It does actually, You can see the parts list at the top of the blog.

https://adrelien.com/what-is-meshtastic-full-guide-on-how-to-get-started/

No idea what eli5 means

Maybe I misunderstood you, but how can you use existing ones without carrying a node?

My apologies I put the link but it is not showing for some reason

I mean you kinda of looking at from the wrong way, In the company I work for, it was a time saver. A department of engineers in embedded systems can upload some measurements then another department can quicky run some questions to write the findings for a customer. They both don’t know anything about SQL and ti is even faster than the tool we built for them. Since they have to filter through 1TB of data. Yes it needs a lot of optimization to get it perfect.

https://adrelien.com/what-is-meshtastic-full-guide-on-how-to-get-started/ Here, I also gave some usecases

Will do that, I will wait a couple of days before posting again. I am sorry if I offended anyone again.

from the part list, you only need Lora and esp. that can get you up and running as for assembly it takes only 10 mins max. But again there is a market for ready products and market for DIY. I had some esp32 with Lora from other projects and used it, you might not have it. But the heltec is also a good cheap starting point. As for the ID well, actually most of the time your government asks for ID number to tax you if needed. But you are free to order from Amazon as well. You can find amazon links on the website if you wish, I won’t be sharing them here not to make anyone angry

Well sorry :) If I could find another blog other than mine I would love to share it. It is new tech I am trying to let people know about it and hopefully we have enough interests that big bloggers write about it.