I took a plunge into learning about mesh networks, specifically because I love the idea of p2p/decentralized systems of communication. To be honest, I was surprised to find that my expectations for “where we are at” with this type of technology was pretty off-base. For some reason I thought by now it would be straightforward to do a little more than text messaging over a truly public and decentralized off-internet mesh. Maybe I’ve missed some things in my search (still learning!) and someone can correct my understanding.
The thing you missed to search for Nyquist limit as applies to the triad of battery power use vs data speed vs range. There's also error rate in the equation...
You can more or less only communicate with people agreeing with one specific tradeoff and the majority have spoken and they want slow long range texting, so you'll only be compatible with their mesh if you're compatible with that use case.
The software works fine if you set up super high bit rate, although you will not like the short range. There is no such thing as a free lunch and something like Y2K wifi speeds will have Y2K wifi ranges and battery use LOL. Also you will not mesh with other people's infrastructure if you intentionally use a modulation scheme they don't use. Its quite capable, really. But if most people want to max out their possible range and secondarily max out their battery life, it isn't going to be very fast...
I had never heard of this before, then last week I watched a video about it and was hooked. Now I'm seeing it everywhere!
Meshtastic and Meshcore are both cool LoRa-based mesh text messaging that operate in an no-license-required band. While this limits your transmit power, it doesn't prohibit encryption - the inverse of most ham radio rules!
Some cities have thriving communities of Meshtastic and/or Meshcore. You can look at maps of coverage to get a very general idea - in my experience, most Meshtastic nodes are NOT listed, while a good number of Meshcore nodes are.
Meshtastic treats the mesh as dynamic - clients are assumed to always be moving, so transmissions flood between different nodes that are in eachother's reach.
Meshcore has a static layer - repeaters that are assumed to be in fixed positions - and a dynamic layer - companions that move. With fixed and hopefully reliable connections between repeaters, routing paths between two users can be 'cached', which avoid the bandwidth overhead of flood routing.
You can get started with a low cost ($30) transceiver board and an SMA antenna ($10) for the ISM band of your region. Stick it in a box an mount it somewhere high up, and see if you can pick up any other nodes!
Give yourself lots of time and lots of time, oh and more time. And then more. The code is buggy and the concept as well as the code is unreliable. It’s not even as good as udp
Love meshtastic. There’s something about the setup friction that has the vibe of early internet, select community, high signal, nobody trying to monetize your attention.
If you setup meshtastic for the love of all that is holy reindex your channels so the public channel is 1 instead of 0. Range tests default to 0. The public channel in my area is regularly spammed with range test and is useless for any meaningful "community" communication. Instructions https://youtu.be/egAZP4KKHNo?t=419&si=s9_ML-GWEaP_bz-W
This seems like a horrible default setting or configuration. Why public channel isn't separated from a sort of control channel for those kind of station keeping messages is kind of mind boggling.
In russia they have limited internet now. something like mestastic is something everyone would need to make sure we could have communication even though someone tried to limit it.
I've been using Meshtastic for years. Still have a few Heltec v2 nodes running. It's been a lot of fun. It also encouraged me to get my HAM license since most of the local meshtastic/meshcore users are also in the radio clubs.
It reminds me of the early internet. In the early 90s the entire list of URLs could fill a notebook. And it was my first exposure to P2P nets. Meshtastic is a bit like that where it doesn't work well until you have a large enough community of nodes and gateways.
I have a node running 24/7 (I also happen to be hosting one of the dozen or so things network nodes in my city) and while the idea is great, the adoption is close to 0. In a city with a 2+ million residents, I see a handful of users, as in less than 10. Same with the things network actually.
I recently received my ham (Technician) license. This was mostly a result of the state of conflict between various nations, but something I've long perceived as vital for community and individual resilience and stability in difficult times.
Many are using GMRS, as it provides easy access to the entire family for $10 over ten years and requires no test. But as does most UHF/VHF or line-of-sight comms, it relies heavily on repeaters.
My handle on meshtastic, LoRa, etc, is still first impression, but I know a lot is going on here, with compelling twists and alternatives in development, eg js8call?. I'm very interested, though haven't had time to learn anything yet.
Being in Florida, which is 1) a power island 2) a hurricane magnet and burgeoning tornado scape among other vulnerabilities, resilient backup comms seems more than prudent.
I've been procrastinating and distracted, but have had the idea of learning markdown and hugo, then making a Florida ham/mesh/LoRa/gmrs/etc website designed to be highly inclusive rather than exclusive, with the hopes of getting many involved.
I don't know much yet, but the whole mesh subject is objectively fascinating and promising. I went from not knowing AM/FM to ham in two weeks of study. I'm still patching and catching up, but seriously interested.
To me, one of the most interesting parts of Meshtastic is the Websphere MQ roots of MQTT and all the goodness of observability and data analysis that comes from an open message broker.
Light up MQTT-explorer and explore the default topics for a good laugh
If you're interested in Meshtastic, just try Meshcore instead. It's the natural hobbiest progression. Eventually you'll get tired of Meshtastic being nothing but telemetry from unknown nodes, nobody talks, it's a ghost town of weak links. Meshcore on the other hand has people actually having conversations, networks that span whole states, and diagnostic tools that actually work and are informative for describing the network around you.
* MeshCore has a lot more reach than Meshtastic. Often 100+ kilometers compared to just a few kilometers. Even if MT is more popular in your area, there's a good chance that MC will give you far more actual range.
* The online node maps for both are unreliable. I don't recommend relying on them for anything.
* Meshtastic uses a basic flood algorithm, up to 3 hops by default and with a hard limit of 7. Every device works as a repeater.
* MeshCore distinguishes between Companions and Repeaters. It uses flood routing by default, and attempts to establish smarter direct routes where possible. Companions are end-user devices for sending and receiving messages. Repeaters are ideally mounted high up in a static location, and they forward packets they receive. Companions normally don't act as repeaters, but can do so if needed in off-grid situations using the "off-grid repeat" setting.
* Some are concerned about whether MeshCore is open-source. The firmware contains everything important, and is fully open-source. The official companion client app is closed-source freemium. But it's simply a GUI that talks to an API over Bluetooth, TCP, or Serial. The official CLI client is open-source, and you can use any client app you want, including the popular MeshCore-open app.
For people who don't think they have an immediate use for either meshtastic or meshcore, it's fine to disregard it and just dig in further into the capabilities of the LoRA radios used. They can be used fairly effectively for some very long reach serial bridge connections for telemetry and command/control of DIY IOT things and similar.
LoRA is also used extensively for hobby size UAV handheld controller/ground control station to air unit controls, and in its narrower channel sizes can be very long range. The well known TBS crossfire serial bridge radio system which predates LoRA by a number of years uses a chipset that is sort of an ancestor of current-gen LoRA stuff.
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[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 49.4 ms ] threadhttps://www.seeedstudio.com/blog/2026/03/23/meshcore-vs-mesh...
You can more or less only communicate with people agreeing with one specific tradeoff and the majority have spoken and they want slow long range texting, so you'll only be compatible with their mesh if you're compatible with that use case.
The software works fine if you set up super high bit rate, although you will not like the short range. There is no such thing as a free lunch and something like Y2K wifi speeds will have Y2K wifi ranges and battery use LOL. Also you will not mesh with other people's infrastructure if you intentionally use a modulation scheme they don't use. Its quite capable, really. But if most people want to max out their possible range and secondarily max out their battery life, it isn't going to be very fast...
Meshtastic and Meshcore are both cool LoRa-based mesh text messaging that operate in an no-license-required band. While this limits your transmit power, it doesn't prohibit encryption - the inverse of most ham radio rules!
Some cities have thriving communities of Meshtastic and/or Meshcore. You can look at maps of coverage to get a very general idea - in my experience, most Meshtastic nodes are NOT listed, while a good number of Meshcore nodes are.
Meshtastic treats the mesh as dynamic - clients are assumed to always be moving, so transmissions flood between different nodes that are in eachother's reach.
Meshcore has a static layer - repeaters that are assumed to be in fixed positions - and a dynamic layer - companions that move. With fixed and hopefully reliable connections between repeaters, routing paths between two users can be 'cached', which avoid the bandwidth overhead of flood routing.
You can get started with a low cost ($30) transceiver board and an SMA antenna ($10) for the ISM band of your region. Stick it in a box an mount it somewhere high up, and see if you can pick up any other nodes!
https://github.com/RbtsEvrwhr-Riley/CellSol
This seems like a horrible default setting or configuration. Why public channel isn't separated from a sort of control channel for those kind of station keeping messages is kind of mind boggling.
From what I could see the general vibe seems to be shifting from meshtastic to meshcore.io in the past months.
Unless an intermediate node lies and doesn't decrement and retransmits anyway.
It reminds me of the early internet. In the early 90s the entire list of URLs could fill a notebook. And it was my first exposure to P2P nets. Meshtastic is a bit like that where it doesn't work well until you have a large enough community of nodes and gateways.
Many are using GMRS, as it provides easy access to the entire family for $10 over ten years and requires no test. But as does most UHF/VHF or line-of-sight comms, it relies heavily on repeaters.
My handle on meshtastic, LoRa, etc, is still first impression, but I know a lot is going on here, with compelling twists and alternatives in development, eg js8call?. I'm very interested, though haven't had time to learn anything yet.
Being in Florida, which is 1) a power island 2) a hurricane magnet and burgeoning tornado scape among other vulnerabilities, resilient backup comms seems more than prudent.
I've been procrastinating and distracted, but have had the idea of learning markdown and hugo, then making a Florida ham/mesh/LoRa/gmrs/etc website designed to be highly inclusive rather than exclusive, with the hopes of getting many involved.
I don't know much yet, but the whole mesh subject is objectively fascinating and promising. I went from not knowing AM/FM to ham in two weeks of study. I'm still patching and catching up, but seriously interested.
KR4KZI 73
Light up MQTT-explorer and explore the default topics for a good laugh
* MeshCore has a lot more reach than Meshtastic. Often 100+ kilometers compared to just a few kilometers. Even if MT is more popular in your area, there's a good chance that MC will give you far more actual range.
* The online node maps for both are unreliable. I don't recommend relying on them for anything.
* Meshtastic uses a basic flood algorithm, up to 3 hops by default and with a hard limit of 7. Every device works as a repeater.
* MeshCore distinguishes between Companions and Repeaters. It uses flood routing by default, and attempts to establish smarter direct routes where possible. Companions are end-user devices for sending and receiving messages. Repeaters are ideally mounted high up in a static location, and they forward packets they receive. Companions normally don't act as repeaters, but can do so if needed in off-grid situations using the "off-grid repeat" setting.
* Some are concerned about whether MeshCore is open-source. The firmware contains everything important, and is fully open-source. The official companion client app is closed-source freemium. But it's simply a GUI that talks to an API over Bluetooth, TCP, or Serial. The official CLI client is open-source, and you can use any client app you want, including the popular MeshCore-open app.
Put it on your roof with a cheap solar panel meant for a security camera, and join it to your home WiFi.
Just use the little plastic case it came in as an enclosure. Cut a hole for the antenna and USB.
A slightly larger antenna will help. There are many on Amazon, and they’re cheap.
(I have tried lots of boards and this has been the best setup for me)
LoRA is also used extensively for hobby size UAV handheld controller/ground control station to air unit controls, and in its narrower channel sizes can be very long range. The well known TBS crossfire serial bridge radio system which predates LoRA by a number of years uses a chipset that is sort of an ancestor of current-gen LoRA stuff.