There’s a live stream tomorrow on the 'tube setting up a MeshCore companion for sending messages over radio waves directly instead of relying on internet providers.
It’s a lot of fun, but not an internet replacement yet. They did just come out with a new dial band that has enough bandwidth to do something useful. Can’t wait to give it a try.
Still very worth setting up. I have a node that runs in my attic, and a few that I can take around with me. I can get good single most anywhere in my neighborhood, and I have enough nodes nearby that I can pretty much communicate with people all over the metro area (I’m in the twin cities).
not really Internet, just a group chat.
that said, making a basic internet on up of it wouldn’t be too hard.
I was looking for a solution that lets someone use Yggdrasil (crypto routed network overlay) over LoRa. The basic idea is to use Yggdrasil multicast and use Reticulum RNodes I with tncattach.
I fear that there’ll be too much overhead (the MTU is only around 500 bytes, and IPv6 minimum MTU is 1280) because of IPv4 fragmentation
Links:
I’ve been looking into this as well and just bought my first components.
I’m trying Meshtastic first and then will try Meshcore.
What does everybody think of Reticulum Network and RNode? It honestly seems superior conceptually to Meshtastic/Meshcore, but I’m not sure how good it is in practice or if anybody is actually using it.
People who studied the code speak really fondly about reticulum, however, it’s not as popular for building the lora based mesh networks, because the full stack does not run on the simple microcontroller. You need what is basically a standard PC connected to it. Given that mesh repeaters are usually designed to run off-grid on solar and battery, wasting additional power for a raspberry pi or similar computer would make the project unfeasible.
All while Meshtastic or Meshcore are perfectly happy with the esp32 or nrf microcontrollers. And the nrf ones can run without a direct sunshine for days with the reasonably large battery.
They’re working on fixing that ;) https://github.com/attermann/microReticulum
BTW, Meshcore is MIT and not fully FOSS, while Meshtastic is GPL and fully FOSS.
A license doesn’t have to be copyleft to be FOSS. Stop trying to redefine things because you don’t like them.
That’s not what I did. Not all of Meshcore is FOSS. There are proprietary components. Therefore it’s not fully FOSS.
Oh sorry, I thought “Meshcore is MIT” meant it was all MIT.
All good!
I still value GPL much higher than MIT, which is why I thought important for others to know, in case they have a preference too. But yeah, Meshcore is just not all open source and some people could also have a preference on that. 😄
And both use LoRa which is proprietary.
Fact, but since that’s common and cheap, and I’m not aware of an equivalent FOSS alternative, I’d go with Meshtastic, if were to dabble. And I dabble. :D
I believe the only part of Meshcore that’s not FOSS is the official app, and there’s a FOSS alternative.
Personally, I’d use Meshcore. I tried MT for a month or so. I never saw a conversation, just a few scattered “test” messages. Meanwhile, on MC, I was away from my phone for 4 hours yesterday and came back to 250+ coherent messages in a conversation from all over the region (not to mention the hundreds of test messages).
MT is better in ad-hoc situations since clients can repeat messages, but MC is better for establishing a region-wide communication network.
That’s interesting. I had the same experience with Meshtastic - I ran it for a few months and almost all I saw were test messages and comments about the weather. That encourages me to dig out my radio bits and try MC 😆
Do it!
Here’s what it looks like around me: https://analyzer.letsmesh.net/channels?region=pnw
I’d check the map to see if there are repeaters around your area.
Agreed. Oddly enough, my Meshtastic contacts are much farther away than my farthest MeshCore contacts but MeshCore seems to be much livelier.
Just FYI at the speed meshtastic/core is talking about, it would be very slow. Like dialup would look fast.
But its a fun hobby! Take a look over at !meshtastic@mander.xyz for anyone interested. Meshtastic (and meshcore) are also SUUUPER alpha so dont expect anything polished.
correct, the real mesh internet replacement is HaLow, that can get a whopping 4Mbps or something.
Totally agree. I saw some people doing just plain text messaging and it looked fairly snappy. I assume we’re miles away from the idea of pushing pixels on LoRa for a while.
If there’s a, say, incident that makes the government want to shut down internet services, those text messages could cone in handy. And im sure the speed will increase as development continues; it always does.
Starting now means you’ll end up being an important node later.
speed will increase as development continues
LoRa is already surfing on the bleeding edge of physics. There is no way to get anything more out of it, other than allocating wider EM spectrum for this usecase.
There are some radio amateurs in my area trying Meshcore on 169Mhz for example. There are also some new boards available that can do LoRa on 2.4Ghz, but both approaches have some downsides as well.
For a more stable and reliable network, we would also need radios capable of communicating on multiple channels simultaneously (remember, the whole thing started off as a reaction to really cheap, almost disposable dev boards), but now we’re approaching the complexity and requirements of the traditional mobile networks.
If there is an actual emergency, I would say these are a nifty introduction to ham radio.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZxR-qtGH7c
Its amazing how far you can go with a somewhat simple setup. You can go really cheap with a Baofeng.
One big downside to ham radio (as someone with my license) is that you can’t use encryption. Which is fine for some use cases, but does limit the usefulness in the “government shut down the internet” kind of scenario.
Which, I suppose if you’re already using back-channels to circumvent some broader government censorship, maybe abiding by FCC rules isn’t a priority anymore, but IMO this is an area where large mesh networks of “consumer” devices with encryption very much still has value.
Yep i agree. Although it sounds like its trivial to break lora/tastic encryption from what was discussed online. Ill be honest i never went down that rabbit hole.
MeshCore runs at 2.73 kbps and it can send a short text message in a fraction of a second. The short turbo preset on Meshtastic is 21.88 kbps, but that’s still too slow for images. The higher speed reduces the range by quite a bit too.
For images, you would be better off using WiFi HaLow, which runs several mbps on 900 MHz.
If you have a ham license, there is HamWAN and ARDEN as well. They are fast enough to stream live video. They can work over long distances, but the high gain antennas have to be aimed carefully.
meshcore is licensed the way you do it if you plan to go freemium down the road. its fine to use if your area has already gone that way. but meshtastic fits better in a foss standard and does the same thing.
either way you go its best to see these as fancy pagers not diy instant messagers. they have some great potential in a world where govs or nature can knock down cell service, if you’re purposeful and realistic about it. but they are not as easy to build as youtube would tell you. and they’re not gonna replace your phone full time.
Mesh is cool, but you get faster speeds on amateur HF or 900 bands and a further distance
Fair, however the meshcore gateway drug starter kit is like 40eur 😅.
Mesh also allows you to use encryption.
Sure, but you don’t need a license for mesh.
i really want to see HALOW become cheap and highly availeble
Honestly I think it would be cool to see a widespread up network based around Bluetooth and WiFi. They don’t have the same range but the upside is that tons of devices support them.
