems, etc. )
- slothtrop 6y agoIn theory could range be extended (for this tech and similar types) through a string of nodes to cover Metropolitan areas?
- geoah 6y agoI was hoping for something like this but unfortunately LoRa seems pretty meh if you don't have line of sight between the devices or maybe open enough areas that don't drown the signals. I was hoping that it could go for a couple hundred meters in urban areas (was trying this out in the outer London zones, UK) but the results were pretty bad. Reception was spotty the moment direct LOS was lost and non existent ~10m after that. Not even worth mentioning the results if one of the nodes was inside a building. If anyone had any success in dense areas I'd really appreciate any links to the hardware/antennas/firmware/software you used to get good results.
- slothtrop 6y agoAh I see. Got too excited.
- bigiain 6y agoAntennas and height make a huge difference. I’ve got a hop from my place to a friend that’s a little over 3km non line of sight (terrain/hill between). Can’t do that with the stock rubber ducky antennas, but with a swr meter tuned home made dipole antenna on a 4m pole on my roof it’s rock solid (using 433MHz, not sure if 815/915 would get that far).
- geoah 6y agounfortunately that raises the entry level by quite a bit but definitely worth a shot. I need to check about the band, cause most of the LoRA I saw being sold in the UK are 868/815, but a cursory google search says that 433 might be allowed. Will take another look thank you.
- bitxbitxbitcoin 6y agoYes. Here's a map of existing (albeit self reported) nodes that you could theoretically mesh with. [0] [1] https://canvis.app/meshtastic-map https://canvis.app/meshtastic-map
- COGlory 6y agoThis is absolutely brilliant. If this works as advertised, it'd be trivial to add mesh network capabilities to lots of the mountainous areas I'm frequently in while hunting or hiking or what not. That would be huge for safety, and substantially cheaper than a sat phone.
- vvanders 6y ago> safety, and substantially cheaper than a sat phone I agree that it's a really cool project but I personally would not use it as a primary safety mechanism. I've got a ham radio license and I see the same mistake with people who think a 5W VHF handheld or 10W HF radio will help them in dire straights. HF isn't reliable enough and all it takes is a little terrain to block VHF. You're also not guaranteed that there's even anyone on the other side of the radio if you really need help. I would recommend a SPOT or inReach as a your primary safety device with this as a (neat) backup. All they need is a line of sight to the sky which is much easier to do than either LoRA, VHF or HF. [edit] If you want a good idea of the limits of LoRA Ars did a pretty good write-up a few years ago: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/10/lostik-usb-lora-radios/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/10/lostik-usb-lora-radi... . You'll see that even in a few mile radius there's plenty of places where even a high-end LoRA device drops out because very few radios can go directly through terrain(if you're curious https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Through-the-earth_mine_communications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Through-the-earth_mine_communi... covers some aspects). It is a really cool modulation for low power but it's still subject to the physics of radio propagation.
- npsimons 6y agoI'm in mountain rescue and I'll second all of this. It's why we will set up repeaters, or station people as repeaters if we have enough people, but more often than not, we are out of radio communication for hours on end, despite all parties having the necessary equipment. More often than not, we'll use inReach texting to maintain comms. But projects like this excite me for future directions. Sometimes when we've been in areas with cell phone coverage (some wilderness in SoCal has coverage), we will be able to see tracks in SARTopo update live from teams in the field. It's really cool when it works!
- Luker88 6y agoThe project is really interesting and I think I am going to try it. It looks like it's text only? would it be possible to add a very filtered, low-bandwidth audio stream since the phone can do all the calculations? I have no idea on the actual bandwidth of these devices, wikipedia says LoRa is 0.3-27 Kb/s and Opus should work decently at ~10Kb/s I think. So maybe? Although audio would probably be half duplex and only point-to-point instead of mesh, but it still could be interesting
- voltagex_ 6y agoHave a look at Codec2 [1] 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codec_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codec_2
- vvanders 6y agoCodec2 is part of it but you need a lot more pieces on top(framing, modulation, etc). LoRA doesn't really have the bandwidth for Codec2(for a few reasons, mostly power and the way LoRA handles channel congestion). M17[1] has been making really big strides in this space and really excited to start seeing a proper open hardware/open source digital radio stack. [1] https://m17project.org/ https://m17project.org/
- s800 6y agoThe duty cycle requirement preclude this type of use. You should be "off the air" ~99% of the time.
- morpheuskafka 6y agoAnother thing to consider would be latency due to retransmissions. Something like voice notes would probably be better than a live call send it could be re-transmitted as many times as necessary and broken into small chunks.
- tpmx 6y agohttps://msglab.co/room/lo-ra-msg https://msglab.co/room/lo-ra-msg is a pretty neat concept/prototype.
- s0rce 6y agoVery cool, I just ordered a couple radios to play with. Looks like the app is Android only although an iPhone app is under development. Any recommendations for a cheap android phone/tablet to use mostly for this application?
- bigiain 6y agoI’m using old Samsung S3 and S4 phones with Android7 Lineage on them. I would go any older than that, and the Bluetooth works more reliably if you can get Android 8 or newer (none of the Lineage images of 8 will boot on my S3s.) You don’t need anything that you probably couldn’t find in the back of your or a family members junk drawer...
- wyck 6y agoI would love this for my dog, she runs in the woods and I like to know where she is. I've tried a Lidar collar but the range is too low. The only other option is a cell phone in a case (which is used by search and rescue) but it's to expensive since you need a cell phone plan, and it's and too bulky to attach to a moving animal. There is a market for this, I'll help prototype it , someone start a company to track dogs and children (out playing, biking, skiing) :)
- semi-extrinsic 6y agoHow about the Garmin T5? It is literally made for this, no? Edit: https://www.amazon.com/Garmin-T5-GPS-Dog-Collar/dp/B00L3C5EDC https://www.amazon.com/Garmin-T5-GPS-Dog-Collar/dp/B00L3C5ED... It's a bit of a pricey solution, and typical range is 4-5 miles I believe. Seems to be popular with people who use their dogs for hunting moose etc.
- wyck 6y agoThat's similar to what I had, you also need a gps receiver, so your investing close to 650$, not great for when your dog smacks it on a rock or tree. The problem is in a mountainous area you need line of sight, so it became practically useless, I would constantly loose the signal. Combined with the battery life in cold weather... The only solution was a satellite connection or creating some sort of mesh coverage like the OP link suggests. ps. Most dog trackers also do not work outside usa.
- conk 6y agoThere are GPS+LTE pet trackers like Whistle dog collar that seem reasonably priced.
- s0rce 6y agoHaving trouble figuring out the subscriptions costs on their website.
- maxerickson 6y ago
- morpheuskafka 6y agoSo these are using LoRa (902-928MHz) as the actual frequency for text transmissions? This is really an exciting frequency that's been around for a while and has a lot of potential for disruption. Fun fact--there is a completed WiFi standard for this frequency (802.11ah / WiFi HaLow), but as far as I know, there have never been any chipsets made for it.
- bigiain 6y agoYes to “LoRa”, but not necessarily on the 900MHz band. I have a few all using boards with 433MHz LoRa radios, most of the hardware supported is available in 433/815/915MHz variants. (In fact, I’m fairly sure most of the chipsets are capable of all those frequencies, and the only real difference if you buy the 433MHz version is the antenna they include.)
- bjconlan 6y agoYeah, this has been my experience too. Generally you use the frequency that has been legalised for use in the region you operate it in. I wonder if this automatically switches to the suitable frequency based off coordinates (when using a gps’d board) I’m sure it would be trivial to implement. Ah good ole opensource. This really is a great solution, riding around New Zealand the only solution is a SPOT tracker which charges like a wounded bull so I love that this is disrupting this space (and using clever tech - heck might throw one of these on the moto just to use it for security)
- bigiain 6y agoFor Meshtastic, you upload a country/frequency specific firmware. It’s perfectly happy running on devices without gps, so it’d be a maybe nice to have but not a thing the project could rely on to meet regulatory frequency compliance. For your motorcycle use case, keep in mind this is a small group of people mesh thing, not something where one device can expect to connect to unknown other people. The SPOT tracker is still the solution you want if you’re looking for safety/emergency contact. What meshtastic might be useful for on motorcycles (and I’m considering building some of these) is a medium range mesh network between you and your riding group, with super simple super limited Comms UI. I’m thinking 3 or 4 different colour old school video game type buttons that you can mash wearing gloves, that light up a bright-enough rgb led to see in the sun, with 3 or 4 agreed meanings for the colours. “Pull over and check messages”, “Wait for me”, “I’ve crashed”, “Cops!” type messages, that can be sent/understood without needing to read a text message on a phone screen (but still having that text messaging available as well).
- pqdbr 6y agoMe and my friends would pay for this. We fly paramotors and almost every weekend we fly to places with no cell connection. Plain old radio is terrible (there's always someone transmitting all the time without realizing, blocking communication for everyone else) and the ability to check each other's GPS position would be awesome to know if the whole party is still flying together.
- bigiain 6y agoThat’s actually one of the driving force use cases for the project founder, so it’s reasonably likely to eventually work well for that.
- adwi 6y agoGoTenna? https://gotenna.com/ https://gotenna.com/
- rlpb 6y agoTry PilotAware (pilotaware.com). It's a Raspberry Pi with SDR comms. A web app gives you a radar type display. It'll integrate with moving map software for navigation if you want (eg. I use SkyDemon). I'm not sure about availability outside the UK though.
- froj 6y agoFANET [1] is specifically for paragliding. It is also LoRa based and open source, but so far only Skytraxx and Naviter really seem to be using it in their products. I think it's exactly what you're looking for, though. [1] https://www.skytraxx.eu/News/FANET https://www.skytraxx.eu/News/FANET
- myself248 6y agoMeshtastic has been talking about merging with Disaster.Radio for eons, because the two seem to have a lot of conceptual overlap. I can see uses for both feature sets and would love if they were just one thing. It sounds like that's just not happening?
- goda90 6y agodisaster.radio seems kind of dead. No commits to the GitHub in 4 months. The contributor who responded to the latest issue says they aren't actively working on it. I think it would be great if they merged as well. Do you have links to any conversations about this?
- punkgeek 6y agowe talked about it in the early but there were some fundamental technological limitations that made it seem like not a good fit. At this point I think meshtastic is more feature complete and has lots of areas not serviced by disaster radio (ie. python API, ports to many different types of lora boards, extremely good battery life). I think the only feature we miss wrt disaster radio is dual radio support and full DSR.
- pgkyc 6y agoWe have a [#BCMesh started here in British Colombia](https://krisconstable.com/bc-mesh-using-LoRa-devices https://krisconstable.com/bc-mesh-using-LoRa-devices) if you want to join.
- adrianpike 6y agoThat's awesome - I've got line of sight to Victoria, so probably can't join, but will take a look.
- pgkyc 6y agoMy current node is line of sight to the U.S. mountains south of Victoria, so if that's your location and you have line of sight, you can probably connect to me right now!
- tlavoie 6y agoI might be interested! Anyone else in or around the Quadra Island area?
- aksss 6y agoIf you’re on-mesh, are you still off-grid?
- killingtime74 6y agoIs Gotenna successful now?
- sybercecurity 6y agoI was wondering the same - I've seen gotenna stuff sold at REI and other outfitters. Meshtastic makes the claim that the gotenna project is focusing on enteprise deployment and not end user (plus the usual dig that it is closed source). Though the gotenna webpage still has the personal mesh devices for sale. Meshtastic sounds like an open source alternative, but if you have to built your own device I don't see it growing beyond serious DIY.
- polishdude20 6y agoHow well does this work in a forested area without line of sight?
- adrianpike 6y agoModerately well. I can get a couple miles of range punching through trees, far far better than any other unlicensed option. Chirp spread spectrum is pretty cool.
- polishdude20 6y agoThat's cool! Might try it out
- abstract_put 6y agoCan you elaborate on specifically what you have that's getting a couple miles? I tried out Meshtastic with a bog standard board exactly as it existed. I carried it down the road and found it got ~500m of reliable range with no obstructions. Has the software improved significantly, or is there different hardware to support getting multiple miles?
- adrianpike 6y agoBoards are the Heltec boards that are an ESP32/SX127x. One of the boards is using the stock antenna that came with it, the other has a TBS Immortal T I had lying around. Using the 915mhz bands as well. I use it out in the mountains, with line of sight between hilltops, but pretty forested so it's having to punch through foliage. I did some unscientific testing around my house and did notice a lot less range, I'm suspecting there's a fair amount of noise from other things in the ISM bands in the city.
- punkgeek 6y agoHi! I'm one of the devs. If you have questions you might like our (friendly/helpful) forum: meshtastic.discourse.group.
- anigbrowl 6y agoIt's great but until someone comes up with something better than 'solder on a screen, 3d print a case' it's going nowhere for lack of critical mass. The best thing that could happen to this is if it turned from a $35 project into a $50 product. I know a bunch of people who find it interesting and would be into investing in deployment (as backup comms for natural disaster scenarios), but nobody wants to commit to soldering 50 of these things.
- bordercases 6y agoHow long would it take per unit?
- anigbrowl 6y agoNot very, but the point is that the necessity to set up an assembly line is a sticking point for adoption. You need to deploy a lot of these to make it useful so skill or time bottlenecks are a big disincentive.
- snops 6y agoThere is hardware available with the same microcontroller (ESP32) in a thick watch style case, but I don't know if anyone has ported meshtastic to it yet. On the face of it, power usage looks a bit higher due to the LCD display rather than OLED. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/10000161655843.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/10000161655843.html
- boschetto 6y agoI am considering it. From a quick calculation (micro-production, 1 man operation, 50 units batch): - Materials: considering the best supported module (T-Beam V1.1 w/ NEO-M8N /w SX1262) with an OLED screen, an upgrade to a decent GPS antenna (ceramic, 28mm^2), 3D printed case and 2 Panasonic 18650. Materials cost: 48€/piece. - Assembly: pipelining would probably be bottlenecked by display soldering (outsourcing the 3D printing). Batching soldering could bring that down to ~1 min/piece. Flashing/testing can be fully automated and parallelized with soldering. Final assembly should be an additional 30s/piece. Start up ~10min considering testing machine boot and soldering iron warm up. Assembly time: 85 min/batch --> <2 min/unit Assembly cost (50€/hour): 71 €/batch -> 1.42 €/unit Shipping (EU): 10€ Support cost: can't estimate well, let's say 1€/unit Defective cost (10%): 13€/unit (2 procuct units, 3 shippings) Cost per unit: 73€ Retail price (40% margin): 102€ It's viable but pretty expensive (a lot more than 50$). For sure more expensive than a goTenna Mesh and offering less support. I won't make money from it but it could be a good learning opportunity. edit: formatting
- huksley 6y agoWhat is the different between this and APRS? I was lately interested in APRS and would be great to know more.
- punkgeek 6y agoNo ham license required. Much better range per watt. Slower. More modern protocol.
- foxhop 6y agoWhat if I wanted to build a non-portable one which acted as a base station (antenna on roof or something)