The LoRa Meshtastic T-BEAM device are small battery powered devices that will mesh with other T-BEAM and send messages and other data from your phones, tablets and computers. They can use one of three different license-free bands, but you do need to check for compliance in your own country as, for example, the 915 MHz license-free band is not necessarily a license-free band in other countries.
The plain broadcast capability can be better replicated using license-free walkie-talkies, but the real niche here is that these devices will create a mesh network. This means that if you are in the outdoors somewhere and a party is slightly split up, the message will relay though intermediate stations it can reach. Yes Android has the Briar app that I think does this, but nothing exists on iOS devices for this, so using these devices, Android and iOS devices can all interconnect (not the iOS device requires a beta version of the software app).
Watch https://youtu.be/DumgHz56IjI
#technology #radio #licensefree #meshnetwork #LoRa
In central and/or south america, during earthquake and another natural disaster, i think, something similar was used on phones that installed a certain app and no extra hardware was needed. that was 15 or more years ago, i think.
Basically only a question of time until Meshtastic will be usable with the LoRa backplate in the Pinephone :)
Can’t wait until volunteers start hosting these in cities and towns and piping internet through them. It’ll be such a middle finger to ISPs and their shitty consumer practices!
Sadly the bandwidth of LoRa is way too low to pipe the internet though it. Some simple SMS like messages with multiple minutes delay will be the best that is possible… or maybe if the mesh is very dense a Gemini/Gopher like hypertext.
Darn.
Well, since 2.4GHz is unlicensed, maybe we could develop an open source mid/long range Wi-Fi-like protocol for that!
It exists, but hardware support of this is lacking.
Yes it creates a big mesh network - I’m thinking of getting my community going a bit after I have mine set up.
