I’ve been reading a bit of the documentation before I get started. Meshtastic’s target use case still seems muddy to me.
Between the different frequencies and modulation modes you can use that don’t immediately seem interchangeable, it seems to me that Meshtastic is more meant for you to build out your own local mesh network with consistent settings, vs. a resilient WWAN mesh network covering your town or entire city utilizing stranger’s nodes.
Am I misinterpreting that? Is there a “common” frequency/repeater setup that most people use to create a public node that would let me contribute to a network in my town? If it’s something that can be used for that, maybe creating a communication network that could survive a largescale interruption in power/telecom (either political or physical in nature), I’m so down for it.
I’m still definitely going to get some hardware and likely set one of these up on my parent’s ranch, with bluetooth repeaters in the vehicles to allow communication where cell service sucks. But I do need help understanding it’s usefulness to a public service.
You might have a look at meshmap.net. In my city of about 45,000 it shows there’s at least one node available but not every node is listed on the map because not every node has GPS so there may be more that I am unaware of. I’m going to be getting myself one in the future, but I’m not quite sure just when yet. Also, I think long fast is the default, and so that’s probably where you will find the most other nodes if there are others available.
Thanks! I opened Meshmap and see zero nodes in my area, which is sad. It’s possible any few around here just have no GPS capabilities. We’ll see, I have hardware on order now.
Just remember that height is might. The higher you can get it, the more likely you are to find other nodes, and other nodes are to find you. Also, unless you get your hardware and find that there is a bunch of other nodes, you will want your node to be in client mode. Because then, if it receives a transmission, it will rebroadcast it to others. But in client mute mode, it will receive it, but it will not rebroadcast. You would probably want to use client mute mode only at big festivals such as Burning Man or ham radio stuff such as hamvention or hamcation.