MRBF holder.

Good night everybody!

I started looking at Meshtastic again yesterday during the rain. If you don't know what meshtastic is, it is a SMS messaging platform that works at 915mhz. It does not use cell towers and these little nodes all form a mesh to extend their range. These tend to work 10-12 miles person to person and I saw a boat in the keys ping thru a station in Miami FL, 55miles 88km away. These radios are usually 1/2w 500mW. You can go to 1w but at 1w you cannot use a really high gain antenna. Some of these units have keyboards and screens, others use your phone as an interface over BLE. But they do NOT use the cell phone network.

These radios are about $25 for the radio. Naturally you can spend more money nad get equipment that lasts longer on a battery or is more suitable for unattended operation.

Long long ago radio hams like myself created the APRS network. It used FM radios at 1200baud. The data encoding used a CRC checksum but no error correcting bits. It had problems with congestion and weak distant stations getting walked over. It was fun and kenwood made some purpose built 50w 2m/70cm radios for aprs. But it reached a point of stagnation. You can still see it at http://aprs.fi online.

In the past several years, a french company patented a long range wide spectrum radio called LORA. These radios can recieve a signal below the noise floor just as you can keep up iwth a conversation from one person in a loud room. The radios are cheap and low powered. Some folks looked at APRS and these LORA radios and decided it was time to take a leap forward. They seem to have addressed many of the shortcomings that stagnated APRS 20 years ago, namely the radio side that doesn't have FM capture effect, Foward Error Correction built in and intelligent message routing. Also the messages are encrypted end to end which cannot happen under ham radio rules. This is a nonlicensed SMS network.

So as all good things do, meshtastic had some of it's own shortcomings to do with how a given repeater decided to repeat a message. Sometimes these packets get discarded when a repeater thinks another repeater should have repeated the message but didn't. So there's a new kid on the block called MESHCORE. It prioritizes routing of messages. at this point it is a competitive alternative to meshtastic and most early adopters are on meshtastic. I suspect as more people come on board and start flooding the network that meshcore will take off.

Although both use the same hardware, they do not use the same frequencies. Meshtastic has different modes for speed vs distance vs robustness and each of those modes has its own radio frequency. For exmple "US_long_fast" is 906.875mhz. So when you use a certain mode, it implies a frequency as well. This also means that you are free to use your own modes and frequencies within your own groups.

I see my station just made the map... it's literally sitting on a chair near a window. and hte next nearest station to me is 18-20 miles away.

http://meshmap.net .

also, just because a station does not appear on that map does not mean it doesn't exist. There are lots of anon repeaters around that don't have any GPS cooordinates assigned os they don't show on the map but they will relay your messages.

Part 1
What Is Meshtastic? Off Grid Communication Explained in 3 minutes (Beginner Friendly)
🔍 Looking for a Meshtastic Device?
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[✅ Reviewed August 2025]

⚡️ Portable ⚡️

LILYGO T-Deck Plus
(Amazon): https://amzn.to/4mSHFmi
(Rokland): https://store.rokland.com/products/lilygo-t-deck-portable-microcontroller-programmer-lora-915-mhz-h642?ref=tc2

Wio Tracker L1 Pro
(Seeed Studio): https://www.seeedstudio.com/Wio-Tracker-L1-Pro-p-6454.html?sensecap_affiliate=4ychcaB

WisMesh Pocket
(Rokland): https://store.rokland.com/products/wismesh-pocket?ref=tc2

💳 Card-Sized
SenseCAP T1000-E
(Seeed Studio): https://www.seeedstudio.com/SenseCAP-Card-Tracker-T1000-E-for-Meshtastic-p-5913.html?sensecap_affiliate=4ychcaB

WisMesh Tag – Coming Soon
(Rokland): https://store.rokland.com/products/wismesh-tag-from-rakwireless-mokosmart-meshtastic-compatible-card-sized-node-us915-mhz?ref=tc2

☀️ Solar ☀️

SenseCAP Solar Node...

Something that's cool about meshtastic is the encryption. There's a "no key" "encrypted" public message channel and if you choose your system will squirt out your position within a box. So your appoximate location can be displayed. But you can setup other messaging channels with familiy members for example where you actually do send your real location. So my wife knows where I am but everyone within 200 miles does not. In the attached picture, here's an example of obfuscating your position.

Raise em Country. Have a great weekend Gentlemen!

Kids making some sour dough bread here