I've been reading a bit of the documentation before I get started. Meshtastic's target use case still seems muddy to me.
Between the different frequencies and modulation modes you can use that don't immediately seem interchangeable, it seems to me that Meshtastic is more meant for you to build out your own local mesh network with consistent settings, vs. a resilient WWAN mesh network covering your town or entire city utilizing stranger's nodes.
Am I misinterpreting that? Is there a "common" frequency/repeater setup that most people use to create a public node that would let me contribute to a network in my town? If it's something that can be used for that, maybe creating a communication network that could survive a largescale interruption in power/telecom (either political or physical in nature), I'm so down for it.
I'm still definitely going to get some hardware and likely set one of these up on my parent's ranch, with bluetooth repeaters in the vehicles to allow communication where cell service sucks. But I do need help understanding it's usefulness to a public service.
After selecting a frequency (LongFast, MediumSlow, etc.) your node is ready to relay all messages it receives on that frequency. That's all you need to do with the standard "Client" configuration.
To send and receive messages on your phone, you must also configure Channels. By default you have a primary channel 0, which is public with an empty encryption key. Beyond that you can add up to 7 other channels with symmetric encryption keys. Everyone who you share a channel key with can send and receive messages to this channel.
To deploy an effective "repeater" all you really need to do is put up a node with a good antenna in a high location. You could change the device config from "Client" to "Repeater/Router" but that is a technical detail and probably doesn't make much of a difference.
So for the most part, I would just choose a freq/mod setting and then see how many local nodes (if any) are visible to mine? And probably settle on the one with the most total nodes, and then I'm participating in that public mesh. Neat. That's exactly what I want.
I'm guessing a node working on LongFast or equiv. would not be able to talk to a node on ShortTurbo or something like that. With the tradeoff being signal quality vs total network transmission speed.
Correct. Personally I just set it to LongFast and leave it there. There's lots of discussions around whether that's a good default (it's not the most efficient use of channel bandwidth apparently) but it's the default for now, and will most likely get you to connect with the most nodes.
Yeah I'll do that to start with and see what's available. I live in a very small city and I would be flabberghasted if there's even more than one node operating anywhere in the area. Thanks!
Router mode does make a big difference. It's best not to do that, unless you are sure you are the only one on that frequency within range, and you have an excellent antenna position. It's kind of meant for dedicated setups on mountaintops.
To deploy an effective repeater, just leave it in client mode- clients pass on messages without risk of saturating the mesh.
Even if it's 40ft up on a tower at my house?
To be clear, I haven't put any permanent nodes up, just trying to understand how to do it properly. I was definitely originally planning on putting that one in router mode.
Also there are zero other nodes in my area.
I'm a noob, so check in with the Discord, but it sounds like that's a good use case for a router. Especially if you can connect it to the public MQTT server, which allows some communication between seperate meshes, and adds the location to the mesh map. Take note, this is sharing your home location with the world.
Thanks for the advice 👍