[VikingCoder]

Please, sell me a USB-C device that gives me mesh networking on my phone.

I'd like a Small, Medium, and Large option. Ideally, each would have a passthrough charger, so I can charge my phone even with the device plugged in to my phone.

The Small is just the device, and I guess it would drain my phone's battery. The Large would have a 25,000mAh and be just small enough to legally take on an airplane in the United Stated. The Medium has a smallish battery, maybe?

Give me what you can. Wifi. FRS. CB. LoRa. The ability to switch between those? The ability to broadcast across all of those in some spread-spectrum broadcast?

Make me use your special App that I have to install on my phone.

Make the device also act like a storage device. The Small has usb storage big enough to store the APK for the app for me to side-load.

The Large has enough usb storage for, I dunno, all of Wikipedia and medical texts, and open maps, and a few other things, and the Kiwix app to side-load.

Make the Medium and the Large also be able to be a hotspot, for other people nearby to be able to connect to, so they can download the app and browse Kiwix, and send messages through my phone? Or just let my phone be that hotspot, I guess?

And most importantly, give me messaging. Secure point-to-point, exchanging keys by touching our phones together, or using QR codes, or something.

Or broadcast messaging. With configurable repeating.

And then make the Base Station version of this, which has solar panels, and a battery, and it's just a repeater. You install and forget.

If you're only going to build one thing, build the Small version I described. Next, I guess, would be the Base Station. Next would be the Large.

Where is the Kickstarter? I'll back it right now. I'll buy 2 Large, 6 Small, and 4 Base Stations. Right now.

[sneak]

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0F7LD3BQG

Meshtastic is the name. It works today. Many cities have them. They aren’t useful in antigovernment scenarios because they are trivial to jam and deny use of.

[nuke-web3]

Worth checking out meshtastic and their ecosystem of much longer range mesh tech.

https://meshtastic.org/docs/hardware/devices/

[Refefer]

Pragmatically, cost and ease of access is especially important in suppressed countries or ones with unstable infrastructure. While the devices you're talking about has lots of conveniences, distribution and price dominate in lower income regions.

For a side project, sure. But in first world countries, the odds of infrastructure breakdown or suppression of Internet is incredibly rare. In Iran's case, suppression is a weapon so phone only makes a lot of sense.

[VikingCoder]

I'd like to start with something that works, and then make it affordable.

Rather than start with something free, that demonstrably doesn't work where it needs to.