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For those of you who have used meshtastic: what was your experience like? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 6 days ago by tottle@sh.itjust.works to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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Meshtastic is a mesh network for radio communications or something. I'm curious to hear from people who've used it as to what their experience was like.

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[–] tophneal@sh.itjust.works 6 points 6 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (3 children)

Works pretty well in my area, though not so much wherever there’s a ridge and no node to help propagate the network over it. There’s a few slivers of town without coverage, but there’s a very large, multistate group of enthusiasts expanding the infrastructure.

Some have also left Meshtastic entirely, in favor of Meshcore. I might try it on my spare T Deck just to see. But Meshtastic is fun, especially if you enjoy the potential for tinkering with things. I had a blast going through the thread of putting MT on some Chatter2.0s, along with some mods to the boards. Now they’re like little mesh Nokias, ringtones and all!

[–] tottle@sh.itjust.works 0 points 5 days ago (2 children)

What's the difference between Mestastic and Meshcore?

[–] mesamunefire@piefed.social 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

To expand on what others have said:

Meshtastic:

Has more users
Has really good info on traceroutes, historical details on signal strength, etc...

MeshCore:

Messages often get recieved because of a better* algorithm (much higher hop limit). Chat feature makes a node into a chatroom. Messages get saved and anyone logging in can see messages.

Both are good. I wish they did more work interop TBH. But both are in their early days. reticulum is also another protocol in the space. Much harder to set up but actually is more like everyone things of a mesh network (websites are hosted/viewed via multiple ways).

Ive worked and contributed to both mesh projects. They have VERY similar hardware so its really just differences between what you want to play around with. In an actual emergency though...walkie talkies are MUCH better (as well as ARPA).

!meshtastic@mander.xyz is where we hang out.

[–] tophneal@sh.itjust.works 1 points 5 days ago

I don’t know the specifics, but I know it’s another option in LORA comms. Works with much of the same equipment as Meshtastic. It has a different way of handling messages that does seem to handle congestion better than busy/uncoordinated areas of Meshtastic networks.

I personally am not as interested in it bc of the lack of node options compared to MT, and parts of it are proprietary. Some admin features also seem to be paywalled in one of the primary app options. Iirc android has a few other app options for node companionship