I have a few LoRa radios running Meshtastic and they're fun to play with, but I wouldn't rely on them in a critical situation. It's too easy to accidentally configure a node incorrectly and cause problems for nearby nodes.
Perhaps someday the project will settle on a handful of sensible presets for different use cases. Even better would be if more of the options were managed dynamically by the software itself, things like adjusting timeouts and hops based on current network utilization and previous transmission success rate, or automatically tweaking the role based on the current mesh toplolgy, that sort of thing.
We need better radio silicon that can survey a wide swath of available spectrum (based on country limits) and pick channel(s) appropriate to the use optimized for battery life, distance, and/or bandwidth with a simplified interface. There's no sense wasting spectrum or having malfunctioning radio gear when it can be standardized and used more efficiently without an artificial, protectionist, hoarding monopoly (excluding particular essential, prioritized uses).
Proprietary mesh networks tend to become unusable garbage because they omit DoS, rate limits, and proper configuration for dense metropolitan uses, and tend to fail at investing in upkeep.
regional meshes may have suggested configuration. for example bay area mesh https://bayme.sh/docs/getting-started/recommended-settings/
i installed a node week ago. honestly, it is somewhat underwhelming
Alternatively…
Huge fan of Reticulum, fixes some of my biggest gripes with Meshtastic. Shame it hasn't got as much adoption yet. For those looking for Meshtastic-equivalent things in the Reticulum ecosystem:
- Sideband: iOS/Android chat app (https://github.com/markqvist/Sideband)
- NomadNet: Desktop CLI chat app (https://github.com/markqvist/NomadNet)
- Rnode: Reference node hardware/firmware (https://unsigned.io/rnode/)
What are those gripes? If I don't have anyone else who would use it, but would hang out in a public chat room, it didn't seem like reticulum was the right choice for that? You need destinations on things?
We have a relatively dense meshtastic in my city, and yet I can't reliably send a message across to my friend, who would be 4 hops away.
It's just not awesome. Especially compared to what you can do with ham radio.
You must live in nyc or san Francisco lol
It’s pretty dense in Portland and Seattle too, I’d image most of the bigger cities have a fairly large net
It seems like big cities get congested, on marginal systems the chances of only getting half the messages is very high. It really dosnt integrate with much else, the mqtt stuff seems unreliable.
It does seem like the RNode radios are a lot less mature but they seem to be aiming to be less of a toy.
Meshcore is another alternative. I haven't done a deep dive into either but have heard that they both fix some Meshtastic issues.
One of the main differences with MeshCore is that client nodes don't repeat messages, only dedicated repeater nodes repeat with the idea that they should be placed in more ideal locations.
Just don't mention MeshCore anywhere around Meshtastic, or they'll kickban you.
First I've heard of this. My initial reaction is why oh god why this name. I liked Anathem, but seriously you're not going to using this as the Internet 3000 years from now.
Meshtastic at first glance seems silly. No routing, one spammer could mess up the whole thing. Hopefully this is better.
Popular in:
2024 (335 points, 79 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38829448
2022 (249 points, 90 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32016142
2020 (620 points, 168 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22540066
Thanks! Macroexpanded:
Meshtastic's Opposition to Proposed Changes on 900 MHz Band - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41242091 - Aug 2024 (16 comments)
Meshtastic: An open source, off-grid, decentralized, mesh network - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38829448 - Jan 2024 (78 comments)
Meshtastic is an encrypted communications platform for the Lora RF protocol - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32016142 - July 2022 (88 comments)
We're making an open-source $30 GPS/mesh radio, would like advice - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22540066 - March 2020 (166 comments)
Yea ppl know it but why not post again a very fun open project.
Here is part of the Berlin mesh https://potatomesh.net/
Wow Freifunk on the Teufelsberg, what a great twist of faith or whatshouldicallit :D
For the last 2-3 years I've been "this close" to getting a few devices and setting up a repeater node on my home roof and my office roof, and one to play with... I love the idea of bringing an alternative to SMS to my area. But at the end of the day, is anyone actually using it for anything?
Some of the official city supported emergency preparedness groups use it in my city. I would say it is largely a curiosity for me, like ham radio.
Been more fun to take it camping and stuff to play around with with friends.
Want to try and send one up in an RC plane soon.
This community is laughably caustic and abusive. My friend attempted to create a simple tutorial site and their org harassed him for over a year. He didn't even mention the word "meshtastic" and they made dozens of false trademark claims that his site could be "confused" with an official site.
I was previously a fan, but I'd never seen behavior like that from an "open source" project.
One thing to keep in mind is that it's not even a very good mesh network.
There's a Zero Retries article recently with a critical review of meshtastic. Or find my comments on meshtastic here.
If anything they showed there's demand for a public mesh. Unfortunately, they didn't want to learn from AlohaNet or any of the other meshes.
You ’re understating it. Meshtastic is horribly designed. If you designed a wireless mesh network making all the worst possible choices, with the most shortsighted design decisions imaginable, you’d get something a little better than Meshtastic.
Not surprising. Most of their devs are in far over their heads.
Calling them unqualified little babies would be an insult to unqualified little babies everywhere.
Heh, that isn't my experience.
I created a client Linux: https://gitlab.com/kop316/gtk-meshtastic-client and even posted it on their discussion page: https://github.com/orgs/meshtastic/discussions/99 . One of the maintainers responded positively to me: https://github.com/orgs/meshtastic/discussions/99#discussion... .
Meshtastic is a terrible project with some of the most toxic terrible people running it.
If they had any human emotions they would feel shame for how they treat the community.
But instead they’re tiny corporations cosplaying as human.
Meshtastic