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.
Hi what is Meshtastic
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!
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.
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.
As someone that’s used a pile of Heltec Lora V3: they’re fragile pieces of overpriced shit. I’ve kept buying them as they’ve kept failing and I think I’ve purchased about a dozen in order to keep 2 devices alive, and the latest two are only a few weeks old. I’ve had a brand new one just stop working as I’ve programmed it for the first time, and I handle these things with an ESD strap on because I think they’re just really poorly protected.
I’m porting my project (a solar pump with radio linked trough float) to eByte e32s and a standard ESP32 because I’m tired of having these things crater if I look at them sideways.
Been wanting to play with a meshtastic radio and the TC2-BBS stuff, but the official site was uh, not the most clear as to what the hell I actually wanted/needed.
This certainly clarifies that, at least, so thanks!
Never even heard of these before today. This seems so interesting and would be really nice if you live in a really rural area.
