Meshtastic What is it and why use it? #
Meshtastic is a form of off grid comunication ( Mesh Network ) that I have been personally very interested in the past months. You don’t have to have a licence to use it, and you can use it with cheap littly esp32 devices.
Frequency #
- It runs on the 915 Frequency making it avaible to the public without a licence. It runns at a very low power only about half a watt. But still people making 50k communications very easily
Use Cases #
- Since Meshtastic is off the grid and is a mesh network you can use it anywhere. From family trips to the middle of the desert it will stil work.
- Meshtastic works best if you have 5 to 10 people and a base station.
- This way you have good coverage and the messages are able to relay of many people to get to the person they need to
Heltec V3 #
- The Heltec V3 is one of the most populare devices people use for meshtastic, It has Bluetooth and screen a button and for only 20$ Now thats a good deal.
- There are some downsides like how it runs on the power hungry ESP32.
- This sucker will only last about a day on a 2000 milamp hour battery
RAK Wiskblock #
- RAK has entered the game with lots of NRF based boards
- The NRF chip draws way less power than the ESP32 and im easily about to get 2 weeks on a 2000 milamp hour battery.
- This board is best for solar repeaters and places you need very low power
Solar Repeaters #
- Sence this whole system is a Mesh network that means that all node / devices will be repeating messages. This means we can cover a very large area with only a couple of devices.
- Solar Repeaters are supper nice to links those last couple nodes and make the connection more reliable.
- These things are small take next to no sun and can be put just about anywhere
- I recently just installed on one a tree about 500feet up on a small hill / moutain to cover that last little bit.