Cross-posted from “Gadgets for people who don’t trust the government” by @db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com in !anarchism@lemmy.dbzer0.com
this is the absolute coolest video I have watched in a while.
Anyone have any experience with that meshtastic idea? Issues and hype?
I have one device at home. Exactly what it writes on the tin. Don’t expect the internet, but it’s perfectly functional for messaging
Check out !meshtastic@mander.xyz. They can probably answer any and all questions you have.
Nodes in my area started to become saturated enough that I can message my node at home anywhere in the city. The dream is to have a mobile node and home node then I can send messages home without phone connection. Then I can also hook up a GPS on the mobile node so the home node can see where I’m at. Less dependent on Google location sharing.
It’s been growing a lot lately, it’s rf so range is all about height, the antenna, and your location. But depending on use case, meshcore or Reticulum/Rnode could fit better. I like Reticulum because it uses the LoRa as just another connection and nomadnet is like old web pages done in markup.
Check out Meshcore as well, it solves a few issues people were having with Meshtastic.
We’ve had a pretty active mesh where I’m from but I see this very similarly to ham radios. They are great for specific scenarios but not terribly useful in everyday life. I still have my meshtastic node powered on but I rarely connect my phone to it to check things. When I do, there aren’t that many nodes that are active.
Overally, I’d say it’s great if you can afford cheap hardware and/or want to build but you aren’t going to get much daily use out of it.
Yeah I’ve had more luck with meshcore for daily use. But it has the issue of no one is using it. And a couple of not so open source parts in the official client.
Our meshtastic network was pretty robust at one point. It hurts that I’m not at a good point geographically, as well. I have a massive ridge between me and most of the network. That also made technician-level ham pretty pointless from home. At one point, about 3/4 of our messages on our mesh was just people in aircraft overhead. I know we are flyover but it was very demoralizing.
Some of the people I’ve hung out with on Resonite have messed around with Meshtastic. Probably because there’s also an amateur radio group that occasionally meets up on there.
I got into it pretty deep before realizing that it’s terrible and doesn’t work for shit.
@runsmooth @db0 yep, we have a local community of Meshtastic users. It’s nice, but not quite reliable. We use it mostly for weather alerts and emergency preparedness
I built several nodes. I think it’s most useful as an asset tracking tool, but the battery life isn’t great. Like, I have a couple premade credit card sized nodes. It’s pretty neat to ping them and get their gps. But, to be honest, your money for that application would probably be better spent on an iPhone and apples tags.
For communication: there are dubiously legal, cheap radios you can get off Amazon that would probably be 100% more useful.
I did enjoy it, though, and I still have some nodes. Also, it’s illegal to send encrypted messages over mestastic.
Edit some mestastic nodes double as a low power gps with a screen. These may be useful on their own.
Also, it’s illegal to send encrypted messages over mestastic.
In the US at least, this is almost never true. It is only true for devices set up as licensed HAM radios. Normal Meshtastic devices fall under the transmit power threshold to be subject to 47 CFR 97.313(j)
Correct, you can turn up the output of your meshtastic node above 1W IF you are a licensed HAM operator and do not encrypt. But at 1W you can encrypt.
