Discover the best Meshtastic devices tailored to your needs! From solar-powered options like the RAK WisBlock to budget-friendly choices like the Heltec LoRa 32 V3, this guide covers various use cases. Whether you prioritize portability, ease of use, or advanced features.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.radio/post/4523050

Discover the best Meshtastic devices tailored to your needs! From solar-powered options like the RAK WisBlock to budget-friendly choices like the Heltec LoRa 32 V3, this guide covers various use cases. Whether you prioritize portability, ease of use, or advanced features.

  • @termainEnglish
    19•1 day ago

    Meshtastic® is a project that enables you to use inexpensive LoRa radios as a long range off-grid communication platform in areas without existing or reliable communications infrastructure. This project is 100% community driven and open source!

      • @[email protected]English
        12•1 day ago

        It is text-based only. And since it’s such a small amount of data, it can be transmitted a much longer distance.

        There’s also the Mesh part where if two nodes (radios) are too far apart, and another node is in between, it can act as an intermediary/relay to increase distance. You can use ~4 nodes (3 hops) in this way.

        Communications are also encrypted.

        • XNXEnglish
          2•1 day ago

          Is 4 nodes the maximum able to connect?

          • @[email protected]English
            3•1 day ago

            Not sure what you mean by “connect”. You can connect hundreds of them in a mesh network (although the network will eventually become saturated if you don’t adjust), but message delivery is typically electronically limited to 3 “hops” for any particular message.

          • @[email protected]English
            5•1 day ago

            Hehe no. It is text/emoji only. Best used in places where cell networks don’t exist, go down, or become saturated, or some combination.

            • @[email protected]English
              1•1 day ago

              Oh. Not even 20 years in the future? Never would have expected the fediverse or iPhones that can talk to satellites.

              • @[email protected]English
                2•1 day ago

                It could certainly easily be added as another backup communication method built into phones, yes. But among many other reasons, Apple doesn’t touch anything “open”, so if anything they would implement their own LoRa protocol.

                But it will never replace photos/videos/files or other functionality that iMessage supports, it’s a limitation of the technology.

      • @[email protected]English
        9•1 day ago

        By supporting networking (and also using a mesh to increase range).

        As I understand “walkie talkie” radios, the spectrum they use (GMRS/FRS/CB/MURS, etc) isn’t permitted to transmit data in a way that’s useful for proper data networking (there’s some allowance for data but not really anything like what most people think of as networking, and encryption is right out of the question).

        For the most part, these radio specs can only increase range by use of repeaters. IIRC meshtastic takes a mesh approach to increasing range and reliability.