Meshtastic

Sometimes when I go cycling I take a buddy or two and we sometimes get split, and i was thinking that having something to tell me how distant we were from each other would be cool. Yeah, there are apps that do that, but they arent foss, they send your location to who knows where, and they massively drain your battery. I saw that there are some varriants of lilygo devices with gps and a screen, but how practical are they really? How fast do they update? How is the battery? Is somewhere using them for a use case similar to this one?

Held together without any solder ^^

Uses an old phone battery for power and is housed in the box that the heltec v3 hardware was shipped in. Unfortunately I had to bend a row of pins to fit it in the box with the battery, but this is only because on my model the two rows of pins are already soldered in. Normally they should be included extra I think.

I am seeing lots of other meshtastic devices, but haven't yet managed to send a message. Maybe I am not in a good location or I need a better antenna.

Kinda want to buy a second device just for messing around with two of these ^^

I highly recommend buying off of aliexpress directly.

I got two T-Echo devices in the mail yesterday, and I've been configuring and playing with them nonstop.

I did notice some other nodes will pop up that have question marks (????) as their name, but they still can send messages. What typically causes a device to appear as unknown?

Is it possible to power the heltec v3 with NIMH batteries? Like maybe 4 in series (4.8v) or 3 in series (3.6v)?

Would it even charge them or is the charging only for li-ion battery packs like the 3.7v one that everyone suggests?

I don't want to buy it if I don't need it, I have old NIMH batteries in abundance and I'm not sure what my final setup should look like yet.

I’m now at a point where I can detect 152 nodes in my city. 25 are listed as “online.”

Yet the only contact I’ve gotten is the occasional “hello world” and once or twice a response to my own “hello world.”

It’s possible that nobody has anything to say, but I also suspect the network isn’t robust enough to maintain contact and facilitate a real conversation between random strangers.

Has anybody else here managed to actual chat with someone they don’t know?

Rak wireless module with battery/solar.

My question is…now what? I’m in Seattle, I can pick up 121 nodes, but there no traffic.

Is everybody using private channels? Or is nobody talking? I don’t see many messages and got one reply to a general CQ I sent out, but no response to the follow up.

I guess I was kind of hoping for what I get over ham radio, occasional chats, evening nets, etc.

Am I running into a technical limitation? Or is that the gist of Meshtastic?

As a follow-up, can I easily see if my router is handling other people’s traffic? I’d like to know if I’m helping.

The lilygo t deck is an all in one device that includes a LoRa antenna with a screen and keyboard for messaging people over long distances without any internet using the open source end to end encrypted software Meshtastic.

The video is way longer than it needs to be but you can see the device in action. There’s a growing community of people making meshnets using Meshtastic in different cities.

Looks like you are my first contact off mqtt.

No direct contracts yet but I have been playing with MQTT.

I've had difficulty finding them locally and there can be restrictions on purchasing them internationally.

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The cheaper v3 and more talk on youtube finally pushed me to order a LoRa board.