[Swlug] Mashtastic?

[Rhys Sage]

Thanks for that. I had a good read of that article. It does seem that LoRaWAN has great limitations but it's a very interesting concept. I can see applications for LoRaWAN but for the vast majority of us, it's a bit limited. The fact that the frequencies change from country to country is an interesting issue for portability.

I can see great possibilities for a LoRaWAN network in certain circumstances. It could bring cheap and easy internet to remote places in Africa but StarLink would do it better. In terms of low cost then LoRa nodes paired with 18650 batteries, solar panels and charge controllers would be brilliant. Having said that, think unprotected nodes might be stolen and sold for quick cash.

My conclusion is that while it is possible to get LoRa to work as a WAN, it seems better to use LoRa for the purpose for which it was designed - communications with devices over a couple of miles. I suppose in the mythical SHTF scenario, it could be viable. As such a scenario is extremely unlikely to happen and if it did then priorities would change away from electronics toward just straight survival.

Rhys Sage






On Saturday, 16 December 2023 at 07:00:06 GMT-5, swlug-request at mailman.lug.org.uk <swlug-request at mailman.lug.org.uk> wrote: 





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Today's Topics:

  1. Mashtastic? (Rhys Sage)
  2. Re: Mashtastic? (Jonathan Marsden)
I was just reading about "meshtastic" - some kind of wireless internet using LoRa. That sounds quite intriguing. I haven't found much information on it so far but had a look a the Meshtastic site. I wasn't impressed to see all the software was proprietary. I'd like to see open-source in Python. It sounds like a fun little thing I could do with a 4-line LCD display, LoRa adaptor and a Pi Pico or an ATTiny88 and C++.

Has anybody here any experience of Meshtastic?

Rhys Sage


Rhys,

I've not used Meshtastic.  However...

There is a 2020 article on LoraWAN mesh networking at

  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7435450/

which might be worth a look as background, even though it is a few years=
old and a bit formal.

For open source free Lora networking, you might look at FDRS, see https:=
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=3D6JI5wZABWmA .  Andreas Spiess, the creator o=
f that video, has other Youtube videos on LoraWAN v3 etc. too.

These are not Meshtastic... to me at a first glance, Meshtastic looks se=
mi-proprietary, and so not interesting.  When you see things like "Mesht=
astic=C2=AE is a registered trademark of Meshtastic LLC. ", it doesn't b=
ode well for real openness... however they claim on their legal page "We=
are merely geeks experimenting on a fun and free project.", so maybe th=
ere is hope?

At least some of the Meshtastic software does seem to be open source.  S=
ee https://github.com/meshtastic/python for the sources to their Python =
CLI client, for example.

A Meshtastic node using a Pi Pico and a Waveshare SX1262 module might be=
an inexpensive way to explore this technology further.  https://www.wav=
eshare.com/product/raspberry-pi/boards-kits/raspberry-pi-pico-cat/pico-l=
ora-sx1262-868m.htm .

Jonathan
--=20
  Jonathan Marsden
  Pastor, Deer Park Baptist Church, Tenby
  jmarsden at fastmail.fm

On Fri, 15 Dec 2023, at 14:53, Rhys Sage via Swlug wrote:

> I was just reading about "meshtastic" - some kind of wireless internet=20
> using LoRa. That sounds quite intriguing. I haven't found much=20
> information on it so far but had a look a the Meshtastic site. I wasn'=
t=20
> impressed to see all the software was proprietary. I'd like to see=20
> open-source in Python. It sounds like a fun little thing I could do=20
> with a 4-line LCD display, LoRa adaptor and a Pi Pico or an ATTiny88=20
> and C++.
>
> Has anybody here any experience of Meshtastic?
>
> Rhys Sage
>
> --=20
> Swlug mailing list
> Swlug at mailman.lug.org.uk
> https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/swlug


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