At that point, given the extremely small bandwidth, we might as well just use a massive wifi, everyone already has the required hardware for that instead of producing more trash for a pretty much non-existing use case.
In trying times you’re missing the big picture. If they were more commonplace, you’d have a decentralised communication network that can’t be shut down by the government.
Ever since I switched to lemmy, I constantly stumble upon people trying to guilt other people for their hobbies. That’s pretty unhealthy.
Whoever reads this, don’t feel guilty living your life. Spend time on whatever you’re passionate about. Build new things, even if they do not have a rational use case at the moment. They might play an important role in your future.
WiFi goes down and people sometimes NEED to communicate instead of streaming Netflix.
This is just an alternate channel, if Eheran doesn’t have the imagination to understand how low bandwidth can still be extremely valuable, as compared to, say, screaming at the top of your lungs to attempt to be heard 5 miles away, then… I’m not really interested in what they think.
Funny thing about Wi-Fi, it overlaps with an Amateur radio band (the 2.4GHz spec does) and so hams are allowed to run Wi-Fi with no encryption but a tremendous amount of power and high gain antennas on like the highest channels.
A portion of the 5GHz WiFI band overlaps with the 5.8GHz ham band too. There are also a few WiFi radios that will also work above the US WiFi band where they can operate without interference from other license free devices. Those are used in the HamWAN network.
I wonder how much you could Jerry rig up Wimax for these days. That’s like 30 miles of range. I remember thinking if I was only going within a 15 mile area of my place it would have been cool, but prices 10 years ago immediately made it a no.
Edit: like it sounds dumb, but what prevents someone from picking up a used Wimax base station, putting it as an uplink from their router, then using a Wimax card to receive it? Could even maybe just rig up a small rechargable wifi box, that received the Wimax signal, then rebroadcasts it back out as wifi using your home network name/password. So anywhere near your home the antenna would just pick it up and rebroadcast, maybe just hook it to your cigarette lighter to charge so anytime your in the car it’s on. I assume most people would find it easier/cheaper to just buy a cellular card… haha. But hypothetically, I am curious what would make it not work
But the point of LoRa is in the name, long range. Wifi barely reaches outside my house. Also a WiFi mesh is dependent on a variety of complicated and proprietary networks and systems while meshtastic is entirely independent.
You can have one or the other. If you choose high bandwidth, you’re going to get very short distance because you can’t do serious error correction, etc. If you choose long range, you’re going to get low bandwidth because you need to include error correction, etc. In the transmissions.
At that point, given the extremely small bandwidth, we might as well just use a massive wifi, everyone already has the required hardware for that instead of producing more trash for a pretty much non-existing use case.
In trying times you’re missing the big picture. If they were more commonplace, you’d have a decentralised communication network that can’t be shut down by the government.
Ever since I switched to lemmy, I constantly stumble upon people trying to guilt other people for their hobbies. That’s pretty unhealthy.
Whoever reads this, don’t feel guilty living your life. Spend time on whatever you’re passionate about. Build new things, even if they do not have a rational use case at the moment. They might play an important role in your future.
WiFi goes down and people sometimes NEED to communicate instead of streaming Netflix.
This is just an alternate channel, if Eheran doesn’t have the imagination to understand how low bandwidth can still be extremely valuable, as compared to, say, screaming at the top of your lungs to attempt to be heard 5 miles away, then… I’m not really interested in what they think.
People are just discussing the pros and cons of technology in the Technology comm. Chill out.
This has much greater range compared to wifi
Funny thing about Wi-Fi, it overlaps with an Amateur radio band (the 2.4GHz spec does) and so hams are allowed to run Wi-Fi with no encryption but a tremendous amount of power and high gain antennas on like the highest channels.
A portion of the 5GHz WiFI band overlaps with the 5.8GHz ham band too. There are also a few WiFi radios that will also work above the US WiFi band where they can operate without interference from other license free devices. Those are used in the HamWAN network.
I wonder how much you could Jerry rig up Wimax for these days. That’s like 30 miles of range. I remember thinking if I was only going within a 15 mile area of my place it would have been cool, but prices 10 years ago immediately made it a no.
Edit: like it sounds dumb, but what prevents someone from picking up a used Wimax base station, putting it as an uplink from their router, then using a Wimax card to receive it? Could even maybe just rig up a small rechargable wifi box, that received the Wimax signal, then rebroadcasts it back out as wifi using your home network name/password. So anywhere near your home the antenna would just pick it up and rebroadcast, maybe just hook it to your cigarette lighter to charge so anytime your in the car it’s on. I assume most people would find it easier/cheaper to just buy a cellular card… haha. But hypothetically, I am curious what would make it not work
You can transmit over whatever, but there’s trade-offs with everything. LoRa is kinda neat because it’s low power.
And you don’t need to be a ham to run it.
Might be smarter… wonder if
Some people already are
https://map.nycmesh.net/
But the point of LoRa is in the name, long range. Wifi barely reaches outside my house. Also a WiFi mesh is dependent on a variety of complicated and proprietary networks and systems while meshtastic is entirely independent.
Isn’t LoRa proprietary? Like, Meshtastic is open source, but something about the radio itself is proprietary tech?
No.
You can have one or the other. If you choose high bandwidth, you’re going to get very short distance because you can’t do serious error correction, etc. If you choose long range, you’re going to get low bandwidth because you need to include error correction, etc. In the transmissions.