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Meshtastic
- mertleee 11mo agoThis community is laughably caustic and abusive. My friend attempted to create a simple tutorial site and their org harassed him for over a year. He didn't even mention the word "meshtastic" and they made dozens of false trademark claims that his site could be "confused" with an official site. I was previously a fan, but I'd never seen behavior like that from an "open source" project.
- bb88 11mo agoOne thing to keep in mind is that it's not even a very good mesh network. There's a Zero Retries article recently with a critical review of meshtastic. Or find my comments on meshtastic here. If anything they showed there's demand for a public mesh. Unfortunately, they didn't want to learn from AlohaNet or any of the other meshes.
- swaits 11mo agoYou’re understating it. Meshtastic is horribly designed. If you designed a wireless mesh network making all the worst possible choices, with the most shortsighted design decisions imaginable, you’d get something a little better than Meshtastic.
- notashock69 11mo ago[flagged]
- vdqtp3 11mo ago> There's a Zero Retries article recently with a critical review of meshtastic Do you have a link? I went through recent ZT issues and didn't find what you're referring to
- mertleee 11mo ago[dead]
- Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe 11mo agoAlohanet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALOHAnet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALOHAnet
- kop316 11mo agoHeh, that isn't my experience. I created a client Linux: https://gitlab.com/kop316/gtk-meshtastic-client https://gitlab.com/kop316/gtk-meshtastic-client and even posted it on their discussion page: https://github.com/orgs/meshtastic/discussions/99 https://github.com/orgs/meshtastic/discussions/99 . One of the maintainers responded positively to me: https://github.com/orgs/meshtastic/discussions/99#discussioncomment-11439776 https://github.com/orgs/meshtastic/discussions/99#discussion... .
- sandos 11mo agoI have not seen that at all. Honestly, people are almost too welcoming and also maybe even too accepting of PRs for example.
- gnabgib 11mo agoPopular in: 2024 (335 points, 79 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38829448 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38829448 2022 (249 points, 90 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32016142 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32016142 2020 (620 points, 168 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22540066 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22540066
- tomhow 11mo agoThanks! Macroexpanded: Meshtastic's Opposition to Proposed Changes on 900 MHz Band - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41242091 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41242091 - Aug 2024 (16 comments) Meshtastic: An open source, off-grid, decentralized, mesh network - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38829448 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38829448 - Jan 2024 (78 comments) Meshtastic is an encrypted communications platform for the Lora RF protocol - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32016142 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32016142 - July 2022 (88 comments) We're making an open-source $30 GPS/mesh radio, would like advice - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22540066 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22540066 - March 2020 (166 comments)
- scirob 11mo agoYea ppl know it but why not post again a very fun open project. Here is part of the Berlin mesh https://potatomesh.net/ https://potatomesh.net/
- thenthenthen 11mo agoWow Freifunk on the Teufelsberg, what a great twist of faith or whatshouldicallit :D
- cheschire 11mo agoAlternatively… https://reticulum.network/ https://reticulum.network/
- 0x62 11mo agoHuge fan of Reticulum, fixes some of my biggest gripes with Meshtastic. Shame it hasn't got as much adoption yet. For those looking for Meshtastic-equivalent things in the Reticulum ecosystem: - Sideband: iOS/Android chat app (https://github.com/markqvist/Sideband https://github.com/markqvist/Sideband) - NomadNet: Desktop CLI chat app (https://github.com/markqvist/NomadNet https://github.com/markqvist/NomadNet) - Rnode: Reference node hardware/firmware (https://unsigned.io/rnode/ https://unsigned.io/rnode/)
- maccam912 11mo agoWhat are those gripes? If I don't have anyone else who would use it, but would hang out in a public chat room, it didn't seem like reticulum was the right choice for that? You need destinations on things?
- bb88 11mo agoWe have a relatively dense meshtastic in my city, and yet I can't reliably send a message across to my friend, who would be 4 hops away. It's just not awesome. Especially compared to what you can do with ham radio.
- iberator 11mo agoYou must live in nyc or san Francisco lol
- NegativeLatency 11mo agoIt’s pretty dense in Portland and Seattle too, I’d image most of the bigger cities have a fairly large net
- 11mo ago
- angiolillo 11mo agoI have a few LoRa radios running Meshtastic and they're fun to play with, but I wouldn't rely on them in a critical situation. It's too easy to accidentally configure a node incorrectly and cause problems for nearby nodes. Perhaps someday the project will settle on a handful of sensible presets for different use cases. Even better would be if more of the options were managed dynamically by the software itself, things like adjusting timeouts and hops based on current network utilization and previous transmission success rate, or automatically tweaking the role based on the current mesh toplolgy, that sort of thing.
- tguvot 11mo agoregional meshes may have suggested configuration. for example bay area mesh https://bayme.sh/docs/getting-started/recommended-settings/ https://bayme.sh/docs/getting-started/recommended-settings/ i installed a node week ago. honestly, it is somewhat underwhelming
- burnt-resistor 11mo agoWe need better radio silicon that can survey a wide swath of available spectrum (based on country limits) and pick channel(s) appropriate to the use optimized for battery life, distance, and/or bandwidth with a simplified interface. There's no sense wasting spectrum or having malfunctioning radio gear when it can be standardized and used more efficiently without an artificial, protectionist, hoarding monopoly (excluding particular essential, prioritized uses). Proprietary mesh networks tend to become unusable garbage because they omit DoS, rate limits, and proper configuration for dense metropolitan uses, and tend to fail at investing in upkeep.
- linsomniac 11mo agoFor the last 2-3 years I've been "this close" to getting a few devices and setting up a repeater node on my home roof and my office roof, and one to play with... I love the idea of bringing an alternative to SMS to my area. But at the end of the day, is anyone actually using it for anything?
- NegativeLatency 11mo agoSome of the official city supported emergency preparedness groups use it in my city. I would say it is largely a curiosity for me, like ham radio. Been more fun to take it camping and stuff to play around with with friends. Want to try and send one up in an RC plane soon.
- raudette 11mo agoIn my experience, no, but still worth doing. You end up finding and chatting (often off-mesh!) with people who are within Lora-mesh-distance of you, who have similar interests.
- meshtasticsuxx 11mo ago[flagged]
- quapster 11mo ago[flagged]
- theshrike79 11mo agoAnd not even the ones who carry them, just a half dozen well-placed reliably powered router nodes can massively increase the range of the network in general. You can get plug&play ones from seeedstudio for $100-ish, solar panels and batteries included.
- bergie 11mo agoWe're using Meshtastic quite extensively for communication on our boat. Each crew member carries a mobile waterproof node (Seeed T1000e), the boat itself has a node, and we also have a Meshtastic tracker for the dinghy. We often sail in places where there's no communication infrastructure, or it is prohibitively expensive. With Meshtastic we can talk when somebody goes ashore, and the boat can send telemetry and alerts to the remote crew. Some of our buddy boats also have Meshtastic on board so we can text chat with them instead of using VHF. Here's a story describing this: https://blog.noforeignland.com/off-grid-boat-communications-with-meshtastic/ https://blog.noforeignland.com/off-grid-boat-communications-...
- Zenst 11mo agoThe only real problem I foresee with this use(fantastic use case btw) is if you travel across regions, does the kit currently get automatically switched to correct frequencies and power limits?
- bergie 11mo agoNo, you need to switch the region manually. Not a big deal to do for a couple of nodes. The trickier part is to figure out the correct preset for more exotic locations. I've had to ask a couple of times from the local Meshtastic community group.
- jonhohle 11mo agoThere’s no reason this can’t be done in software though via GPS, right?
- wtallis 11mo agoMany (if not most) Meshtastic devices don't have a GPS receiver of their own, and also may not be paired with a phone app to supply location. So at least some devices would need to sniff GPS coordinates from traffic on the wrong band in order to know it's time to switch to the new band appropriate for the new location. Some amount of automatic reconfiguration could probably be made to work, but there would be serious limitations on how many use cases it could handle.
- synergy20 11mo agoHow far can Meshtastic go, it seems using LoRA. How is it different from VHF/UHF based radio that can do 30+ miles using handheld where no cellular power exists(off-grid communication), or the 5-mile walkie-talkie. My assumption is that Meshtastic has the advantage of low-power that can sustain much longer time. Another forthcoming alternative will be satellite-based chat using phones.
- exitb 11mo agoMeshtastic is multi-hop, doesn’t require a license and is encrypted by default. It’s also a toy network, really. Reliability doesn’t seem to be high on the priority list.
- wtallis 11mo agoReliability carries serious costs in airtime usage and power consumption, and there's always going to be someone who demands that the network support an even higher level of reliability. "Toy network" is highly subjective and depends on your (unstated) assumption about what kind of use case you want Meshtastic to fulfill.
- bergie 11mo agoFor a single hop you can expect close to similar ranges as a VHF set. We saw 30NM distances on open sea when leaving Curaçao. Could be a lot more with antenna situated high up. Where the magic potentially kicks in is the mesh hops. With those you can reach much further by jumping from one node to another. It's not even close to satellite comms in reach or reliability, but it also requires no infrastructure, no licensing, and no subscriptions.
- kordlessagain 11mo agoSeems perfect for AI agents to use to communicate to other nearby agents. I have two of the LilyGo units and want to hook one up to the computer and then carry the other one with me.
- wtallis 11mo agoWhat do you even mean by "AI agent"? I've head that term used in a few different ways, but none of them are at all close to anything that would benefit from an off-grid ad-hoc dialup-speed communication channel between agents (as opposed to between an agent an a human or non-AI service).
- raffael_de 11mo agoIs there a mesh network solution with very low bandwidth by design? "by design" meaning that participants of the network aren't able to increase their bandwidth beyond a defined upper limit. I'm thinking of a bandwidth of about 10kbps. The low bandwidth would practically eliminate problems around spamming and cp. The idea is a network that is only useful for exchanging texts/messages and accessing simple text based websites.
- wtallis 11mo agoMeshtastic already fulfills that, except for the bit about accessing simple text-based websites, because Meshtastic isn't an IP network. The data rates only go up to 21.88 kbps for the fastest preset: https://meshtastic.org/docs/overview/radio-settings/#presets https://meshtastic.org/docs/overview/radio-settings/#presets
- raffael_de 11mo agothe idea is that there would be no point in visiting anything else than text based web-sites or use text-based services. or do you mean that it can't be hooked up to the internet due to its lack of IP protocol?
- Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe 11mo agoI think reticulum was made for this exact purpose. It can even work on bandwidths of like bits per minutes.
- HelloUsername 11mo agoWhat about Briar / Berty https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.briarproject.briar.android https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.briarproje... https://apps.apple.com/app/id1535500412 https://apps.apple.com/app/id1535500412
- soldeace 11mo agoMy wife and I tried to use Briar to communicate after we had been reallocated two seat rows apart in a flight. It didn't work at all. Messages arrived hours later, when they arrived.
- rtkwe 11mo agoMeshtastic uses 900 MHz in the US which has way longer range generally than both wifi and bluetooth at the cost of needing a dedicated radio.
- aeblyve 11mo agoMeshtastic is reasonably good for unplanned and mobile use cases such as hiking, but for building an emplaced network, Meshcore has much better performance. This has been our experience in the Greater Boston Mesh.