Messaging service and bulletin board using
meshtastic direct messages as an interface to a server using Heltec v3
and
awesome ! With the meshtastic mesh you can retrieve messages and access
bulletin boards. Reminds me of… internet but no service provider required. Home-made net.
This is really cool.
I am very excited about this. I do wonder if it would cause problems with increased channel traffic,
but here in my rural area, it should be fine. I shall install it soon.
I am super psyched about this, im in baltimore maryland usa and hope to have a node up in a few weeks and plan to get the bbs going
I tried to install it on my Raspberry Pi 5 and got permission errors.
Unfortunately, I am not savvy enough with linux to fix it.
Is there a low power pi that can run off a USB battery bank?
I’d like to have my outside node running this, but not sure how I could power a pi out there other than USB battery bank.
What were the errors you got?
I also want to have a solar BBS service using a pi. I have not tried anything yet - still doing the basic nodes. There are uninteruptable power supplies (UPS) for pies - and some nice solar battery packs from Waveshare but I have not tested anything.
Do I install the BBS on a RPi that is running Meshtasticd ?
There is a Docker port available now.
I’m just as clueless about docker though.
Just rename
/usr/lib/python3.11/EXTERNALLY-MANAGED
in something like
/usr/lib/python3.11/EXTERNALLY-MANAGED.old
More info please! Would like to spin something up on a Synology!
https://hub.docker.com/r/thealhu/tc2-bbs-mesh
I have a Synology diskstation too, so I might head down that path.
I have the TC2-BBS-mesh running on my synology NAS, its a bit different to the normal docker setup.
First off you need to install the Docker Package from Package Center
From file station you should see a docker folder, in this docker folder create another folder called TC2-BBS-mesh
open Docker
go to Registry
search for TC2-BBS-mesh (its called this - thealhu/tc2-bbs-mesh)
Download the latest version
wait till its installed
then go to image and click on thealhu/tc2-bbs-mesh:latest
Launch (tab at the top of docker)
you then need to go through the setup process
Network - use the same network as Docker Host
General Settings - Container Name : TC2-BBS-mesh
leave everything else here as default
Port Settings - none to be mapped
Volume Settings - add folder, select from file system /docker/TC2-BBS-mesh
Mount Path /TC2-BBS-mesh
Now you need to go to
GitHub - TheCommsChannel/TC2-BBS-mesh: A BBS server for Meshtastic for posting bulletins, sending mail to users, and channel directory.
download all the files and put them in the /docker/TC2-BBS-mesh folder
next you need to edit the config.ini file to suit you connection method.
(not sure you can use USB as I havent found a way to do that. Im using a heltec v3 wifi to nas{that should be fairly straight forward to set up, remember to ping heltec to confirm )
Once thats done you should be able to start the TC2-BBS-mesh container and if everything is good it should run and stay running.
If you open up the container details you can check the log to see how its going
note watch spelling and capitols else you will have issues.
good luck
p.s. it works well
and I hope this makes sense
This is fantastic. I’m still working on getting a repeater on my 100 foot tower in harrisburg. But I would like to talk about adding smtp to the bbs for internet email. Before smtp ( thanks jon postel) we ran a mail bagging protocol to condense the bandwidth usage in 1982. We only at 56kbps circuits at the time. Perhaps mail bagging from the client to the bbs. And smtp from/to the internet for the bbs?
One can view uucp as another mail bagging protocol as well.
I worked with the initial blackberry in 1994 which had its own proprietary means for bagging
Sounds like a neat idea. Personally I think that the meshtastic algorithm would not really allow for this in practice but a proof of principle would be fab. I am not an expert on this, just posted the stuf because the concept is clearly really cool.
the first component is a generalized file transfer protocol. using tftp in netascii/netansi mode allows for email transfer. nice little writeup here: Trivial File Transfer Protocol - Wikipedia
this was part of the “stone knives and bear skins” that they early internet designers and implementors used
