Ok I have a simple question: I live in Canary Islands, Spain (overseas) and I saw on the wiki that are two different bands to use on European Union. My concern is: buying a LilyGo TTGO Meshtastic from official vendors but wich bandwith will provide more range, 433MHz or 868MHz? Is there any noticeable range difference between those models?
Thanks in advice, Luis
The answer isn’t that simple.
Lower frequency has better penetration through buildings and vegetation, but lower bandwidth.
The lower frequencies typically have lower transmitting power restrictions due to how far they propagate.
So it depends on the specific power restrictions for the given frequency in your area. Assuming you are following local restrictions.
If your a Ham type operator you may be able to legally transmit at higher power levels if following the requirements for such transmitting. Meshtastic gives you full control for such reasons, but you will need to use the python interface to make such changes as there are no plans to add those advanced settings to the mobile apps.
Thanks for the promptly response, and of course I am following legal bandwidth restrictions, even though I live near Africa, this state is part of the European Union so the law applies the same.
Another quick question:
What MCU Transciever would you recommend me for testing purposes? I have some IoT projects in mind and could posibly make my own gateway later on, but for a starter kit, what’s the best?
Cheers, Luis
Having those abilities within the app, would greatly reduce the general need for everyone to plug into a PC and perform these advanced changes.
Food for thought, should be added. It betters the control aspect.
~ LostRotorHead
I don’t understand what you mean, maybe my english is a little bit rusty, I was asking for reliable LoRa transceivers for testing purposes, found the T-BEAM ones on AliExpress but with that many different chips to pick I’m not very sure which to pick for best performance.
Keep in mind I discovered the LoRa protocol 2 or 3 weeks ago. Any recommendation of hardware will be useful 
-Luis
Edit: I will test the android app now, but kinda wanted to deep dive in the hardware stuff
I was talking about the ability to make any changes similar to using python, but to incorporate it into the meshtastic app. So we don’t need to use a computer all the time.
If you’re in the field, you’re not going to have a pc handy. Changes in the field are also seldom, as the saying goes. It’s better to have and not need, than to need and not have. I use it regularly for flying.
The main issue is too many people think more is better and will set limits outside the legal range if it is easy to do so. The ISM bands Lora radios use are a shared resource. If every device cranked up the power and transmission time the resource would be useless.
If someone isn’t willing to learn a simple python interface they probably haven done the required research to stay legal in their area and not negatively effect other users of shared spectrum.
That’s absolutely makes sense and I agree, that could happen. Though being there’s python apps for Android that do exactly what a PC does, anyone willing could do the same type of changes in that form and would still step on those shared resource freqs. One could say, 6 in one and half a dozen in the other type of scenario… All the same.
I’ve got meshtastic cli installed on termux on Android. Still working on how to get Bluetooth or USB working on termux, but should get there at some point.
All true. And most people will come here to figure it out because that easy button isn’t in the mobile app and hopefully they will learn about the legal restrictions and accept responsibility for changing those settings.
Also, ham = no encryption, at least in the US (although based on my previous conversations, it sounds like that’s also the case for international?).