this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2025
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Meshtastic
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It has the potential to replace cell networks and give people sovereignty and privacy over their communications.
It can be used in emergency situations when power goes out or cellular traffic becomes saturated (concerts, sports events or other events), or when there simply is no cell service (I think the original intent of LoRa is long range monitoring of various sensor data).
It can be used to transmit location data that is visible for miles and miles around from a drone or plane, in case of emergency.
But really its mostly just for fun.
Indeed. I use it professionally in agricultural r&d. Infrequent, remote data sampling.
I found meshtastic the other way around: wouldn't it be cool to use this for text messaging. Turned out: someone beat me to the idea :)
I'd be interested in exploring LoRa sensors - but I am not sure how many of those are available to hobbyists.
Dragino is a brand I like working with.
I should approach this in stages I guess :)
So - if I get something like a Station G2 and place it somewhere in my home - I can then get some Dragino sensors and add them to my network, even long distance? That's the idea, right?
We have a cabin off-grid - no power for most of the year - and I'd be interested in adding some sensors down there.
That's the idea yes.
But range depends on a lot of factors. In my context it's open fields and forests. The path from your cabin to your home, I expect to be more challenging.
It will be challenging, for sure - it's in the woods, after all, and it's 150 km away. But that's exactly what LoRa is developed for, right? And if more people go online the problem of distance will disappear...
Lora in itself is just the radio communication, low level.
It doesn't do the meshing. That's meshtastics' thing. There's also lorawan that does it.
More info (1).
How did you decide between LoRaWan and meshtastic?
Went with neither. We have our own gateways that connect to the internet.
LoRa itself travels kms if the terrain is favourable.
Neat. But is there any architectural difference between the two? Do LoRaWan units also form a decentralised mesh network?
Yeah they share little other than same radio carrier.
Lorawan is hierarchical, almost always eventually plug into the internet, data is binary, and upstream providers are usually commercial.
Meshtastic does its alternative network meshing thing.
Thanks!
I agree with you but
Is that really the case? I'd love a decentralized hardware network but unfortunately LoRa can't do more than basic SMS
I mean, for the purposes of basic "text messaging", yes. And probably could support a lot of the features that many modern messengers have, except the ones that have large file sizes.
A man can only dream. That would be so cool