Meshtastic

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A community to discuss Meshtastic (https://meshtastic.org/docs/introduction)

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Is Meshtastic meant more for a personal network, or is it for distributed WWAN messaging? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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.

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[–] farcaster 11 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] farcaster 7 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 weeks ago

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!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

Thanks for the advice 👍

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

You might have a look at meshmap.net. In my city of about 45,000 it shows there's at least one node available but not every node is listed on the map because not every node has GPS so there may be more that I am unaware of. I'm going to be getting myself one in the future, but I'm not quite sure just when yet. Also, I think long fast is the default, and so that's probably where you will find the most other nodes if there are others available.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Thanks! I opened Meshmap and see zero nodes in my area, which is sad. It's possible any few around here just have no GPS capabilities. We'll see, I have hardware on order now.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Just remember that height is might. The higher you can get it, the more likely you are to find other nodes, and other nodes are to find you. Also, unless you get your hardware and find that there is a bunch of other nodes, you will want your node to be in client mode. Because then, if it receives a transmission, it will rebroadcast it to others. But in client mute mode, it will receive it, but it will not rebroadcast. You would probably want to use client mute mode only at big festivals such as Burning Man or ham radio stuff such as hamvention or hamcation.