Meshtastic

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A community to discuss Meshtastic (https://meshtastic.org/docs/introduction)

Other mesh communities:

MeshCore: !Meshcore@feddit.org Reticulum: !Reticulum@mander.xyz

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Cross State Communication (piefed.social)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by TechnoCat@piefed.social to c/meshtastic@mander.xyz

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If I live in one state and my parents live a few states over, would I be able to use this network to communicate with them? Not sure if this is a mesh network for long range routing.

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[–] gkaklas@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (6 children)

Hello, sorry for the random question, but I'm new and still trying to understand the benefits of joining the network and how it works

What is the point of a network that:

Is off-the-grid but can't connect nodes that are too far away
Is independent, but forces people to use LoRa which creates a dependence on LoRa-licensed radios
Is decentralized, but obviously needs few centralized higher power backbone nodes in order to function (e.g. in this case)
Is peer-to-peer, but from what I read it's recommended to not have your node accessible at all times (or have it read-only?) in order to not have the TTL expire
Cannot connect remote networks together, but also can't bridge them in some other way

Is the main use case just connecting e.g. a couple of sensors on a remote farm a few kilometers away from your house, and have 2 neighbours relaying the messages to you along the way? 🤔 Why does that need a decentralized peer-to-peer network if it can just be done by simple repeaters?

[–] cm@chaos.social 1 points 1 week ago (2 children)

@gkaklas @TechnoCat What is "too far away"? I'm seeing nodes up to 120k away in meshtastic and 220+km in meshcore, specifically the meshcore network in my area is spanning three nations and their capitals.

[–] TechnoCat@piefed.social 1 points 1 week ago

Milwaukee, WI to Lansing, MI. Has to go around a great big lake and back up.

[–] gkaklas@lemmy.zip 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

What is "too far away"?

Hmm, you're right, I guess I don't mean the distance of the link by itself, but rather the fact that the number of hops and the dependence on central (?) high-power long-range nodes limits how far a message can go

While technically a mesh network, I'm not sure that with 3-7 hops it provides the benefits of one; in theory, just by being mesh it should be able to have a much larger (unlimited?) reach, just like the Internet.

Instead, from what I understand, user nodes are recommended to not participate in the routing, = they are just clients, but by being "mesh" they would be expected to actively participate in the network.

In this sense of "peer-to-peer", we could say that my ISP is also a peer, and if it lost the connection to all other ISPs it could still continue working within the reach of its infrastructure, = my ISP is off-grid as well, and my connection to the ISP is independent since they own the fiber

Instead, I think the focus should be on building a distributed mesh network that is resilient and can't be taken down by the failure of a couple of nodes. Similarly, with the dependence on LoRa radios: if e.g. the import or usage specifically of LoRa™®© chips is banned, the nodes who chose to use alternative technologies would not be affected and the network could continue to operate normally

[–] cm@chaos.social 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

@gkaklas My take is that for the given constraints (low-power, cheap, low-bandwidth) it works pretty well. If you want a more flexible (but way less beginner-friendly) mesh, have a look at reticulum, that can use all kinds of transport technologies.

[–] gkaklas@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 week ago

for the given constraints (low-power, cheap, low-bandwidth) it works pretty well.

Of course! I'm just curious about 1) what are the real world use cases (e.g. my farm example) and 2) how come Meshtastic™®© is so popular with people who experiment with RF but don't have these constraints; how come that having a couple of points of failure (either in the nodes or the technology) and not being able to experiment outside of LoRa™®© is not more of an issue

(For example I found:)

Reticulum

I was looking into it, seems more like what I have in mind, thank you!

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