• coolie4@lemmy.world
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    19 hours ago

    Related to Meshtastic. As i understand it’s like a bunch of walkie talkies using homemade hardware, that strangers talk to each other on, but sends digital data instead of analog.

    Its a niche thing i see picking up popularity here on Lemmy. Been curious about it because I think there’s work being done to get TCP/IP working on it, which would be cool because it would be an internet without paying an ISP.

    • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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      10 hours ago

      Meshcore, like Meshtastic, is a text messaging service built on top of LoRa. In the United States, LoRa is 900MHz UHF low power radio, intended for low bandwidth telemetry. There’s an entire class of nerds using it to ask if anyone can hear them and get no reply.

    • rumba@lemmy.zip
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      9 hours ago

      If you want TCP encrypted messaging with radio capability, check out https://github.com/markqvist/Reticulum

      It’s TCP/Bluetooth/serial/HaLow/LORA, any interface that python has drivers for.

      It has messaging protocols LXMF, It has a web browser like app called NomadNet, some browsers like Columba add on LXST telephony, People have written Chat clients, Git Clients, Proxies, VPNS,

      To clear things up:

      Meshtastic is really peer to peer and dead simple, but also almost no extra features.

      Meshcore is setup to be routed. You setup mailbox server and routers and create your own backbone, good for a community and more reliable than meshtastic, but also requires more design so there’s less of a chance of talking to people if youre in a sparse area.

      Reticulum can use R-Nodes, (same hardware as meshtastic/core) but the rnodes are way less frequently found than tastic/core. (i’ve never found reticulum over radio in the wild)

      There is a messy radio issue to Meshcore, Meshtastic and Reticulum at least in the US, they’re using a very narrow band with their spread spectrum to get distance and it’s against FCC regs even in the free ISM bands.