I am owned by several dogs and cats. I have been playing non-computer roleplaying games for almost five decades. I am interested in all kinds of gadgets, particularly multitools, knives, flashlights, and pens.
I, and several others, have been very happy with the “Ultimate Solar Radio Node” that is available from PeakMesh on Etsy. It runs around $130 and it works perfectly. Ours has now been up for most of a year and has not required any attention at all.
There are also plenty of options for building your own. I found that doing it myself the way I wanted to wasn’t going to save me all that much money. Being lazy, I bought one off-the-shelf.
That is all excellent advice. My only addition is to keep in mind that every new node extends the mesh. And every extension makes it more valuable for other to join. A little over a year ago I bought three nodes (for me, my wife, and a friend). At the time, we could only see our own nodes. Then we put up a repeater on a relatively high point in our neighborhood. Suddenly we could see several dozen nodes. Now we can see at least four other repeaters and around 200 nodes
You aren’t likely to see that kind of grown in a rural area, but you are likely to see some. I think of it as similar to the early days of cell phones. You used to only get service in very limited areas, and never in the country. That has gradually changed to the point where coverage is more likely than not, even in remote areas. It got that way one tower at a time. The mesh is developing in the same way. And every repeater put up is a public service.
Mine was made by Peakmesh too. They seem to have gotten everything right.
Kudos for contributing to the public good!
I bought this Solar Radio Node, ready made, on Etsy. Not the cheapest solution, but it was still pretty reasonable and it works beautifully. It has now been running out in the weather (in Wisconsin) for more than six months without any downtime and with absolutely no maintenance. Rain, snow, and 40 mph winds have not bothered it any.
You can still connect to a repeater from your phone via Bluetooth. It is possible to designate something as an “Infrastructure Node”, which most keeps people from sending direct messages to it. If you do not designate it that way, which really doesn’t have a downside, you will be able to use it as a regular node, in addition to having it act as a general-purpose repeater.
If you plan on using solar or battery power, I strongly recommend against getting any of the boards that are based on the ESP32S3 processor. Get something that uses the nRF52840 processor instead. The main downside is that you don’t get WiFi capability. Most people don’t use that, but it may figure into your decision.
The Heltec V3 is a great starter, but it uses the ESP32S3. The RAK Wisblock kit may be the best overall choice for what you’re doing. The pre-built solar repeaters I see are nearly all best on it. (I have two and they work very well.)
Another good choice is the Heltec T114. It uses the nRF2840 and it is one of the easiest boards to flash firmware onto. My repeaters are RAK Wisblocks, but my personal radios are all Heltec T114s.
And if you really want to get the cheapest possible board to start with, look at Seeed Studio. They have an ESP32S3-baed board that sells complete for under $10. If you want their case for it, that goes up to around $15. It does include an antenna, but does not come with batteries, and the case has no room for a battery.
As the previous responder said, the mesh itself is unlikely to reach that far. MQTT can bridge larger gaps like that, but it depends on the internet. At that point, it probably makes more sense to just use conventional internet methods to communicate.