Nice article on Meshtastic. The problem is that, like anything, the actual distance is a lot more dependent on line of sight and the actual mesh existing. Which means we’d need a LOT more people to adopt these and put up repeaters for them to be useful. Which is doable, but not cheap.
Have a look at meshmap.net. That shows people who have voluntarily put themselves on a map.
Although it can be a serious underestimation, for example in my area, I’m the only one who lists myself on the map, but there are about 10 other nodes that don’t
Edit: Also, the number of nodes on MeshMap has pretty much doubled in six months since I started playing with it.
That’s pretty much exactly what they are. Text message in walkie-talkies. With the added benefit that if your friend can’t hear you, but another friend is in between, your message automatically gets relayed through their walkie-talkie.
Yeah, I’ve seen some clever stuff where they take a solar powered light and wire in a Heltec V3 for $30-$40. But I thought one of the new upcoming standards (WiFi? Cell?) incorporated a mesh capability.
Sucks you can’t charge it and have to instead go to a central bank to exchange minted coins for notes that you can exchange for the commodity that is the radio.
I worked for Vint Cerf back in the early 90’s. I became aware of the politics around it when Al Gore pushed for funding so the Internet could grow into something bigger than a University/Military communication system. Rush Limbaugh was on the radio daily railing against Al Gore’s Boondoggle. Clinton/Gore secured funding and the Internet exploded in use.
During the 1999 Presidential election, Republicans took Al Gore’s greatest political accomplishment, getting Congress to fund the creation of the Internet, and made it a joke.
Eisenhower had probably the worst foreign policy record because of the Dulles bros. Almost all the CIA government coups that happened occurred during Eisenhower and ended up in disasters decades later.
At that point, given the extremely small bandwidth, we might as well just use a massive wifi, everyone already has the required hardware for that instead of producing more trash for a pretty much non-existing use case.
Ever since I switched to lemmy, I constantly stumble upon people trying to guilt other people for their hobbies. That’s pretty unhealthy.
Whoever reads this, don’t feel guilty living your life. Spend time on whatever you’re passionate about. Build new things, even if they do not have a rational use case at the moment. They might play an important role in your future.
WiFi goes down and people sometimes NEED to communicate instead of streaming Netflix.
This is just an alternate channel, if Eheran doesn’t have the imagination to understand how low bandwidth can still be extremely valuable, as compared to, say, screaming at the top of your lungs to attempt to be heard 5 miles away, then… I’m not really interested in what they think.
Or more to the point, the ISP fails. A Wi-Fi router isn’t that much more difficult to power than a meshtastic node, but my old ISP, I don’t think they even bothered to install UPSes, if the power was out, so was the internet. I could keep my Wi-Fi up indefinitely, but it’s basically useless outside my house.
Funny thing about Wi-Fi, it overlaps with an Amateur radio band (the 2.4GHz spec does) and so hams are allowed to run Wi-Fi with no encryption but a tremendous amount of power and high gain antennas on like the highest channels.
A portion of the 5GHz WiFI band overlaps with the 5.8GHz ham band too. There are also a few WiFi radios that will also work above the US WiFi band where they can operate without interference from other license free devices. Those are used in the HamWAN network.
I wonder how much you could Jerry rig up Wimax for these days. That’s like 30 miles of range. I remember thinking if I was only going within a 15 mile area of my place it would have been cool, but prices 10 years ago immediately made it a no.
Edit: like it sounds dumb, but what prevents someone from picking up a used Wimax base station, putting it as an uplink from their router, then using a Wimax card to receive it? Could even maybe just rig up a small rechargable wifi box, that received the Wimax signal, then rebroadcasts it back out as wifi using your home network name/password. So anywhere near your home the antenna would just pick it up and rebroadcast, maybe just hook it to your cigarette lighter to charge so anytime your in the car it’s on. I assume most people would find it easier/cheaper to just buy a cellular card… haha. But hypothetically, I am curious what would make it not work
In trying times you’re missing the big picture. If they were more commonplace, you’d have a decentralised communication network that can’t be shut down by the government.
But the point of LoRa is in the name, long range. Wifi barely reaches outside my house. Also a WiFi mesh is dependent on a variety of complicated and proprietary networks and systems while meshtastic is entirely independent.
You can have one or the other. If you choose high bandwidth, you’re going to get very short distance because you can’t do serious error correction, etc. If you choose long range, you’re going to get low bandwidth because you need to include error correction, etc. In the transmissions.
Nice article on Meshtastic. The problem is that, like anything, the actual distance is a lot more dependent on line of sight and the actual mesh existing. Which means we’d need a LOT more people to adopt these and put up repeaters for them to be useful. Which is doable, but not cheap.
Have a look at meshmap.net. That shows people who have voluntarily put themselves on a map.
Although it can be a serious underestimation, for example in my area, I’m the only one who lists myself on the map, but there are about 10 other nodes that don’t
Edit: Also, the number of nodes on MeshMap has pretty much doubled in six months since I started playing with it.
I always thought these were more like walkie talkies for messaging than telephones that you can call anyone.
Like it would be good if cell serivce goes down.
That’s pretty much exactly what they are. Text message in walkie-talkies. With the added benefit that if your friend can’t hear you, but another friend is in between, your message automatically gets relayed through their walkie-talkie.
If I wanted to transmit, for example, temperature and humidity from a sensor once every 5 minutes, would the network be willing to carry my signals?
https://meshtastic.org/docs/configuration/radio/device/
SENSOR is one of the defined device roles. And whether for personal automation or public information, it is a reasonable use case for the network.
Can you message random people or have to already know their contact info?
It is channel-based, using Pre-Shared Keys (PSK).
There is a public line where you can message pretty much everyone with the blank PSK.
Oh, now that sounds fun
Companies are starting to manufacture repeaters and they are not that expensive. You can get one for about 100 Federal Reserve Notes.
Yeah, I’ve seen some clever stuff where they take a solar powered light and wire in a Heltec V3 for $30-$40. But I thought one of the new upcoming standards (WiFi? Cell?) incorporated a mesh capability.
Not that im aware of. SeeedStudio has released a new solar node to be a repeater though
Sucks you can’t charge it and have to instead go to a central bank to exchange minted coins for notes that you can exchange for the commodity that is the radio.
“Money can be exchanged for goods and services” - Homer Simpson
Why not just add networking capabilities or a SIM card?
You can’t expect me not to reinvent the wheel.
As we post on Lemmy, which is a reinvention of a reinvention of a reinvention of Usenet from 1979.
I thought Al Gore invented the internet in the ‘90’s.
Ok, rant time!!!
I worked for Vint Cerf back in the early 90’s. I became aware of the politics around it when Al Gore pushed for funding so the Internet could grow into something bigger than a University/Military communication system. Rush Limbaugh was on the radio daily railing against Al Gore’s Boondoggle. Clinton/Gore secured funding and the Internet exploded in use.
During the 1999 Presidential election, Republicans took Al Gore’s greatest political accomplishment, getting Congress to fund the creation of the Internet, and made it a joke.
Vint Cerf wrote this letter as a result:
https://web.eecs.umich.edu/~fessler/misc/funny/gore,net.txt
So he did invent it?
Eisenhower gets credit for building the Interstate Highway system despite not pouring any concrete.
Eisenhower also didn’t drone strike anyone.
Eisenhower had probably the worst foreign policy record because of the Dulles bros. Almost all the CIA government coups that happened occurred during Eisenhower and ended up in disasters decades later.
General Eisenhower definitely bombed some people.
At the very least fathered the internet we know today.
Well, back then it was a bunch of tubes.
At that point, given the extremely small bandwidth, we might as well just use a massive wifi, everyone already has the required hardware for that instead of producing more trash for a pretty much non-existing use case.
…for you.
I can see a use-case where a low-powered off-grid communication device can be useful.
Ever since I switched to lemmy, I constantly stumble upon people trying to guilt other people for their hobbies. That’s pretty unhealthy.
Whoever reads this, don’t feel guilty living your life. Spend time on whatever you’re passionate about. Build new things, even if they do not have a rational use case at the moment. They might play an important role in your future.
WiFi goes down and people sometimes NEED to communicate instead of streaming Netflix.
This is just an alternate channel, if Eheran doesn’t have the imagination to understand how low bandwidth can still be extremely valuable, as compared to, say, screaming at the top of your lungs to attempt to be heard 5 miles away, then… I’m not really interested in what they think.
“WiFi goes down”
Or more to the point, the ISP fails. A Wi-Fi router isn’t that much more difficult to power than a meshtastic node, but my old ISP, I don’t think they even bothered to install UPSes, if the power was out, so was the internet. I could keep my Wi-Fi up indefinitely, but it’s basically useless outside my house.
They’re a godsend for camping, and would be legendary in a disaster event.
Low power requirements, battery + solar power source… this isn’t science fiction anymore.
People are just discussing the pros and cons of technology in the Technology comm. Chill out.
This has much greater range compared to wifi
Funny thing about Wi-Fi, it overlaps with an Amateur radio band (the 2.4GHz spec does) and so hams are allowed to run Wi-Fi with no encryption but a tremendous amount of power and high gain antennas on like the highest channels.
A portion of the 5GHz WiFI band overlaps with the 5.8GHz ham band too. There are also a few WiFi radios that will also work above the US WiFi band where they can operate without interference from other license free devices. Those are used in the HamWAN network.
I wonder how much you could Jerry rig up Wimax for these days. That’s like 30 miles of range. I remember thinking if I was only going within a 15 mile area of my place it would have been cool, but prices 10 years ago immediately made it a no.
Edit: like it sounds dumb, but what prevents someone from picking up a used Wimax base station, putting it as an uplink from their router, then using a Wimax card to receive it? Could even maybe just rig up a small rechargable wifi box, that received the Wimax signal, then rebroadcasts it back out as wifi using your home network name/password. So anywhere near your home the antenna would just pick it up and rebroadcast, maybe just hook it to your cigarette lighter to charge so anytime your in the car it’s on. I assume most people would find it easier/cheaper to just buy a cellular card… haha. But hypothetically, I am curious what would make it not work
You can transmit over whatever, but there’s trade-offs with everything. LoRa is kinda neat because it’s low power.
And you don’t need to be a ham to run it.
Might be smarter… wonder if
In trying times you’re missing the big picture. If they were more commonplace, you’d have a decentralised communication network that can’t be shut down by the government.
Some people already are
https://map.nycmesh.net/
But the point of LoRa is in the name, long range. Wifi barely reaches outside my house. Also a WiFi mesh is dependent on a variety of complicated and proprietary networks and systems while meshtastic is entirely independent.
Isn’t LoRa proprietary? Like, Meshtastic is open source, but something about the radio itself is proprietary tech?
No.
You can have one or the other. If you choose high bandwidth, you’re going to get very short distance because you can’t do serious error correction, etc. If you choose long range, you’re going to get low bandwidth because you need to include error correction, etc. In the transmissions.