Meshtastic

[bergie]

We're using Meshtastic quite extensively for communication on our boat. Each crew member carries a mobile waterproof node (Seeed T1000e), the boat itself has a node, and we also have a Meshtastic tracker for the dinghy.

We often sail in places where there's no communication infrastructure, or it is prohibitively expensive. With Meshtastic we can talk when somebody goes ashore, and the boat can send telemetry and alerts to the remote crew.

Some of our buddy boats also have Meshtastic on board so we can text chat with them instead of using VHF.

Here's a story describing this: https://blog.noforeignland.com/off-grid-boat-communications-...

[Zenst]

The only real problem I foresee with this use(fantastic use case btw) is if you travel across regions, does the kit currently get automatically switched to correct frequencies and power limits?

[ProllyInfamous]

This is really cool; it's the merchant marine equivalent of the flight park near me which uses meshtastic for glider tracking/comms (secondary).

Lots of LoRa stations nearby.

[angiolillo]

I have a few LoRa radios running Meshtastic and they're fun to play with, but I wouldn't rely on them in a critical situation. It's too easy to accidentally configure a node incorrectly and cause problems for nearby nodes.

Perhaps someday the project will settle on a handful of sensible presets for different use cases. Even better would be if more of the options were managed dynamically by the software itself, things like adjusting timeouts and hops based on current network utilization and previous transmission success rate, or automatically tweaking the role based on the current mesh toplolgy, that sort of thing.

[burnt-resistor]

We need better radio silicon that can survey a wide swath of available spectrum (based on country limits) and pick channel(s) appropriate to the use optimized for battery life, distance, and/or bandwidth with a simplified interface. There's no sense wasting spectrum or having malfunctioning radio gear when it can be standardized and used more efficiently without an artificial, protectionist, hoarding monopoly (excluding particular essential, prioritized uses).

Proprietary mesh networks tend to become unusable garbage because they omit DoS, rate limits, and proper configuration for dense metropolitan uses, and tend to fail at investing in upkeep.

[tguvot]

regional meshes may have suggested configuration. for example bay area mesh https://bayme.sh/docs/getting-started/recommended-settings/

i installed a node week ago. honestly, it is somewhat underwhelming

[cheschire]

Alternatively…

https://reticulum.network/

[0x62]

Huge fan of Reticulum, fixes some of my biggest gripes with Meshtastic. Shame it hasn't got as much adoption yet. For those looking for Meshtastic-equivalent things in the Reticulum ecosystem:

- Sideband: iOS/Android chat app (https://github.com/markqvist/Sideband)

- NomadNet: Desktop CLI chat app (https://github.com/markqvist/NomadNet)

- Rnode: Reference node hardware/firmware (https://unsigned.io/rnode/)

[MerrimanInd]

Meshcore is another alternative. I haven't done a deep dive into either but have heard that they both fix some Meshtastic issues.

https://meshcore.co.uk/

[snickerer]

Meshtastic: Text message mesh network using LoRa modems.

Reticulum: full network stack (alternative to IP), mesh, focus on low-speed, unreliable connections. Transport layer agnostic. Current 'Hardware drivers' are written for LoRa, Internet Tunnels, Wifi, Amateur radio.

Reticulum sounds great? It is, but still has 2 problems: 1. The only complete & stable implementation is written in Python and 2. The existing end-user applications have confusing and complex UIs (except for the command-line tools for remote shell and file copy).

[curcbit]

reticulum cannot scale, it's not topology aware and has no congestion management

[greesil]

First I've heard of this. My initial reaction is why oh god why this name. I liked Anathem, but seriously you're not going to using this as the Internet 3000 years from now.

Meshtastic at first glance seems silly. No routing, one spammer could mess up the whole thing. Hopefully this is better.

[gnabgib]

Popular in:

2024 (335 points, 79 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38829448

2022 (249 points, 90 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32016142

2020 (620 points, 168 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22540066

[tomhow]

Thanks! Macroexpanded:

Meshtastic's Opposition to Proposed Changes on 900 MHz Band - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41242091 - Aug 2024 (16 comments)

Meshtastic: An open source, off-grid, decentralized, mesh network - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38829448 - Jan 2024 (78 comments)

Meshtastic is an encrypted communications platform for the Lora RF protocol - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32016142 - July 2022 (88 comments)

We're making an open-source $30 GPS/mesh radio, would like advice - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22540066 - March 2020 (166 comments)

[scirob]

Yea ppl know it but why not post again a very fun open project.

Here is part of the Berlin mesh https://potatomesh.net/

[thenthenthen]

Wow Freifunk on the Teufelsberg, what a great twist of faith or whatshouldicallit :D

[aeblyve]

Meshtastic is reasonably good for unplanned and mobile use cases such as hiking, but for building an emplaced network, Meshcore has much better performance.

This has been our experience in the Greater Boston Mesh.

[raffael_de]

Is there a mesh network solution with very low bandwidth by design? "by design" meaning that participants of the network aren't able to increase their bandwidth beyond a defined upper limit. I'm thinking of a bandwidth of about 10kbps. The low bandwidth would practically eliminate problems around spamming and cp. The idea is a network that is only useful for exchanging texts/messages and accessing simple text based websites.

[wtallis]

Meshtastic already fulfills that, except for the bit about accessing simple text-based websites, because Meshtastic isn't an IP network. The data rates only go up to 21.88 kbps for the fastest preset: https://meshtastic.org/docs/overview/radio-settings/#presets

[Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe]

I think reticulum was made for this exact purpose. It can even work on bandwidths of like bits per minutes.

[synergy20]

How far can Meshtastic go, it seems using LoRA. How is it different from VHF/UHF based radio that can do 30+ miles using handheld where no cellular power exists(off-grid communication), or the 5-mile walkie-talkie. My assumption is that Meshtastic has the advantage of low-power that can sustain much longer time.

Another forthcoming alternative will be satellite-based chat using phones.

[bergie]

For a single hop you can expect close to similar ranges as a VHF set. We saw 30NM distances on open sea when leaving Curaçao. Could be a lot more with antenna situated high up.

Where the magic potentially kicks in is the mesh hops. With those you can reach much further by jumping from one node to another.

It's not even close to satellite comms in reach or reliability, but it also requires no infrastructure, no licensing, and no subscriptions.

[exitb]

Meshtastic is multi-hop, doesn’t require a license and is encrypted by default. It’s also a toy network, really. Reliability doesn’t seem to be high on the priority list.

[HelloUsername]

What about Briar / Berty

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.briarproje...

https://apps.apple.com/app/id1535500412

[soldeace]

My wife and I tried to use Briar to communicate after we had been reallocated two seat rows apart in a flight. It didn't work at all. Messages arrived hours later, when they arrived.

[rtkwe]

Meshtastic uses 900 MHz in the US which has way longer range generally than both wifi and bluetooth at the cost of needing a dedicated radio.

[kordlessagain]

Seems perfect for AI agents to use to communicate to other nearby agents.

I have two of the LilyGo units and want to hook one up to the computer and then carry the other one with me.

[wtallis]

What do you even mean by "AI agent"? I've head that term used in a few different ways, but none of them are at all close to anything that would benefit from an off-grid ad-hoc dialup-speed communication channel between agents (as opposed to between an agent an a human or non-AI service).

[linsomniac]

For the last 2-3 years I've been "this close" to getting a few devices and setting up a repeater node on my home roof and my office roof, and one to play with... I love the idea of bringing an alternative to SMS to my area. But at the end of the day, is anyone actually using it for anything?

[NegativeLatency]

Some of the official city supported emergency preparedness groups use it in my city. I would say it is largely a curiosity for me, like ham radio.

Been more fun to take it camping and stuff to play around with with friends.

Want to try and send one up in an RC plane soon.

[raudette]

In my experience, no, but still worth doing.

You end up finding and chatting (often off-mesh!) with people who are within Lora-mesh-distance of you, who have similar interests.

[mertleee]

This community is laughably caustic and abusive. My friend attempted to create a simple tutorial site and their org harassed him for over a year. He didn't even mention the word "meshtastic" and they made dozens of false trademark claims that his site could be "confused" with an official site.

I was previously a fan, but I'd never seen behavior like that from an "open source" project.

[kop316]

Heh, that isn't my experience.

I created a client Linux: https://gitlab.com/kop316/gtk-meshtastic-client and even posted it on their discussion page: https://github.com/orgs/meshtastic/discussions/99 . One of the maintainers responded positively to me: https://github.com/orgs/meshtastic/discussions/99#discussion... .

[bb88]

One thing to keep in mind is that it's not even a very good mesh network.

There's a Zero Retries article recently with a critical review of meshtastic. Or find my comments on meshtastic here.

If anything they showed there's demand for a public mesh. Unfortunately, they didn't want to learn from AlohaNet or any of the other meshes.

[sandos]

I have not seen that at all. Honestly, people are almost too welcoming and also maybe even too accepting of PRs for example.

[theshrike79]

And not even the ones who carry them, just a half dozen well-placed reliably powered router nodes can massively increase the range of the network in general.

You can get plug&play ones from seeedstudio for $100-ish, solar panels and batteries included.