Over the years I've had students doing "people net" style meshing,
BATMAN, opportunistic routing, stuff for warzones or emergency coms
for disaster areas.
We learned a great place to test this is festivals.
Lots of endpoint mobility. New nodes coming in and out of the
network. Terrible 4/4G cell coverage, so few alternatives. Dead
batteries. Shadow zones. Fairly chilled out delivery time constraints.
Everything you need to tweak your protocols.
I hope someone into playing with this will set up a larger scale
experiment at Glastonbury, Burning Man or another big music festival.
We have tested it successfully with 4 nodes last week at the Fusion Festival in Germany - one of those where you have to battle constant cellular network outages - and were surprised to randomly see fellow meshtastic users extending the mesh network. It was one of those "open source technology is amazing" moments :D.
I bet! I can imagine festivals being a good disaster simulation.
Meshtastic appears to use a simple flooding algorithm which is appropriate to what I understand to be the application - a small group of outdoorspeople keeping tabs on each other with short messages. One of my takeaways from a similar project I worked on in a past life was that flooding works well for use cases like that and just about anything more sophisticated is a pretty serious research project. BATMAN etc looks like fun to experiment with.
I have this same need and am preparing an evaluation of Meshtastic in the field this month.
I'm part of a volunteer EMS division within a paid fire department and we staff foot teams and medical carts at large events at our 90,888-capacity stadium (football, concerts, etc; well over 100k including tailgaters at our biggest game of the year) and music festivals with 10-40k attendees on the adjacent golf course.
While we have fancy Motorola APX 8000XE, our on-site dispatch wholly lacks visibility into unit locations and the abysmal cell service precludes software solutions leveraging mobile phones.
Burning Man is one of the the primary usecases of one of the core devs, so yeah, it should definitely get some good exercise in that kind of context. Another acquaintance is a PAX admin and looking into it for similar reasons.
I'd love to see a protocol designed for that sort of thing that hops from phone to phone without explicit intervention from the user.
No setting up a wifi hotspot and having people connect to you. No need to be connected to wifi at all. No fucking with Bluetooth.
I'm not even sure if there's a way to do it but that's what I really want. Carrying a separate LoRa device is just one more thing I'll forget to pack or charge.
Over my decades of visiting Glastonbury I can report that cellphone coverage has gone from “it works for some calls but no data” to “perfect 3G data everywhere on site”. The cell phone infrastructure companies ship in lots of portable masts.
What about LoRa and Xray Satellite Comm? Couldnt you set up like noded repeaters as well for a ground back up / stronger signal along side as well? I have a bunch different arduino coding to do it, but finding a group of people to actually try to implement it wider scale deems to be harder than one would think. lmfao
they test this stuff regularly at festival and sporting events. i met a guy walking around outside lands with a suitcase full of phones. he was working for verizon to ensure the mobile base stations were appropriately powered
Around October 2020, there was a group of people putting up battery powered LoRa repeater nodes in the hills around Los Angeles. I had a few LilyGo TTGO units, one with DisasterRadio and one with Meshtastic installed.
I could get occasional packets through to one of the nodes that was about 6 miles away (line-of-sight).
My conclusion was that for a city, a much higher transceiver density would be needed if you wanted viable communications. It's not outside the realm of possibility. The units themselves are less than $20/each in bulk, and could be powered with a $5 solar panel/battery rig. Placement of the units would be key.
I saw some Hong Kong activists online post designs for "throwable" battery-powered units. The idea there was to toss out dozens of them during events where non-internet mesh communications would be needed. Seems like an interesting use case, although jamming and the end points (e.g., burner phones with WiFi->LoRa or Bluetooth->LoRa) are still the weak points in a scheme like that.
I bought a couple of these from aliexpress fully assembled[0] (along with some massive terrifying batteries[1]). They're cool little devices. You can send messages via the app on your phone or by plugging them into your computer via USB. There's evidently also some wifi connectivity that I haven't experimented with at all.
Message shows up in the chat room on the phone and on the other devices linked to the room. Planning to play with them for camping Soon™.
I'm not sure about Meshtastic, but in LoRaWAN, with the largest spreading factor (= maximum range) the maximum packet size is 11 bytes. And you get maybe one packet per second at most. Meshtastic is its own protocol and uses repeaters (and wider channels?), so I would expect them to do better, but not several orders of magnitude better.
I worked on LoRaWAN systems a couple years ago, and from what I found the biggest determinant of performance was what frequency band you're in. US915 has a 400ms dwell time limit for single transmissions, while EU868 has a 1% duty cycle limit. LoRa was designed for sending small amounts of data infrequently -- that's the "low-power" in LPWAN. Where I worked we were pushing it to the limits to get a couple hundred bytes per second at close range. LoRa does have some nice properties and I'm glad to see people using it outside of LoRaWAN, which is somewhat bulky for point-to-point communication.
I tried it some time ago, and the only way to communicate was to join a channel with someone you already knew (so basically it needed two(+) people to synchronize first in person or over some other channel, and then chat via meshtastic).
Is there something that supports a "public" chatroom? Something that would allow you to set up a node on a window in a large city, become a point in a mesh and be able to join a chatroom with all the other people (that you don't know yet) and chat there?
I don't personally know anyone else who'd use this over some "normal" chat platform, but live in a building high enough to be able to set a possibly usable meshpoint to connect with other enthousiasts and chat about random stuff there.
> Selecting a default or any of the simple values from the following table will use publicly known encryption keys. They're shipped with Meshtastic source code and thus, anyone can listen to messages encrypted by them. They're great for testing and public channels.
In $west_coast_city I've gotten a fair amount of random pings on default settings.
Other projects (using other base technologies) like https://www.arednmesh.org/ are more focused on joining an already-existing network than making your own.
The Pocket Popcorn Computer might be closer to what you are looking for, if and when it will be ready for purchase.
https://pocket.popcorncomputer.com/
There's a LoRa model of the Popcorn Pocket P.C. which will have a physical keyboard and run Linux, however they're a couple years behind manufacturing schedule so it's a little doubtful if it'll ever actually be for sale.
You still can't get this on one package but the closest I've come so far is using a LoRa capable feather board [0] and a keyboard feathering [1]. This gets you much of the way there.
M17 is possibly what you're looking for? Not specifically mesh but could be used similarly or extended. It's a a protocol that provides data and digital voice transmissions and works (with some modification) on a few existing commercial grade handheld radios running OpenRTX open source firmware. The only thing we need is a radio that has a Bluetooth module.
Remember that if anyone manages to get any kind of mesh network working that regular users can use, they will get immediate and very hard pushback from mobile network providers.
People will stop spending $1000/year to have a cell connection if they can browse the web and message friends using your mesh network for free.
My prediction is that no one will ever get the "join us now and share the bandwidth" model of mesh networking to work for any reasonable definition of "work", for both technical and social/political/human-being reasons. No industry conspiracy will be necessary.
Mesh networks will always perform poorly. Each wireless hop cuts throughout in half. People don’t want their device’s battery charge and timeslots used to relay other people’s traffic. To simulate the slowness, use Tor full time.
I heard about it (here), a couple of years ago. I think the main reason that I didn't get involved, was because there's quite a bit of "some assembly required" with the project.
I don't really have a problem with that, but I wasn't really up to setting up a tech bench, all over, again.
I was trying to work with a proprietary system, and they were quite uncooperative. Once I have the wraps on the project I'm doing now, I may see what I can do.
You're correct that if you buy the most popular board for it (LilyGO T-Beam) from the source, you need to do some light soldering to get the screen on, and need to figure out a case on your own. That said, there's now an ecosystem of people on Etsy and other places who'll sell you a pre-soldered board in a nice printed case, e.g. everything under https://www.etsy.com/shop/QuantumShadow3D. Maybe worth considering if you just want to kick the tires without literally getting your hands dirty.
I was hacking on this back in 2019 but never finished it, glad this open source project came about and looking forward to trying it out on my next hike! Found a great case for the modules on here too https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5200457 !
Does meshtastic still have the problem that if there are too many nearby devices they will "capture" messages and use up all their hop count before they make it far?
I work with similar systems a lot, given the modulation and power output, 1-10km would be a reasonable range band, 10km being line of sight under real world conditions, 1km being light urban propagation. It could theoretically be much worse in a dense urban environment with a high noise floor but I think you can safely put it around or slightly better than the performance of those blister pack FRS walkie talkies.
For comparison, my APRS mobilinkd modem attached to a 5 Watt handheld 144mhz radio will routinely do an order of magnitude better and the same modem on my 50w mobile car radio will approach two orders (double the base range plus additional antenna efficiencies).
[+] [-] nonrandomstring|3 years ago|reply
We learned a great place to test this is festivals.
Lots of endpoint mobility. New nodes coming in and out of the network. Terrible 4/4G cell coverage, so few alternatives. Dead batteries. Shadow zones. Fairly chilled out delivery time constraints. Everything you need to tweak your protocols.
I hope someone into playing with this will set up a larger scale experiment at Glastonbury, Burning Man or another big music festival.
[+] [-] c7h|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] buescher|3 years ago|reply
Meshtastic appears to use a simple flooding algorithm which is appropriate to what I understand to be the application - a small group of outdoorspeople keeping tabs on each other with short messages. One of my takeaways from a similar project I worked on in a past life was that flooding works well for use cases like that and just about anything more sophisticated is a pretty serious research project. BATMAN etc looks like fun to experiment with.
[+] [-] dan000892|3 years ago|reply
I'm part of a volunteer EMS division within a paid fire department and we staff foot teams and medical carts at large events at our 90,888-capacity stadium (football, concerts, etc; well over 100k including tailgaters at our biggest game of the year) and music festivals with 10-40k attendees on the adjacent golf course.
While we have fancy Motorola APX 8000XE, our on-site dispatch wholly lacks visibility into unit locations and the abysmal cell service precludes software solutions leveraging mobile phones.
[+] [-] livueta|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] na85|3 years ago|reply
No setting up a wifi hotspot and having people connect to you. No need to be connected to wifi at all. No fucking with Bluetooth.
I'm not even sure if there's a way to do it but that's what I really want. Carrying a separate LoRa device is just one more thing I'll forget to pack or charge.
[+] [-] erichocean|3 years ago|reply
Low-bandwidth, but doesn't require any "human in the loop" to establish the mesh.
[+] [-] wgx|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whatthewonk|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] foolfoolz|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] angst_ridden|3 years ago|reply
I could get occasional packets through to one of the nodes that was about 6 miles away (line-of-sight).
My conclusion was that for a city, a much higher transceiver density would be needed if you wanted viable communications. It's not outside the realm of possibility. The units themselves are less than $20/each in bulk, and could be powered with a $5 solar panel/battery rig. Placement of the units would be key.
I saw some Hong Kong activists online post designs for "throwable" battery-powered units. The idea there was to toss out dozens of them during events where non-internet mesh communications would be needed. Seems like an interesting use case, although jamming and the end points (e.g., burner phones with WiFi->LoRa or Bluetooth->LoRa) are still the weak points in a scheme like that.
[+] [-] delabay|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thcipriani|3 years ago|reply
Message shows up in the chat room on the phone and on the other devices linked to the room. Planning to play with them for camping Soon™.
[0]: < https://www.aliexpress.com/item/2255800992363816.html?spm=a2...> [1]: <https://www.18650batterystore.com/products/sanyo-ncr18650ga>
[+] [-] nope96|3 years ago|reply
I'd love to see something like old school BBS systems take off again, an off the grid/off the internet network for hobbyists.
According to https://meshtastic.discourse.group/t/data-bandwidth-and-late... "But for the default very long range config it takes about 3 seconds to send 60ish bytes." Hmm, a bit slower than a 300 baud modem.
[+] [-] AdamH12113|3 years ago|reply
I worked on LoRaWAN systems a couple years ago, and from what I found the biggest determinant of performance was what frequency band you're in. US915 has a 400ms dwell time limit for single transmissions, while EU868 has a 1% duty cycle limit. LoRa was designed for sending small amounts of data infrequently -- that's the "low-power" in LPWAN. Where I worked we were pushing it to the limits to get a couple hundred bytes per second at close range. LoRa does have some nice properties and I'm glad to see people using it outside of LoRaWAN, which is somewhat bulky for point-to-point communication.
[+] [-] airbreather|3 years ago|reply
Also, you can buy 1 watt Lora modules made by Ebyte, Sparkfun sell them.
[+] [-] sweis|3 years ago|reply
https://github.com/meshtastic/Meshtastic-device/blob/0447808...
https://github.com/meshtastic/Meshtastic-device/blob/0447808...
https://github.com/meshtastic/Meshtastic-device/blob/285413c...
[+] [-] ajsnigrutin|3 years ago|reply
Is there something that supports a "public" chatroom? Something that would allow you to set up a node on a window in a large city, become a point in a mesh and be able to join a chatroom with all the other people (that you don't know yet) and chat there?
I don't personally know anyone else who'd use this over some "normal" chat platform, but live in a building high enough to be able to set a possibly usable meshpoint to connect with other enthousiasts and chat about random stuff there.
[+] [-] livueta|3 years ago|reply
> Selecting a default or any of the simple values from the following table will use publicly known encryption keys. They're shipped with Meshtastic source code and thus, anyone can listen to messages encrypted by them. They're great for testing and public channels.
In $west_coast_city I've gotten a fair amount of random pings on default settings.
Other projects (using other base technologies) like https://www.arednmesh.org/ are more focused on joining an already-existing network than making your own.
[+] [-] jokowueu|3 years ago|reply
But few time a year I go online and just try to find a simple Lora device with good range a qwerty keyboard and a simple OS
It still doesn't exist . Maybe in a few years
[+] [-] squarefoot|3 years ago|reply
The Pocket Popcorn Computer might be closer to what you are looking for, if and when it will be ready for purchase. https://pocket.popcorncomputer.com/
[+] [-] itintheory|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noman-land|3 years ago|reply
[0] https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-feather/lora-radio-feath...
[1] https://www.solder.party/docs/keyboard-featherwing/
[+] [-] goodpoint|3 years ago|reply
An open alternative would provide more opportunities for experimenting.
EDIT: there are alternatives like HaLow and DASH7 on paper but nothing you can buy (for 4 euro like LoRa)
[+] [-] edrxty|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marcodiego|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pabs3|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wmf|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] olah_1|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RF_Savage|3 years ago|reply
Reticulum looks interesting, but what does it bring to the table compared to previous efforts?
[+] [-] londons_explore|3 years ago|reply
People will stop spending $1000/year to have a cell connection if they can browse the web and message friends using your mesh network for free.
[+] [-] buescher|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] supertrope|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] z3c0|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChrisMarshallNY|3 years ago|reply
I heard about it (here), a couple of years ago. I think the main reason that I didn't get involved, was because there's quite a bit of "some assembly required" with the project.
I don't really have a problem with that, but I wasn't really up to setting up a tech bench, all over, again.
I was trying to work with a proprietary system, and they were quite uncooperative. Once I have the wraps on the project I'm doing now, I may see what I can do.
[+] [-] livueta|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ENadyr|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] walterbell|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nullc|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] foobarbecue|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] edrxty|3 years ago|reply
For comparison, my APRS mobilinkd modem attached to a 5 Watt handheld 144mhz radio will routinely do an order of magnitude better and the same modem on my 50w mobile car radio will approach two orders (double the base range plus additional antenna efficiencies).
[+] [-] iseanstevens|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jcbcn|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] metadaemon|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] buescher|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sitzkrieg|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brooksbp|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ComputerCat|3 years ago|reply