What is Meshtastic? “An open source, off-grid, decentralized, mesh network built to run on affordable, low-power devices”… It’s a system of small Long Range (LoRa) radios that form a mesh network to provide text communications. It allows texting from your phone (or computer) even without the grid. If the power is out, all your computers are offline, the cellular networks are all down… you can still communicate. Meshtastic does not require the Internet, the cell networks, or any other grid-based things. (Also, Read the Docs!)
The details of how it technically works are explained very well by Austin Mesh: Can you explain it like I’m five years old?
So my old pal Matt got me interested in this because we live close enough that we should be able to use it between our houses. We haven’t yet, but we’re still working towards that. There do not seem to be other nodes in the area, which is crucial to a mesh network…
So in the meantime as we experiment and figure things out and test antennas and different hardware, there is research and reading and learning to be done. And testing, and building solar-powered nodes that can live 25 feet up and there is 3D printing and messing around with electronics, and… it’s been a nice distraction that we hope will be useful someday when others join us.
So for now, I am dropping this post here to say we are here, join us. If you’re in Milwaukee or Wauwatosa or close by or in the Greater Milwaukee Area, let me know. There is also a Meshconsin group, and a map of nodes (with many missing of course) and a Discord server.
And in future posts I’ll explain a bit more about the photos and screenshots in this post, so Stay Tuned!
Things like letting everyone know when sessions were starting or when lunch arrived, or even just trying to find someone in Bucketworks, would have been easier with an intercom system. We could have done something as simple as put an FRS radio in each session room to alert people as to what was going on. (Sadly, I had three radios with me, but didn’t think of it at the time.) I know at least a few times I had to stop sessions from running over their time (only because the space was needed by others) or had to let people know that the session would need to end in 2 minutes.