Hello , i am new to the community, and i have been looking for a straight answer for this , but none so far .
What is the actual maximum amount of nodes mashtastic can register?
I.e. can i have a group of 1000+ nodes ?
I think in theory there isnt a defined limit.
Although seems the device firmware by default can only keep track of 200 nodes, but they probably varies by device, depending on memory available.
… a large network might get overwhelmed as all the devices forget each other, and constantly ask each other who they are.
Suspect the main practice limit, is channel utilization, there are limits on how much a particilar device can transmit, such that devices might get knocked off air, with all the chatter.
… Might need to set a most of the clients, not to do any forwarding, to limit bandwidth usage.
… and instead route most messages though a relatively small number of ROUTER nodes.
(I’m quite new to meshtastic too, so might well of missed some other practical limits)
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Thanks for the info , i am looking into this because i got this idea to create , a network but using vehicles equipped with these nodes .
The idea is that the vehicles would be driving around constantly and would be able to connect to eachother , anf a central station would be able to send msgs to each vehicle , and also monitor their whereabouts
Not sure if it is actually possible , but that is the main idea
Certainly in concept that should work. Actully a very similar idea is being dicussed here:
(tracking horses rather than cars)
But if you are truly talking about a 1000 vehicles, then suspect there will be scalability issues. For example might need to develop custom firmware.
I get the feeling that 10 vehicles would be relatively easy, and work almost out of the box. As long as you had coverage. (if all moving around one factory for example, range would proabbly be fine, but if they over a city then might need to make sure enough repeaters. Each vehicle would be a node, but might still leave coverage holes. )
100 -200 vehicles could work, but will be challenges, even just that in the app, will have 100 nodes in the list, which will make finding particular vehicles, not impossible, but clunky. Suspect will start needing to seriouslly tweak settings for it work - to avoid channel utilization issues mentioned. Might even need MQTT server(s) to work as storage nodes, to deal with signal blackspots (otherwise messages get lost in transit, as they dont quite make it all the way end to end in the mesh ), and the servers would be more powerful than tranditional meshtastic nodes.
But beyond that is were get into serious challenges, and need some serious custom development. THe community would probably love you, as would be contributing to making the whole platform more robust, I might be missing the mark, but doubt there are many ‘real world’ meshes that big.
Thank you for this , i am currently in the planning phase, but definately something i want to tackle , it might work or it might flop , but just the idea of intercomunicated vehicles , and basicaly nodes on wheels driving around expanding coverage , is something that does interests me a lot, and i am looking to have a go at it