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This tech would be great if we had high power nodes all across the globe. But we do not. Maybe a cool idea could be encrypted data over FM radio. The radio stations already exist and are a dying business. Nonprofits could buy up radio stations and rebroadcast data broadly and only those with the encryption keys could decrypt. Cut the ISP out entirely. Like the difference between a local call and a long distance call.
Meshtastic communication would prioritize local hops where they are available and then where there are spans of area without nodes, they could hop across radio broadcasts.
Primary issue would be speed. Next to no bandwidth on a signal like that. Kbps not Mbps. Perhaps an incentive for much better compression as well.
Queue IT Crowd episode…
What time zone?
Their website is .nl, so it may or may not be Netherlands time, which would be 6PM UTC, I think.
The internet will get back up if it goes down. It is very decentralized. Sea cables and DNS is where most of the centralization occurs, and DNS going down is not at all the end of the internet. How man sea cables have to be broken at once for the internet to break, I’m not entirely sure.
Meshtastic is a cool thing and it is very useful, internet up or down.
That won’t help for situations where a government shuts down access to the internet.
How resistant would this be to jamming? Iran managed to black out Starlink.
And how trackable is it? Not sure how many people would be prepared to run one of these boxes if the Revolutionary Guard are going to come knocking.
It’s pretty easy to jam as it’s just radio waves. Increase the noise on the channel and the chirps of your msg don’t get heard. That said there are some options to vary the channel as a group, and jamming a broad and robust mesh completely vs an area of nodes is a bit harder.
Trackable as in traceable? You mean finding your node location? By default not overly difficult but again, can be set up to make it hard to find you.
If they shut the Internet and there is a decent meshtastic network they will jam that as well.
This is a non answer. yes, hypothetically they can, but the whole point of finding alternative channels is to make it difficult for them to do so, to the point that they might not even try.
That pessimism of “they can jam it anyways” is like saying do not wear a helmet while riding a bike, if you are meant to die that day, you will die regardless of head protection.
Plus, it will take resources for them to jam things, and the more resources they need to do that shit the faster it will deplete them and the less they can do, it is so obvious I do not know how to write it without sounding demeaning.
Maybe so, but incompetence is persistent within fascist organizations, and it adds an extra problem for them to deal with, which has value for that fact alone.
Riots fix that, not meshtastic
Riots are better coordinated when people can communicate wirelessly
A government can shut down a riot of 10,000
It struggles with 10 1,000 person riots.
I think at that point it’s more of a revolution than a riot, but I agree
No doubt, but meshtastic really is a temporary solution, but a very good solution since it’s only necessary for a temporary amount of time. I’m just saying there aren’t really many cases outside of a catastrophic mass human extinction event that would disable the internet infrastructure beyond maybe a few years if that. Won’t be a library of alexandria moment from a connectivity side, but which servers are still up is the real question
I didn’t know riots and protests 50+ years ago depended on the internet. Crazy.
they depended on communication
You missed the word “better”.
I never said meshtastic is a hard requirement.
There are normally only a few points at which traffic enters the country. Shutting them down will effectively cut you from most of the Internet, and the rest that remains will be fully in the jurisdiction that oppresses you.
So, I setup meshtastic.
Put an antenna on my roof.
Have a decent number of mesh radios. Put one in each car in relay mode.
Setup a locally run LLM and made an interface to it.
Working on setting up a BBS.
I’m in the high density suburbs, I can, when the weather is just right, reach a single node that doesn’t seem to be able to reach any other nodes.
If I go on a drive, I can see 5-10 nodes.
Adoption in the mid-Atlantic US is just so damn low, it’s not really usable.
We need some antennas up high, but there aren’t any reasonable options around me.
I am literally building a network in my town. Love this project, so much fun and useful
How resilient is something like Meshtastic? My understanding is that anyone can configure their device poorly so that it can become overly chatty, congesting the network. Even in ideal an ideal scenario with properly configured nodes, could this actually survive if it saw more than hobbiest adoption?
I think it’s really cool and i like having this idea of a backup communication system, but if has serious range limitations and is likely to be overwhelmed in a no-cell scenario is it even worth it, or is it just fun to play around with?
Just installed two Bluetooth mesh messaging apps on my phone, just in case. Is there one y’all recommend? Are BIT and Berkanan ok?
I already have too many hobbies, not going to get into amateur radio. I guess I’ll go buy a battery powered radio receiver when I get a chance, or one with a crank.
So much of our infrastructure uses the internet now that if it goes down I wouldn’t be shocked if electric grids, healthcare, shopping, public transport, etc also shit the bed.
Add some batteries to the meshtatic nodes. and even if all electricity and networks go down, you and your friends can still organize and plan.
I wonder if that fancy bed company that saw it’s beds freeze 'cos no AWS ever sold to hospitals…
Internet outages happen all the time. Most of these networks can run independent for a time. And are designed to be so. Only smaller networks have issues because they are not designed as such. But things like toast make a small store feasible to run. If electricity goes out then it has bigger issues, but I’ve seen stores go to hand swipe cards before to keep from closing.
I can only speak for the US, but our electric grids and production are supposed to be air gapped for critical infrastructure. Healthcare? I doubt it based on the continuous leaks there - and medical supply chains are tightly integrated with internet/cloud… Shopping still has a fairly sizeable local accessibility for staple items, certainly food distro where the internet wouldn’t matter for at least a short while, but it’s also tightly integrated for Supply Chain Management, much like Health care - so there could be a run on it.
I’m not sure on public transport, but most are goverment led, so probably air gapped.
There’s also a shitton of dark fiber laying about. Internet infrastructure COULD be brought back up depending on the damage that triggered outages in the first place.
Literally all the ordering for stores uses the internet now; we’d be absolutely fucked for a good while if the internet actually went down in the USA.
I can only speak for the US, but our electric grids and production are supposed to be air gapped for critical infrastructure.
Do oil pipelines count? 'Cos Colonial got hacked and everybody thought they were airgapped.
I think some water facility was too but no serious values were changed - 'cos and admin preferred to sit comfy at home.I’m not exactly standing behind it - just saying what I’ve read. I’m confident nuclear plants are after 9/11. Anything else is probably hit or miss, including petro/gas pipelines, coal, and generating plants specifically. Plus if a bad actor (likely state sanctioned) decides to, they can get through air gaps with spies/traitors/unwitting idiots with a simple USB drive. After air gapped uranium processing centrifuges were wrecked with an errant USB drive, I would expect all systems to disable or remove USB drive connectivity, but I’m sure that’s inconsistent… at best.
I’ve not been recycling my tin cans and I have a whole shitload of string. Happy to share.
I’ll take 3 bags full. One for the master (coordinator) and one for the slave (endpoints), and one for the little girl who lives down the lane (Fitgirl Repacks)
My remembering of that line is “and one for the dame”, and I grew up in the deep south…strange
I ad-libbed to make my horrible analogy work. I am beyond regret
I got a visa gift card for Christmas I’m spending on LORA today. Western NY here. Probably gonna build some decent nodes at home and office. Will add to the map to help encourage others.
Not to discourage you, and I’m not sure if LORA you’re referring to is LORA-WAN that we were implementing at my employer, but we abandoned it for cost and manufacturer support (firmware support issues).
Not LoRaWAN just plain LoRa much simpler.
Lot of complex discussions here about Ham radio operator, new hardware or protocol like Mestastic, SDR, etc so I’d start with “just” what people already have at home and only AFTER go there, if need be.
If you have WiFi Mesh at home or IoT via ZigBee or Z-Wave you already are doing mesh networking. Sure you might not have Internet access this way but the principle is already there via your existing relative affordable infrastructure.
If this is something I can setup with no need of complex licenses, it would be interesting.
I live in a small town and it could prove as a useful city project for cheap, reliant, local communications.
setup with no need of complex licenses, it would be interesting
It doesn’t seem like you need any licensing, it’s like a walkie talkie.
it could prove as a useful city project for cheap, reliant, local communications
I’m not sure if that’s the right usecase. Meshtastic seems to be for short-range, line-of-sight-ish communication. Apparently, you can set up repeaters to expand the coverage area, but it seems like buildings, trees, etc will dramatically affect the signal strength. (I think?)
I’m fairly certain that this requires a Ham radio operator’s license (in the USA at least). It uses frequencies that are regulated.
No US license required ISM band 915mhz < 1w
Licensed amateur radio operator here in the US. Meshtastic does not require an amateur radio license.
Nope, it specifically uses free frequencies. The same ones that are used by RC hobbyists and RF based remotes
I don’t actually own a Meshtastic device… but I did blow off work to do a little browsing and found this:
Meshtastic does not require any license and is open for anyone to use.
Meshtastic does not require a HAM radio license to operate
don’t need an amateur radio license for the low-power bands used by Meshtastic
Huh? Can anyone explain what all these words mean? Mesh? Ham radio? How does this work is it like toy walkie talkie?
I think Ham radio means hobby and amateur radio, I.e. not professional. Radio is a type of radiation at very long wavelength. From the wiki:
long waves can diffractaround obstacles like mountains and follow the contour of the Earth (ground waves), shorter waves can reflect off the ionosphere and return to Earth beyond the horizon (skywaves), while much shorter wavelengths bend or diffract very little and travel on a line of sight, so their propagation distances are limited to the visual horizon.
Others have explained mesh pretty well.
They’re a mesh walkie-talkie, but you don’t need to walkie or talkie 😁
Meshnet means that if A can see B and B can see C, then A can message C, it’s routed through B automatically.
Also it’s text only, not enough bandwidth for speech
Isn’t this just like the internet though?
Internet routing is a bit more complex, but basically yes.
That’s the point, but it doesn’t require an ISP
So it’s like a pager?
When I think of pagers I think of receiving only, not sending. Meshtastic devices can typically do both.
Kind of. But it is my understanding that pagers work with centralised transmitters/stations. I am no expert though, so maybe there is mesh-like pager protocols.
This is decentralised, a mesh. Routing is done through the terminals themselves, rather than through a centralised transmitter.
walkie talkie
Yeah, I think so. I saw a video where someone called it “a walkie talkie, but for sending text messages”. People use these for going on remote hikes, hunting trips, or protests. Basically, any area where you can’t use a cellphone. They’re not a replacement for cellphones, they fill a different usecase.
I’ll say what I just said on a similar thread: if the internet goes down tomorrow, mesh will mean very little compared to ham radio.
Any quality transceiver built in the last 100 years will be more useful. It is purely about how many exist, how long they last, and their requirements for use (which are effectively, power and antenna).
Yes, there is a license that you need in non-emergency situations. It doesn’t change much anything in emergency situations, and it certainly doesn’t affect the fact that there are already millions of radios out there.
I certainly wouldn’t throw away a mesh if the world was ending – I’d set it on the desk while finding contacts on HF (=world band) using a ham radio. My chances of contact there are at least an order of magnitude better.
I’ll say what I just said on a similar thread: if the internet goes down tomorrow, mesh will mean very little compared to ham radio.
For what purpose? Hanging out with friends? Watching porn? Getting vital information around?
AFAIK, ham is really mostly geared towards synchronous voice communication, whereas most of the Internet is asynchronous communication in a variety of forms: text, voice, video, etc. In an emergency, synchronous voice is pretty important. But, for day-to-day life, asynchronous dominates most people’s usage of things.
So, if the Internet goes down tomorrow and you need to know why, what happened, etc. your best bet is probably not ham radio but normal TV and radio broadcasts, not rumours being spread by other random people using ham radio. If you live in a country where a complete overnight shut down of the internet, and complete stopping of all news broadcasts is possible, then ham might be useful for the first few days / hours to figure out what’s going on. But, in the longer term, ham isn’t really a replacement for the Internet. For that you’d want asynchronous sharing of various kinds of data, which is more a mesh network, not ham radio.
What good is ham radio in a “replace the internet” situation though? Can you send data over it? I read early that you can’t encrypt it. I’m not an expert on the subject but as far as I can tell from reading about it here, it’s not an answer to this topic.
It allows for worldwide comms, even in situations where entire infrastructures cease to exist. This is especially useful for emergency situations.
There are many, many digital modes on ham radio. The encryption question is one of legality – not capability. But the short answer is yes, you can do various things with data on ham radio.
I guess it’s a question of the level of disaster / political strife / etc which causes the internet to no longer be usable.
Edit: worth noting that mesh is effectively a kind of ham radio device, which uses some ham spectra and can be subject to the same rules about encryption (it is specifically illegal in the US to use “messages encoded for the purpose of obscuring their meaning”, FCC Title 47 Section 97.113). Digital signing, for example, does not violate this.
The only reason you don’t need a license for mesh is because it is using specific, reduced power transmissions and specific parts of the spectra. Adjusting these settings beyond the acceptable range (e.g. boosting output power) would mean you need a license just like any other ham device.
Here’s an example of intercepting and transmitting mesh content using an off-the-shelf ham radio SDR.
I’ve come to the realization that mesh nodes are little more than a gateway drug into the world of ham radio. And for that I’m grateful.
It’s not as good, and does everything worse than radio. The only real world use I have found is for when cellphone networks get overwhelmed at things like music festivals and large sports games. No one else’s texts go through, but I can toss by buds a node to put in their back pocket and we can stay in touch.
our local mature club is building our local mesh network out now as an introduction to the ham world. And it’s working. It’s getting the younger kids and adults through the door. And from there, it’s an easy thing to get them interested in more useful and fun forms of communication.
our local mature club
You meant senior citizens or content?
Why not both? 😉
Great typo, I’m leaving it.
I bring FRS radios (normal ol’ walkie talkies) to the local Renaissance festival which has awful to no cell reception. It works great.
But yeah the barrier to even getting a technician license is too high. You get people that get excited and wanna do stuff and then they’re told they can’t. So things like meshtastic where they actually can do radio related things without a license are great.
The question pool is so small you can memorize it :)
9/10 of the tech test is common sense or courtesy, and the bare minimum to make contact
I get you, it’s pretty easy, but I’m just saying trying to get somebody into a hobby, and then saying “actually you can’t talk to people until you schedule a test” is a huge barrier.
It’s likely why the hobby is dying.
That said, ham equipment is generally able to be operated in a way that could interfere with police, fire, and air traffic. If you’re operating bigger stuff, you can end up with RF exposure or even exposing your neighbors. It’s all fun and games till you burn out Mrs. Johnsons pacemaker :)
I’d say they should make some safer HT’s that don’t step on emergency bands and do a scouts honor web test, but those bands are so poorly defined, and GMRS/FRS is already in that headspace.
There’s no restriction to purchase this stuff, so licensing will only stop accidents, not intentional bad actors. Even Baofengs can be put into a “ham mode” so they don’t transmit out of band. I don’t think we’d see it happen, but a license class under technician targeted at getting people legally able to use lower power handhelds super quickly would be nice. Even the technician question bank has questions about things that ultimately don’t really matter for making sure people operate in band as they should. The metaphor I give folks is like if your driver’s license test asked you questions about how to build engines. (And part of the reason we won’t ever see that is because amateur radio licenses allow you to construct and use your own equipment, as opposed to things like FRS where the part itself has to be certified.)
I like the idea of a ham radio, but too voice shy to actually talk lol, so I don’t bother with it.
FT8 is fun and doesn’t require talking. CW too but you need to learn Morse code.
JS8Call and FT8 are digital modes that don’t require talking. Plenty of other things to do as well
Now let me introduce you to APRS 😁
It’s pretty much the HAM equivalent of Meshtastic
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Now that I like. And I think there is room for both – IF people know and understand the differences.
Mesh against ham in an emergency is not even a competition, in my view. The numbers just aren’t there. But for random cellular failures etc, I see some utility.
Personally, I’ve just seen so much more about mesh lately than ham, and it makes me sad. If it’s a gateway, as you suggest, then great. I worry that people see it as a novelty and not a gateway.
Meshtastic has some store-and-forward stuff that’s damn nice but someone has to set it up.
Meshcore has routers, repeaters and mailboxes.
It it could be pushed up to a few watts it would be far more useful.
There was a massive power outage in Portugal not too long ago and people used Meshtastic to communicate between cities to see who had power.
It does work, but it’s not a Final Solution
I expect they also used ham. It’s just a numbers game. Mesh doesn’t have them in comparison.
Both can coexist, more options is better when talking about decentralised systems
Oh it’s a hundred percent just the novelty communication technology that is in vogue right now. I don’t really know if it’s a true zeitgeist technology or if someone with a lot of product to sell who is playing with the social media algorithm. But I guess I don’t really care much.
The trick is to find a way to seize on that opportunity. Now that our mesh network is structurally sound and sufficient, I’m working on using a raspberry pi to automate our ham club meeting dates, testing dates, and field days, and then blast those messages once a week or so over the mesh network. That way, an impulse buy turns into the discovery of a fuctional network and afterwards, a random person can discover a whole local community of people with all sorts of new things to learn.
You can lead a horse to water. But you can’t make him drink.
first you need a trough. That’s the mesh network. After, the horse needs to be thirsty. That’s the curiosity people have. information, the when and how and where, you can automate and passively tell them about. that’s the water.
Good on you for using one to bolster the other! Smart use of the tech either way.
I’ve been fooling around with Meshtastic for a couple years and haven’t come up with a real world use for it yet, other than scenarios like you mentioned.
What would be really cool is if cell phone makers could incorporate a mesh into their phones as a local public channel when the tower goes out. It would probably just be used by drug dealers or something, but it’s the only cool and functional idea I can come up with.
Controlling home automation remotely without any internet access.
Tracking dogs, people or vehicles - again with no internet.
I don’t see how you could get enough reliability to do either from any distance.
It all depends on the environment and the amount of nodes. I’m not exactly controlling Fort Knox here so 100% reliability isn’t a big point
It’s still cool to be at the store 2-3km away and get a notification that the fridge door is open, via a completely independent network 😀
I get the exact same notification via the internet, but it’s not as cool
If they can’t charge an admittance fee or a per message fee, they won’t implement it. It goes against their business model.
But we can dream.
FYI if you’re ham licensed, you can boost the output power of your mesh radio. There’s a setting in most firmwares.
But you lose encryption.
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If I recall correctly, you can, but it removes your node from the public networks everyone else is using because hams cannot use encryption for coms as part of the rules for ham operation, as the non ham network is encrypted by default. You would have to build a secondary network independent of the public node list.
Correct me if I’m wrong. But that was my understanding of the difference.
You’re probably right. I noticed the feature, but haven’t personally tried it.
Here meshtastic has become part of the emergency information network initiative. If there is a coms blackout, intercity/town civillian communications are to be handled by amateur radio enthusiast with licence and communications whitin the city/town will be handled by licence free systems. Meshtastic has been spreading well among the general public, so it has become most viable system to use at lowest level in the chain.
But it just isn’t. Why not put those resources towards ham, where there are considerably more handsets already there?
This seems like a solution in search of a problem thay was already solved, hidden by people who don’t want a $10 license.
Have you thought about not trying to drag meshtastic down to try and prop ham up?
I get it, you spent a bunch of time studying for your ham and you don’t want it to feel like a waste, but lets be perfectly frank here- most people aren’t going to get a HAM license. It IS, however, VERY accessible for someone to buy a cheap gadget on sale to try out.
I never understand why ham radio people always try to sabotage every other communication method, but you guys do it every time.
Let other people communicate how they want.
I’m not trying to drag anything down. But I think it is important for many people to realize that the meshtastic is ultimately a ham device. It is using specific parts of the spectrum and reduced power to avoid needing the license. There’s nothing wrong with that, but by definition, it isn’t really adding anything that can’t also be done on ham. In a similar vein, the only direction to go in terms of enhancing its capabilities is further into ham.
And no, I didn’t spend a bunch of time doing anything. People vastly overestimate the complexity of the ham radio exams.
But by all means, use what you want to communicate. I’m not trying to dissuade anyone from it – I just think it’s important that they know the limitations of the device compared to the greater whole in which it exists.
it isn’t really adding anything that can’t also be done on ham.
Encryption, affordability, ease of access.
It is a misconception that you cannot do encryption with ham radio.
Affordability – looks like a wash to me.
Ease of access – maybe. But it generally does less, so it’s a tradeoff.
You get shitloads more people to buy a cheap gadget that’s easy carry with you.
If you start talking about ham radios and licences, most people loose interest before you finish the sentence.
The HAM license isn’t a trivial checkbox test, at least not over here
I’d love to know where a ham test is difficult.
Finland. The questions for the basic test require you to actually know your shit, they’re specifically worded so that you can’t wing it
I failed it, that’s how I know. By a few points but still 😀
