just came across meshtastic - amazing project. The use-case I have in mind is to connect a number of schools in rural Sub-Saharan Africa. You typically have a ‘ward structure’ of 6-10 schools. If these could exchange text-based messages, they could coordinate regarding professional development.
I have a few questions
Question 1. School-to-school. Suppose you put a bigger antenna on the LILYGO® TTGO Meshtastic T-Beam V1.1, and make sure it’s a relatively unobstructed area, what kind of range would you expect? Elsewhere on the forum I saw possibilities for boosting the range, but that seems experimental. Cost would be $50/school or so (price of T-Beam + solar), which is fine.
Question 2. Teacher-to-teacher. In a teacher-to-teacher scenario, the cost of $30 (T-Beam) per teacher is too high. Would it be possible to have a T-Beam with Wifi hotspot (no internet, just wifi), and let several phones register to one T-Beam via Wifi? I am aware that this is not possible right now - my question is: Is this something for which the current T-Beam could be adapted, or is this so different that we’d need to start from scratch? (Edit: This application is similar to the https://disaster.radio/ Android app, but with disaster.radio the phone connects via BLE to the LoRa unit. I’d like WiFi, to have a greater local range at the school.)
I’ve got some T-Beams ordered to explore, which might help with these questions… but as they’ll take 2-3 weeks to arrive, I thought I’d ask those questions.
(PS. I’m in the UK, and have ordered from https://uk.banggood.com/, which I assume is the fastest way of getting it? Shipping times seemed to be marginally faster than aliexpress.)
This is my go to thread on this forum for anything distance/antennas, looks like @luandro is the guy to talk to. If you’re doing stationary to stationary you can get some very directional antennas with insane gains.
I think your use case falls outside of what Meshtastic is capable of supporting. You say exchange text messages to coordinate professional development, but very quickly this can lead to someone trying to perhaps share some document? I don’t mean to discourage you from meshtastic, but I believe you will spend the money and realize it does not suit your needs. It certainly would be good to use it as some type of emergency communication link where no other communication means exist.
I would suggest you check out some of the Ubiquiti products for wireless networking. We have used Ubiquiti NanoStation M5 antennas to link remote oilfield wells that are anywhere from 2 to 12km apart. This is a high speed wireless Ethernet link. You can have a WiFi router plugged into it and many people can connect to this network. There are other models that provide even more range where required.
Check out this guide on Ubiquiti website: https://operator.ui.com/
There are also many videos on YouTube on this topic.
I realize you are looking to do something on the cheap but I don’t see that investment in meshtastic for this use case will be of any particular benefit.
There are other brands other than Ubiquiti that offer similar product, perhaps cheaper. Reason I recommend Ubiquiti specifically is that units we installed 5-6 years ago are still in service, I don’t ever recall having to reset one.
Hi @Scout, thanks - that’s very thoughtful. And yes, I did say professional development, and yes, that could be exchanging documents.
However, to start of with, exchanging very simple messages would be sufficient: Number of teachers present in the school every day, and during PD sessions. Also, simple quizzes. One project we’ve supported uses a tablet-to-SMS approach: You do a quiz (on a shared tablet) and you get a string, which you type into an SMS to send. So yes, the ‘quiz’ is interactive for teachers, but the outcomes communicated are really basic.
So our focus is really what we can do “cheaply, MVP-style” to get the essentials rather than emulate (or replace) internet. Anything beyond minimal can then be done via sneakernet or as better connectivity comes.
However, you are of course right to point to Ubiquity as well - connectivity is never just one technology, but always a range of technologies, so I’ll have a look!
Yes. A bigger, better tuned antenna will make a huge difference in range. Even more so if you can use directional antennas.
A lot of work has been done on providing a web interface over wifi that could eventually support multiple users.
The new and growing plugin interface will allow a lot of cool things. Like sharing documents or submit data sets (like grades).
Just keep in mind that what is possible (practically speaking) will likely depend on your channel settings. If you are using the medium range settings you have a fair about of bandwidth compared to very little bandwidth on the very long range settings.
How about using Ubiquity nanostations which have directional antennas with Meshtastic LoRa devices. LoRa devices (with omni directional antennas) can be used to control Nanostations (Mounted on Pan/Tilt platform) to point to certain direction so point to point link can be established between 2 nanostations. Best of both world.
