4 ms·

I had never heard of this before, then last week I watched a video about it and was hooked. Now I'm seeing it everywhere! Meshtastic and Meshcore are both cool

by Cyan488 5mo ago

I had never heard of this before, then last week I watched a video about it and was hooked. Now I'm seeing it everywhere! Meshtastic and Meshcore are both cool LoRa-based mesh text messaging that operate in an no-license-required band. While this limits your transmit power, it doesn't prohibit encryption - the inverse of most ham radio rules! Some cities have thriving communities of Meshtastic and/or Meshcore. You can look at maps of coverage to get a very general idea - in my experience, most Meshtastic nodes are NOT listed, while a good number of Meshcore nodes are. Meshtastic treats the mesh as dynamic - clients are assumed to always be moving, so transmissions flood between different nodes that are in eachother's reach. Meshcore has a static layer - repeaters that are assumed to be in fixed positions - and a dynamic layer - companions that move. With fixed and hopefully reliable connections between repeaters, routing paths between two users can be 'cached', which avoid the bandwidth overhead of flood routing. You can get started with a low cost ($30) transceiver board and an SMA antenna ($10) for the ISM band of your region. Stick it in a box an mount it somewhere high up, and see if you can pick up any other nodes!

RobotToaster 5mo ago
The meshcore app is closed source
- jeromegv 5mo ago
  The firmware is open source. There are many apps, some are open source, some are freeware.
- squarefoot 5mo ago
  Does it apply to the meshcore.io app as well? From what I know (not a meshcore user currently) there has been a kerfuffle recently when a developer decided to fork and vibe code the project using Claude, then silently trademark the name and move everything to his own website. The original and legit site should be meshcore.io while the .co.uk site was created by that developer and isn't considered official nor reliable by the community.
- wielebny 5mo ago
  Only the app store app which does not matter for usage. There are tons of other clients. Core firmware is Open Source.
varispeed 5mo ago
So you have the mesh and then what? Do people communicate to distribute prohibited anti-government propaganda or is it a network of people who otherwise be too shy to talk to each other by other means? What is the use case?
- fiskeben 5mo ago
  It runs independently of internet and power. One use case is a group of people in a remote area (hikers, hunters) carrying their own node and being able to communicate via text over several kilometres.
  - wang_li 5mo ago
    v. a satellite enabled phone that can send text messages over thousands of kilometers? These people should not be making a short range text solution, they should be building a low bandwidth internet extension with gateways to the real internet. Most of the information content of the internet can readily fit over 56kb lines once you strip out all the fluff. And in an emergency where you need or want a decentralized mesh network, that's more important that being able to text, who exactly?
  - para_parolu 5mo ago
    Or you just use iPhone satellite messaging without relying on extra devices that may not even work in mountains
    - mplewis 5mo ago
      This won't reliably get messages between two users in the mountains.
      - LastTrain 5mo ago
        Neither will Meshtastic!
    - davidkwast 5mo ago
celsoazevedo 5mo ago
> in my experience, most Meshtastic nodes are NOT listed, while a good number of Meshcore nodes are. I don't know about online tools, but it should be the opposite when actually using it, as by default Meshtastic is much more chatty (and wasteful) than Meshcore.
- windexh8er 5mo ago
  Meshtastic is horrible in a metro area. The area I live in has a huge user group and it's almost impossible to get a message across more than 3 nodes reliably. Meshcore, on the other hand, is far less popular but still has a nice amount of repeaters and it's, conversely, very good. I've since moved all of my devices to Meshcore. I'm on the edge of a metro (about 30 miles out) and have a repeater at one of the highest points in my geo and can seamlessly message users on the other side of the metro (~60 miles).
  - celsoazevedo 5mo ago
    I tried Meshtastic here in London (UK), but was struggling with anything more than 1 hop away. There's no coordination, everyone's using the long fast preset, etc. Then found out about Meshcore, flashed the firmware, selected the UK narrow preset, and it's a day and night difference. Still wouldn't rely on this for anything serious because it's not reliable at all, but it's nice to be able to send a message across the city or to the other side of the country.
    - neltnerb 5mo ago
      Similarly, I put a repeater in an upper story of an apartment building in Boston and am reliably able to talk to people over 10+ hops. Right this second I'm able to talk to someone 99.5 miles away in Vermont. We had to create different channels for different regions (connecticut, new hampshire, massachusetts, rhode island) just to keep from having hundreds of messages in a single public channel when posts are generally about local things. Unfortunately it doesn't fix congestion issues completely, repeaters still repeat everything (and can't listen while transmitting) so packets from connecticut still put traffic onto the entire mesh all the way to new hampshire, but at least it's better organized. It seems like there are some ideas to help with congestion, maybe making channels region specific (repeaters can be programmed to only repeat traffic with a certain region code) but for now it's shocking to me how far I can reach with a 0.125W radio. But yeah, it's not "reliable", that's what TCP/IP is for =) Definitely a toy network for now, and a single malicious bot on the frequency band would absolutely wreck it. Or a single high power jammer sending out noise at just the wrong frequency. Definitely a fun project for people who would do ham radio if they had any interest in taking a test... I wouldn't use it for emergencies though, it's theoretically a backup if the cell network and internet go down but the reliability just isn't there and I suspect never will be.
trunkiedozer 5mo ago
Give yourself lots of time and lots of time, oh and more time. And then more. The code is buggy and the concept as well as the code is unreliable. It’s not even as good as udp

by Cyan488 5mo ago

RobotToaster 5mo ago

The meshcore app is closed source

jeromegv 5mo ago
The firmware is open source. There are many apps, some are open source, some are freeware.
squarefoot 5mo ago
Does it apply to the meshcore.io app as well? From what I know (not a meshcore user currently) there has been a kerfuffle recently when a developer decided to fork and vibe code the project using Claude, then silently trademark the name and move everything to his own website. The original and legit site should be meshcore.io while the .co.uk site was created by that developer and isn't considered official nor reliable by the community.
wielebny 5mo ago
Only the app store app which does not matter for usage. There are tons of other clients. Core firmware is Open Source.

varispeed 5mo ago

So you have the mesh and then what? Do people communicate to distribute prohibited anti-government propaganda or is it a network of people who otherwise be too shy to talk to each other by other means? What is the use case?

fiskeben 5mo ago
It runs independently of internet and power. One use case is a group of people in a remote area (hikers, hunters) carrying their own node and being able to communicate via text over several kilometres.
- wang_li 5mo ago
  v. a satellite enabled phone that can send text messages over thousands of kilometers? These people should not be making a short range text solution, they should be building a low bandwidth internet extension with gateways to the real internet. Most of the information content of the internet can readily fit over 56kb lines once you strip out all the fluff. And in an emergency where you need or want a decentralized mesh network, that's more important that being able to text, who exactly?
- para_parolu 5mo ago
  Or you just use iPhone satellite messaging without relying on extra devices that may not even work in mountains
  - mplewis 5mo ago
    This won't reliably get messages between two users in the mountains.
    - LastTrain 5mo ago
      Neither will Meshtastic!
  - davidkwast 5mo ago

celsoazevedo 5mo ago

> in my experience, most Meshtastic nodes are NOT listed, while a good number of Meshcore nodes are. I don't know about online tools, but it should be the opposite when actually using it, as by default Meshtastic is much more chatty (and wasteful) than Meshcore.

windexh8er 5mo ago
Meshtastic is horrible in a metro area. The area I live in has a huge user group and it's almost impossible to get a message across more than 3 nodes reliably. Meshcore, on the other hand, is far less popular but still has a nice amount of repeaters and it's, conversely, very good. I've since moved all of my devices to Meshcore. I'm on the edge of a metro (about 30 miles out) and have a repeater at one of the highest points in my geo and can seamlessly message users on the other side of the metro (~60 miles).
- celsoazevedo 5mo ago
  I tried Meshtastic here in London (UK), but was struggling with anything more than 1 hop away. There's no coordination, everyone's using the long fast preset, etc. Then found out about Meshcore, flashed the firmware, selected the UK narrow preset, and it's a day and night difference. Still wouldn't rely on this for anything serious because it's not reliable at all, but it's nice to be able to send a message across the city or to the other side of the country.
  - neltnerb 5mo ago
    Similarly, I put a repeater in an upper story of an apartment building in Boston and am reliably able to talk to people over 10+ hops. Right this second I'm able to talk to someone 99.5 miles away in Vermont. We had to create different channels for different regions (connecticut, new hampshire, massachusetts, rhode island) just to keep from having hundreds of messages in a single public channel when posts are generally about local things. Unfortunately it doesn't fix congestion issues completely, repeaters still repeat everything (and can't listen while transmitting) so packets from connecticut still put traffic onto the entire mesh all the way to new hampshire, but at least it's better organized. It seems like there are some ideas to help with congestion, maybe making channels region specific (repeaters can be programmed to only repeat traffic with a certain region code) but for now it's shocking to me how far I can reach with a 0.125W radio. But yeah, it's not "reliable", that's what TCP/IP is for =) Definitely a toy network for now, and a single malicious bot on the frequency band would absolutely wreck it. Or a single high power jammer sending out noise at just the wrong frequency. Definitely a fun project for people who would do ham radio if they had any interest in taking a test... I wouldn't use it for emergencies though, it's theoretically a backup if the cell network and internet go down but the reliability just isn't there and I suspect never will be.

trunkiedozer 5mo ago

Give yourself lots of time and lots of time, oh and more time. And then more. The code is buggy and the concept as well as the code is unreliable. It’s not even as good as udp