Haha yeah its a bit much. Still a decent video. Does the community care if i makeva new title for the post? I usually keep it the same to respect the maker of the video.

When did it get forked?

Also to me this is def a hobby and would have to get MUCH better at the hop/messaging system to come close to competing with anything. I liked the video for showcasing some of the capabilities. But the title is a bit silly.

I usually just get some cheap helteks (last I checked 2 for less than 50?) when people first start out. Then get the other stuff later.

The frequency and power these things transmit at is VERY low. Think trees andleaves can get in the way of signals getting from device to device.

I agree with @roofuskit@lemmy.world its probably lone of sight. There are two ways i have tested in the past:

1. Get another meshtastic device and walk around the neighboorhood.
2. Test with an rtlsdr (usb dongle) that can pick up radio and “see” the signal strength. This one may be overkill for most.

GL!

1W is not enough for any emergency system. I would NOT rely on meshtastic when there is already ham radio stuff out there that works. Trees, walls and other such already block the signal and “jamming” can occur when an air conditioner turns on.

In a real emergency there are frequencies (depending on where you live) that will give you more info at MUCH stronger signals. Its their job already.

Theres a fantastic video that does over everything involved here: https://www.rtl-sdr.com/transmitting-and-receiving-meshtastic-with-sdr/

and another one here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1VgO1OZWbs

You can take a RTLSDR (<50$) and receive meshtastic/lora signals. Then put it though some software to “see” it. Its fascinating. The logo is actually what lora/meshtatic looks like on the spectrum.

I was able to reproduce with an old RTLSDR V3.

To be honest, theres nothing magical about meshtastic compared to say ham radio and meshnets. Its just using a technical amature band at a whisper (less than 1W usually) to transmit. If you want to be really technical, all you would need is a very cheap RTLSDR, some tiny transmitter, and a computer in order to reproduce “open hardware” for meshtastic. GNU-radio would help with that should anyone go that route. Its hard (to me) to do all of it, but I was able to get most of the way there about a year ago.

Yeah meshcore already has a char room style for nodes. It works really well. I could see tastic stealing the best ideas from it.

Awesome find!

Maybe cross post to !videos@lemmy.world for a bit more exposure? IDK.

For some reason that link is not loading for me.
EDIT Now it is.

I feel like there is more I can do with this that involve the lora side:

1. Sync book pages with some sort of server(?)
2. Update book with lora instead of wifi
3. Meshtastic type node where you can ask the node to give you a page at a time (multiple pages?). Then you could read a book slowly through the mesh. Click “n” for next or something of that nature.
4. Better hardware? I still have a nice ebook reader that has better battery life than this.
5. Some way to put the device in deep sleep. Right now its designed to be turned off and keep its page. But doing something like meshtastic where the screen goes to sleep after a while might be better?
6. Throw the code onto git…somewhere. With instructions and all that. Its Sat and it took effort just to post this. So im leaving it alone for now.

I dont know if ill ever get to the above, but it was fun to try out. Again hope its not against the community rules! It WAS a meshtastic node and someday may go back to again.

Its possible with very clear line of sight. But it might be difficult. At 1watt or below a “noicy” air conditioner may break up your signal.

Give it a shot with a cheap node and see what you get!

There is some good news. Theres enough esp32 and other chip clones to keep people honest. Kinda like arduinos.

We have both meshtastic and meshcore all getting more and more nodes.

The only issue that im seeing is the prices basically doubled for some of the hardware (esp32 and otherwise) and are probably going to go up significantly because of tarrifs and other factors.

Nodes in this video:

1 - https://tidd.ly/3NQZJRP
2 - https://geni.us/MJFjgL
3 - https://atlavox.com/wnrwwl
4 - https://geni.us/YYBer4S

I think thats what they were going for. And it seems to function that way.

Interesting, thanks for letting me know. I thought it was still being developed but then found: https://github.com/markqvist/Reticulum/blob/master/MIRROR.md too bad. But I understand it. Its an ambitious project!

I found a fork here: https://codeberg.org/skyguy/retinet but no idea if its any good.

Theres MUCH more to it, but in nutshell it allows you to do TCP/IP/Internet things with LoRa. More info here: https://reticulum.network/

Its a network of networks.

I was able to communicate with another node via voice and images through LoRa. Its very useful if you are looking for more of a internet kind of mesaging system but VERY hard to set up (my opinion). Looks like the community made the heltecs work on it now which was fun to play around with.

You can see an example of this in the times link above.

Nope. We are broadcasting below 1 watt.

A noicy air conditioner could, in theory, jam our nodes. Ive seen it with satelite ground stations. Or a big enough tree.

Plrase someone prove me wrong but thats my understanding.

Oh awesome!

Oh yeah first time i did it, nothing at all. It took a couple of months for people to get some nodes in.