I just stumbled across Meshtastic and have been impressed by how nicely the community interact and support this project. I think the idea of an off grid reliable communications network that doesn’t rely on any other infrastructure is an amazing concept. I have seen other commercial offerings but so far haven’t gotten involved.
I’m looking for a COVID-19 lock-down project to tinker with and was wondering if there was anyone in Melbourne that would be interested in testing this out with me / have me assist with their testing.
I can test both iOS and Android clients.
@nicetechguy I saw a post that you’re located in Melbourne. Do you need another set of hands to prove out your concept?
Meshtastic is a great project and I can see wonderful things in the future for a variety of usage cases
For me - and for the concept I am looking at, we are at the stage where Meshtastic could certainly be capable of what we need - but when it is a little further along in its development based on the information on features possibly available post v1.0
Our concept hinges on three key requirements:
1 - When an iOS user (or maybe multiple Bluetooth beacons - connected to one device) is/are connected to a node they can message and share location details.
2 - A node has the ability to function and report location (scheduled or triggered intervals) without the need for a device connected or button pressed
3 - A node can be placed into a logging/server mode and report all locations of connected nodes with the same passphrase/channel to a connected PC log or via WIFI to MQTT, etc.
Fully understand that all of the above mentioned isn’t currently available (or even possible) or on the radar for making its way into the feature set at the moment, or the near future - and any of the above would also be subject to others also requiring similar functionality to justify it being added.
This means that while Meshtastic may currently do user to user messaging/location via Lora mesh on a connected Android - it may not be the best suited (at this stage at least) for what I would like to achieve.
I still have my T-Beams and Heltec Wireless Stick sitting waiting for new features to test as they become available - but have done all the testing I can in regards to using Meshtastic as the framework for the moment.
For anyone else curious reading along - I’m currently prototyping devices using LoraWAN with TTN to report location - and focusing efforts on reducing power usage to very low levels to increase battery life to around 2-3 years and then building emergency messaging functionality in that uses TTN, as it is a secondary requirement to location reporting.
Understand that Meshtastic doesn’t require (or depend on) TTN to function - which is much preferred, but I need to compromise somewhere to be able to move forwards at this time on a workable solution.
Love Meshtastic and will continue to keep an eye on the Project and its wonderful community though moving forwards with much interest.
Hi there, did yoiu make any progress with your testing of this. I am based in New Zealand and have just come across the project. It has an excellent use case for me. What firmware version do you use? Cheers Shane - email: shane@shanedowd.com
@chucknitro where in Melbourne are you located? I almost pulled the trigger on ordering my T-Beams but I got lost in the world of batteries and didn’t come back to it.
I have 9 small parcels on the way from China from Aliexpress. I’m hoping that they start arriving before the end of the year!
I’m in the inner west, so trying to line up testing from our home locations is probably a no go. I wonder if we can get a repeater on top of one of the buildings in the CBD
Our of curiosity what batteries did you end up purchasing?
I just got 3 T beams in the SE suburbs, hope to put the third on a tall building with a solar panel.
Wondering how to set them up so they continue to use the default “channel” and then have a secondary encrypted channel running for selected people but the nodes still pass on data and mesh with other people’s nodes.
I have a DJI Mini 2 Drone, I’m going to strap a tbeam or similar board to it, I found that Urban Prepper on Youtube had the same idea. 1 city block rang through houses and trees but he got 34 City blocks from 400 feet in the air with a tbeam strapped to his drone. He could have got a better result he said.
Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but I’m new to meshtastic and local. The drone idea was also one I had for extending range for emergency comms use out bush where I spend a lot of time. I have a couple of t-echos which should suit that purpose with a bit of luck. I’m also interested in piggy backing some internet gateways onto existing amateur radio repeater setups.
I’m pretty new to LoRa - was wondering this too.
433MHz is a legal LiPD band. - https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/F2023C00524
But I’m not sure what categoryof LiPD LoRa fits into. I’m Cooma area BTW.
Is there a shared Australian Channel? Or a Channel per-state, or region? Like a Melbourne or Vic channel we can share to save using the default Long.Fast? This would allow us to run it via an mqtt broker without overloading the way long.fast does.
I now have my (915) set up on the default long.fast channel as a secondary, with my own shared channel as my primary, so that my position isn’t automatically sent out to absolutely everyone but I can still chat with anyone who’s around. The config I’m using is this.
I don’t mind if anyone else wants to run this - or start with it then change their primary to something else - this allows you to control who sees your position, while still being open to a public chat.
Next step is to install a heltec v3 stick in my car probably running as a router_client so that it functions as a preferential repeater (it has essentially unlimited battery) but also as the comms input and tracker for my car via my android head unit.
That’s a very smart idea with the Android head unit. I should be getting my Lily hopefully next week (it seems to be caught up in customs), so I’m keen to get started on this. My intrusive thought for the last week has been to climb trees in state forests with Heltec devices as repeaters in a box w/solar to try to improve everyone’s coverage, but I’m not sure if it would be a good idea. LOL!
