Three good things today: 1. Meeting went well, other party very accommodating and helpful 2. Managed the treadmill and had a swim before work, second time this week. Woo Hoo 3. Learning more about #meshtastic#3GoodThings@3goodthings
I've been casually playing with Meshtastic to get an understanding of how LoRa works in practice and managed to get a signal between my house and my office 3.5km away. Granted I'm pretty high up in a tall office building, but I was genuinely surprised and impressed!
AT&T is sending out letters warning they want to kill virtually all landlines (and perhaps related data circuits where fiber is unavailable) across essentially their entire coverage area throughout California. This would have devastating effects. Related CPUC meetings will be taking place through March.
Landlines provide crucial services for individuals, businesses, and other organizations in a wide variety of situations -- not just emergencies when cellular and Internet service tends to rapidly fail, but also for vast numbers of people in areas with poor, unreliable, or in many cases (even in large sections of major cities!) NO cell service, NO fiber, etc.
Landlines often provide the only available communication in a wide variety of security and safety situations, from elevators to interior spaces of all sorts where cell service simply doesn't work.
Many disabled and other persons have crucial equipment that depends on landlines. Often they are not tech-savvy and do not have friends or relatives to help them through forced technology changes.
AT&T has been shirking its public safety responsibilities for years, while still leveraging their effective monopoly on services in so many areas.
Their new effort must be stopped. I'll have much more to say about this as the situation progresses.
@kyozou@Sunny@lauren@DukeDuke I'm hearing interesting things about #Meshtastic. It's a text-based mesh network that operates license-free in the 915 MHz band in the USA. Rokland sells most of the hardware as near as I can tell and there are lots of YouTube videos about it.
It's line-of-sight but solar-powered repeaters are easy to deploy and maintain. I've got a T-Beam Supreme unit coming the end of the week.
Three good things today: 1. #Yoga class has started again after Christmas break 2. Parcel with #meshtastic hardware has arrived 3. Really enjoying the second the second Richard Coles’ Canon Clement Mystery #3GoodThings@3goodthings
Huhu #37c3-Wesen! Ich suche die beiden Wesen, mit denen ich nach der ersten "Amateurfunk als Hilfe in Not- und Katastrophenfällen"-Session bei der #Chaoswelle an Tag 1 noch lange weiter über #Meshtastic & Co. diskutiert habe. Mich hat die Post-Congress-Motivation gepackt und ich würde die Themen mit euch gerne weiter angehen, aber wir haben vergessen, Kontaktmöglichkeiten auszutauschen 🙈 #pleaseboost :boost_ok:
Wow just got my first ever message from a stranger on the “public” #Meshtastic channel. Comes out they’re 38 km away with a rather poor antenna! My previous record was 30 km on the coast.
p.s. i'm a sucker for cory doctorow's ideas, and suddently meshtastic (just the word) reminded me instantly of «someone comes to town, someone leaves town», easily my favourite since all those years (thank you @pluralistic for that!)
Hey, everybody! We're in the feedback phase. Some more devices have gone to Armenia, USA and Germany.
A few devices have been sent to Mestastic developers. Made some non-critical updates to the interface and functions on the git. We are moving, perhaps slowly, but surely. The basis is still the protocol. #loratype#lora#electronics#iot#meshtastic#tech
Each time I do some experiments with #LoRa I’m stunned by human ingenuity which led to invention of these protocols. A small radio powered by a 18650 provided a reliable two-way communications over ~30 km.
On both ends I was using #Meshtastic node built on WisBlock Meshtastic Starter Kit. What makes a huge difference in comparison to my past experiments is the antenna: On the tiny PCB antenna that comes with the WisBlock kit you can get at best ~200 m in mixed urban terrain, but in most cases it will be less than that.
Merely adding RAK 3 dBi and 5 dBi fiberglass antennas made a huge difference: in urban terrain I was easily getting 1-3 km range with no line of sight. But then I used an opportunity of a walk around Swanage to test it even further: I left one node (5 dBi) at Portland Bird Observatory and took the smaller 3 dBi node with myself for the walk. Right after leaving from Swanage I didn’t get any packets through. I was a bit disappointed, but it came out it’s because the start was well hidden behind a hill. Once I got on top of the cliffs, messages started to come through reliably well under 1 second on the default FAST_LONG radio setting (SF11). Note that Meshtastic doesn’t merely send and forget, it sends a packet and expects an acknowledgement, so you need to actually have a reliable two-way link for it to show packets properly sent.
The measured distance at the most remote reception point was ~30 km. If I wasn’t shy and asked the manager of the Portland lighthouse for access to the top, it would be very likely much further.
The long-distance link won’t work in crevasses, but here comes Meshtastic with its peer-to-peer routing. You don’t need line of sight as long as there’s some node above you that will route your message to the remote link. And because a RAK node can easily recharge battery from a small PV panel placed inside the enclosure (!), a router node could be feasibly placed on a tall tree and largely forgotten.
LoRa has low bandwidth, so it’s mostly suitable for sending relatively short text messages which is not very attractive at the time of 5G. At the same time I find it very interesting to research and test such communication methods, as situations when you don’t have that 5G or even 2G are entirely feasible with aging electrical and communications infrastructure, especially with extreme weather conditions becoming more and more frequent…
The previous quick and dirty design had one significant weakness: the antenna connection. I've replaced it with a sturdy 3D printed antenna holder in two diameters, for 3 dBi and 5 dBi sticks. Plus some epoxy resin, plus some silicone. The new design spent a week outside during heavy rain season now and seems to be working.
And I have an actual real-world use, relevant to my line of occupation: these two will be base stations for an underground Meshtastic network which I plan to test for cave communications and cave rescue. No solar panels down there, but if a smaller variant can hold for a few days on a single charge, possibly in super-sleep mode, that will do the job.
We're making progress on building a #Meshtastic network across PHL! In the past few weeks we've shown it's possible to send messages 5 miles or more across the city via #LoRa nodes in high places. If you work in a tall building, get in touch!
Hi all! This picture means that we are putting together a small batch at a low price and sending devices to enthusiasts for testing.
At the moment the geography is as follows: Ukraine, Armenia, America, Germany....
From internal questions: The most difficult thing is to implement quality transfer protocol, and dynamic output (chat) on E-ink screen :blobfoxcofeowo: We successfully managed with the second one
Everything will be LoraType)
@truffles To jest bardzo ciekawy projekt do zbudowania sieci łączności kryzysowej na wypadek np wyłączenia internetu przez władze (w niektórych "demokracjach" to normalka: geekweek.interia.pl/technologi… ) ale dla szerszego zastosowania "na co dzień" są dwie przeszkody:
potrzebny specjalizowany hardware: wprawdzie nie jakiś strasznie drogi (100-200zł) ale wymaga zaprogramowania, jest sprzedawany jako moduły OEM, czyli raczej temat dla ludzi "technicznych"
maksymalna prędkość transmisji: teoretycznie 37 kbps na krótkim dystansie, w praktyce kilka kbps a w miarę zwiększania zasięgu schodzimy do ułamka kbps (czyli do kilkuset bitów / sek. czyli do kilkudziesięciu bajtów na sek. ). Dla porównania prędkość transmisji dla pierwszych standardów sieci komórkowych 2G w latach 90' to ok 14.4 kbps. #LoRa#mesh#networking#meshtastic
@truffles Taki trochę offtopic/(nie)ciekawostka do tego tematu - bo bliższym przejrzeniu się kanałom informacyjnym PL związanym z #meshtastic (<a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">lora.waw.pl,</a> https://t.me/MeshtasticPL/7292 ) wychodzi na to, że to jest promowane jako łączność dla środowiska "wolnych ludzi" (TV-republika, W realu24, suwerenni.org. plandemia, światowy spisek - te klimaty :-( ). Może jak sieć w naturalny sposób urośnie to ten "wolnościowy" nurt straci na znaczeniu.
LoRa/ Meshtastic
Does anyone know if a good server/ room to discuss LoRa/ Meshtastic projects?
Meshtastic - An open source, off-grid, decentralized, mesh network built to run on affordable, low-power devices (meshtastic.org)
Ciekawy projekt - szyfrowany komunikator oparty o niskoenergetyczny standard komunikacji radiowej LoRa, o zasięgu do kilku kilometrów