What are some popular rebuttals to comments about the inexpensive baofeng radios being a better alternative to meshtastic for a community wide back up communications system?
I appreciate whatever comes to mind first 
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You donāt need a license, very few people are hams.
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But many people say they are not concerned about licenses in the middle of a disaster.
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People are wrong about all sorts of things.
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Digital mesh data vs. analog FM?
Which is better: a motorcycle or an autogyro?
Interesting thread, I think a two way radio licensed or unlicensed like PMR 446 in the UK. Is definitely a better solution for a community, people mostly already understand the concept of a walkie talkie and what it does, readily available from Amazon, push and talk. Meshtastic has itās place for sure but also has far more limitations and is more of an experimenters dream. This is only my opinion. Here in the UK we have a nationwide PMR 446 net Iām guessing out of the conversations I hear and antennas being used not many are legal set ups but the coverage is phenomenal, my local village could be covered by legal good quality PMR 446 radiosā¦only a few would understand Meshtastic unless a commercial device was built that looked like a mobile phone with a big screen for message purposes. There are apps in android that will put a mobile phone into an off-grid mesh network š
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One more tool in the box amigo.
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Meshtastic communications are also encrypted ā which isnāt allowed for ham communications.
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Just so you know, I am asking because I am attempting to get my community and neighboring communities to invest in this project. I appreciate much of the feedback received so far, so thanks
The more people use it, the better it works, right? So making it easy to try out is critical.
I would absolutely love to see direct BLE advertising mesh support, or UDP multicasting.
That way, you could just download the app and communicate directly between phones.
A group of people in a small area could then share one single LoRa repeater with no setup needed. For most of us, the devices are not cheap. Nobody wants to buy one unless everyone else is also going to have one.
BLE packets could have a frequency and modulation field, plus an extra Bluetooth-only hops count, and we could treat them just like real LoRa packets.
Also, in some cases you could avoid actually sending a LoRa packet at all, if you know that there is a path over pure BLE.
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That is a great idea from my limited perspective. There used to ba an unrelated mesh app for that purpose but i dont think it ever took off.
Looking into this more, it seems like WiFi might be the easiest way to make this work. Thereās already tons of really good mesh projects for WiFi, including 50km directional links and it would be nice to integrate with those.
Maybe you could just put an HTTP server in the app, find all your peers with MDNS, and then post your packet in an http request to each client individually?
Not very bandwidth efficient, but itās simple and reliable, and easy to implement without having to port the entire stack, and it lets non-lora-capable devices talk to apps and radios in a uniform way.
It could use the same API that already exists, we could just reserve a range of channel indexes to be WiFi-only and ignored by real hardware.
Hardware devices could then have a new option to route between a LoRa channel and the WiFi.
50km seems pretty optimistic, the halow long distance WiFi equipment does like 2km. Lora is really not a great match for TCP.
The TP-Link CPE710 claims 18 miles line of sight, and thereās lots of success stories with external antennas on various routers.
Seems like long distance WiFi is well established, as long as itās fixed point to point and you have LoS.
I agree that trying to do TCP or IP over LoRa packets is probably not that useful, but the other way around, carrying mesh data over WiFi seems like it could have plenty of applications.
Iām sure thereās a simple answer but why do we use Lora instead of Wi-Fi?
LoRa has long range with low power and small size, in all directions, WiFi generally only achieves that kind of range with large expensive routers using 5-15 watts and directional antennas.
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In the UK encryption is permitted for HAM use e.g. RAYNET when requested by a āUser serviceā.
M0RPQ
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Iām in the US; a ham operator and member of ARES, Amateur Radio Emergency Services, and also member of a local, emergency radio GMRS group. We are beginning to include Meshtastic. We donāt believe in āone right answerā, weāre looking for resilience.
Thereāve been many good points in this thread. A number of fundamentals from our perspective.
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A āhub and spokeā network, where those with lesser radio capability can call into the āhubā which will relay messages. Numbers of hubs possible. Includes hams operating āNVISā, āNear Vertical Incidence Skywaveā, with a range of 0-300 mile radius (most ham radio setups will not reach local stations, signals skip over them); special value in our hilly region is that signals come down from on high (āreflectedā) and so reach over the hills. (For the Baofang etc handhelds our club has repeaters with solar/battery backup, but in any real emergency any repeaters will be overwhelmed with traffic). Not for everyone as it requires quite long antennas, and multi-band operations.
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On the GMRS side, we are setting up GMRS repeaters (relatively low cost/low power) for our own use, mostly to get around hills. These will work with the Baofangs but not with the ābubble packsā as these are not repeater capable.
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Some members are encouraging neighbors to get the bubble-pack radios. These members can then serve as āhubsā, passing messages via the repeaters.
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Meshtastic has a number of attractive features. A capability we are especially interested in is the equivalent of voicemail, e.g. the collection of text messages. The current concept is to have a channel specifically for emergency notifications. With minimal use the messages should stay on board. Problem with radios is that they are synchronous; got have the radio with you, on, and on the right frequency (can āscanā to help with the latter). Meshtastic can be checked later on, serving like a āpagerā, and the radios then used as needed.
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We also like the encryption and texting, for privacy. In our hilly terrain we may set up local networks going around hills.
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It can be cheaper to use on device on a roof with a good antenna, and reach it with another, cheaper one in the house, rather than the expense of the high-quality coax needed at that frequency.
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Again, that ability, locally, to go around hills, may lead to sub-networks. Everyone with Meshtastic has GMRS. Hub-and-spoking with GMRS and ham.
Itās an interesting question whether a pre-setup Meshtastic could be used by the ācasualā user. All-in-ones, with keyboard, would likely be necessary (even Bluetooth pairing is a barrier) but the expense is an issue then.
Message limits on the boards lead to one thought, to have cheap phones always on, paired to the device/node, the board keeping message space free by off-loading to the phone. Depending on the traffic, but this is all about comms capability in times of disruption (ice storm, grid down, etc.), when itās likely message traffic would increase dramatically. Might restrict the Meshtastic traffic for the āpagerā usage, use analog radio for the other.
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One problem with the ādonāt worry about a license, itās for emergenciesā is, it takes practice to use this stuff. How to talk, habits of keeping batteries charged, frequencies and channels, repeaters and tones. Which way to hold the radio (antennas need to be parallel), how to talk into the mic, on and on. This is from experience with a local non-tech group.
Btw on the Baofang side, consider the UV-5G or -X, the ones set up for GMRS. The -5R is way more versatle, handling ham frequencies, but thatās just the trouble, makes them in fact quite complex to operated.
The GMRS models are channelized; and, they are repeater capable, and even neighborhoods can set up inexpensive repeates (Retevis, 5W output for $400, $50-$100 for antenna, $25-75 for coax.
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