Hi there. I’m fairly new in the field of LoRa, Ham Radio and Meshtastic. Coming more from the blockchain eg. distributed web space I think it would make eventually sense to merge some outstanding projects from both worlds to create synergies and use new cases in the IOT world.
But as I mentioned earlier, I don’t know enough about Meshtastic to know if it’s feasible. So I have some specific questions that, if they can be answered, will make it clear whether it could make sense or not.
What I have in mind is using Meshtastic as second transport layer for Holochain, which is a awesome post blockchain distributed computing framework, which basically can run without internet or servers.
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Of course the limited data rates and low latency are a kind of a show stopper for applications designed for the speed of the internet. But on the other hand it is a fallback mechanism and there are many Holochain hApps that not require large throughput and low latency. Especially when you consider that a Holochain node is self healing and does updates it states when other nodes go offline when they come back. So if data rates similar to LoRa (about 20Kbs) are achievable it think it is worth to give it a try.
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The idea is to run Meshtastic as an addon service to a device as a Holoport, which is a kind of micro (home) server to run distributed app that are exposed to the internet. Because Holoports are supposed to run 24h, when a Meshtastic Router/Repeater could get attached, this would first expand the Holochain network two other Meshtastic users and second act a a fallback network when in a emergency case the internet is down. But I don’t have a clue how those can be wired together. Of course on the software side some Meshtastic libraries in Rust would be required, but on the Hardware side?
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I found this thread about running [Secure Scuttlebutt] on Meshtastic but frankly I understand only part of it.
As an ideal solution I can imagine having a [Seed Studio, Odyssey Mini PC] running NixOs and Holochain. The Odyssey Board supports hybrid connectivity including 5G, LoRa, BLE and WiFi, but I don’t know if compatible LoRa extension boards (Raspi or Arduino pins) could run Meshtastic? Other methods to connect would be Wifi or USB I suppose.
If the wiring and connectivity issues could be solved I think a Proof Of Concept wouldn’t be extremely difficult to achieve. As far as I can oversee the Holochain dev community support from this side would be guarantied and such a POC highly welcomed. Such a POC certainly could to a wider interest and eventually adoptions in the field of commercial IOT projects.
Note: Sorry for some missing links, but as a new users I’m restricted to two.