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.
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BTW, Meshcore is MIT and not fully FOSS, while Meshtastic is GPL and fully FOSS.
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.
Agreed. Oddly enough, my Meshtastic contacts are much farther away than my farthest MeshCore contacts but MeshCore seems to be much livelier.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
