What is Meshtastic?
From the Meshtastic website:
Meshtastic® is a project that enables you to use inexpensive LoRa radios as a long range off-grid communication platform in areas without existing or reliable communications infrastructure. This project is 100% community driven and open source!
In the US, these radios can be operated without a license on the 915Mhz band. Other countries may need a different model operating elsewhere on the spectrum. There’s been some pretty impressive distance records set by the community. Meshtastic communications are encrypted (although there are some “public” channels set up with a simple blank key), which is a plus.
Hardware
I’ve had a chance to use / experiment with these different compatible radios so far:
Of all of these, the T-Beam is the best bang-for-your-buck if you want a mobile radio that you can pop an 18650 battery into and go. There aren’t a whole lot of commercially produced cases for the radios I’ve listed so you’ll need to either print one, use a generic enclosure, or buy one someone’s printed off Etsy.
I think the RAKWireless is the most flexible, since it has sockets for different accessories (e.g GPS).
There area couple recent releases I’d be interested to try, but haven’t gotten ahold of them yet. These are more commercially produced so they come with enclosures. The T-Deck looks pretty cool.
The Card tracker seems to be a nice on-the-go form factor, much more low profile than the T-Beam.
Range
In my area, which is not ideal terrain with lots of trees and hills, I can get a few miles of range, connecting between my T-Beam and the base station I have set up.
So Far
I 3D-Printed some cases for the T-Beams, to use as mobile radios. With the 18650 batteries installed, these last for a decent amount of time.
I’m working on building an enclosure for the Heltec V3. The ESP32 inside it is a bit of a power hog I’m going to configure that as a router where it will just stay plugged in. There’s a handful of other nodes where I am located, so hopefully we can get a nice mesh going for our local area.
The RAK Wireless Module I have special plans for, I’m working on 3d-printing a portable hard-drive sized unit that’ll be 3D printed, and have a USB-C to plug into a laptop. Then I could use https://client.meshtastic.org/ to connect to what’s around from my laptop.
Future
- Stay tuned for a printable case for the RAK Wireless board I have - maybe I’ll sell these once I finish designing it. I’m trying to think of a name, and so far “Passport” is what I’ve got.
Legal
This site is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Meshtastic project. The Meshtastic logo trademark is the trademark of Meshtastic LLC.