[HN Gopher] Meshtastic: An open source, off-grid, decentralized,...
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Meshtastic: An open source, off-grid, decentralized, mesh network
Author : 882542F3884314B
Score : 285 points
Date : 2024-01-01 02:57 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (meshtastic.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (meshtastic.org)
| new299 wrote:
| I bought a pile of LoRa/Meshtastic stuff and tried to research it
| and figure out if I could easily use something like APRS to log
| my location and plot it on a map.
|
| Seemed much harder than the process of setting up an APRS iGate
| and viewing my location on aprs.fi
|
| I'd like to try again sometime though, but feel like I need a
| good getting started guide to motivate me!
| anakaine wrote:
| I've got a stack of meshtastic lora hardware. I found it to be
| way harder to get something operating functionally than it
| should have been.
| walrus01 wrote:
| Before anyone gets too excited about this - half duplex/TDD-like
| mesh radio systems with _omnidirectional_ antennas are one of the
| LEAST efficient possible ways of building a wireless village
| /town scale IP network. The thing about an omni antenna talking
| to another omni is that an omnidirectional antenna is also a 360
| degree noise gatherer, and gathers traffic/timeslot occuyping
| stuff that might be coming from other, slightly further away,
| mesh nodes it can hear that your radio is _not_ immediately
| engaged in tx /rx with...
|
| Similarly, for everything that you transmit packets towards
| another specific node, 99% of your RF signal is going in azimuth
| directions that you don't want and don't need, but because it's
| an omni it goes everywhere. Raising the noise floor for all other
| nearby nodes of similar hardware configuration.
|
| I would encourage people who want to do something like this on a
| very tight budget to look into the designed for purpose point-to-
| point (primarily parabolic reflector based) 802.11ac/ax based
| radio systems that exist to form L2 ethernet bridges between two
| locations. And some newer very low cost 24 GHz and 60 GHz based
| stuff also designed for exclusively line-of-sight (and line-of-
| fresnel-zone-clearance) point-to-point bridges.
|
| LoRA stuff is also much better if have fixed-link needs between
| two spots in bands far below the typical 2.4 or 5.x GHz, working
| in VHF/UHF-like bands (or generally anywhere below 1300 MHz), and
| can point a few yagi-uda or dipole type antennas at each other
| instead of having two omnidirectional antennas talk to each
| other.
|
| If you have sites which are not mobile and do not move around or
| change location relative to each other, and you want better link
| reliability and data rates, I would strongly encourage people to
| look into using _just about anything else that isn 't an omni_ to
| form network links between nodes.
|
| randomly chosen example in 5 seconds of googling, note gain
| pattern in one specific direction:
|
| https://www.elprocus.com/design-of-yagi-uda-antenna/
|
| One of the cool things being done with LoRA-type chipsets and RF
| modules these days is ExpressLRS, which implements a serial UART
| bridge between remote controller and UAV (or unmanned boat,
| ground vehicle, etc) for link between human and onboard flight
| controller. Evolution of the same general idea as TBS Crossfire
| for RC applications.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=expresslr...
| kaliqt wrote:
| We could even slap these on drones in a rotation to keep
| boosting signal for a sector.
|
| There's so much possibility to bypass ISPs...
| lormayna wrote:
| This is why stuff like smart antennas and beamforming were
| invented. But for a system like LoRA that has a very low
| thoughput (AKA slow in the time domain), it's not an easy
| concept to apply in mobility.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| That's a whole lot of commenting from someone who clearly
| doesn't know what meshtastic is.
|
| It's text messaging with channels, some provisions for nodes
| transmitting sensor data, and some location data.
|
| It's not intended to provide TCP/IP networking.
| walrus01 wrote:
| Almost inevitably, people building "mesh" networks _do_ try
| to run IP over them, because the most common and popular
| applications and services are all TCP /IP based.
|
| DIY things capable of a few hundred kbps and text only are a
| very niche application. "Mesh" at very low data rates and
| duty cycles has very good purposes when purchased in a fully
| packaged single purpose industrial/embedded system from a
| vendor with support, such as how electrical grid operators
| implement some forms of smart meters.
| datadeft wrote:
| I think your comment is based on something that LoRa is not.
|
| > building a wireless village/town scale IP network
|
| This was never its goal. You can build a simple messaging
| network for text that has a pretty good range and low
| bandwidth. That is all.
| niles wrote:
| LoRA , capital A for LLM training, LoRa for wireless
| getwiththeprog wrote:
| See previous discussions
| https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=meshtastic.org
| dreamer7 wrote:
| Is it feasible to create a mesh network using Bluetooth on
| participating smart phones?
|
| In crowded places like college campuses, we could run campus IM
| on it for instance
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| I think any wireless mesh like this runs into issues with
| scaling because you cannot efficiently route messages between a
| bunch of moving nodes as the network topology is always
| changing. You have to use a flood network, which is also what
| Meshtastic does [0]. Flood networking wastes bandwidth with
| every node repeating itself, and it gets even worse with
| wireless that's a shared spectrum.
|
| All these mesh networks have a max hop limit, to prevent
| messages from bouncing around the network repeatably, but also
| not guaranteeing messages reach their destination. Meshtastic
| defaults to 3. Gotenna I believe is also Lora and is also 3.
| Bridgefy is bluetooth and has a 250 max hop limit, but also a
| 7d TTL, basically not close to real-time.
|
| It could be made better by having statically position nodes
| that keep track of the nodes it can reach. And then having all
| these statically positioned nodes communicate with each other
| on a different wireless spectrum so you don't interfere with
| regular nodes. Since that topology isn't changing, you can
| efficiently route message between them. Now that's basically
| just regular wifi mesh.
|
| [0] https://meshtastic.org/docs/overview/mesh-algo
| neilalexander wrote:
| There are more state-of-the-art routing protocols working to
| solve this problem for mesh networks. A couple examples of
| projects I have been involved in:
|
| https://yggdrasil-network.github.io/
| https://github.com/matrix-org/pinecone
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| I don't know if I consider those the same thing as they're
| not fully wireless meshes. They'll use the internet when
| possible, so it wouldn't be an off-grid network. And
| without internet, it won't scale.
|
| So if you're using internet anyways, at high-density
| locations like a college campus, just deploy more wireless
| APs in the area instead of building an inefficient wireless
| mesh network. The wireless mesh part of those protocols is
| only useful for areas with no internet, but somehow enough
| people to build a chain to an internet connected device.
|
| Reading Pinecone's documentation: "The only requirements
| for a peering today are that it is stream-oriented and
| reliable" [0]. I don't think a phone that's constantly
| moving around and battery operated (so you want to power-
| save by transmitting less) is considered reliable.
|
| Pinecone's offline protocol also will not route to devices
| that haven't been seen in the last 10 seconds [1].
| Basically preventing phones from sleeping or going into a
| low power state. That's also the kind of protocol that only
| works for small wireless mesh networks. A huge wireless
| mesh network would quickly be filled with "I'm here"
| broadcasts if a device is expected to do it every 10
| seconds and it has to be repeated for everyone else on the
| mesh.
|
| [0] https://matrix-org.github.io/pinecone/introduction
|
| [1] https://matrix-
| org.github.io/pinecone/virtual_snake/maintena...
| geraldhh wrote:
| the 'find my shit' networks deployed within the gog and apl
| ecosystems can be used to piggyback on for low-bw off-grid
| communication
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| Interesting! Any further reading you would recommend on this?
| neilalexander wrote:
| Yes it is possible. The P2P Matrix demos worked in this way but
| they were alpha-quality at best, shoehorning today's federation
| protocol on top of Pinecone mesh routing over Bluetooth/Wi-Fi.
| It still needed a lot of work to adapt the Matrix federation
| protocol to be properly usable in real-time without full-mesh
| connectivity.
| mapmap wrote:
| iOS limits what you can do in the background with Bluetooth. At
| least one of the iPhones needs to have your mesh app running in
| the foreground to communicate with another iPhone that has your
| app. Two locked phones with your mesh app will not be able to
| communicate over Bluetooth.
| VikingCoder wrote:
| Isn't there an open source Android mesh network? Based on Wifi or
| Bluetooth?
|
| I thought I heard about mesh networks being used in protests
| years ago...?
|
| Do we still not have something viable?
| kaliqt wrote:
| It's crazy if we don't yet. Hardware decentralization is sorely
| lacking.
| myself248 wrote:
| I've heard of Briar and Bridgeify and Serval and Meshenger,
| what others are there?
| tecleandor wrote:
| There is LibreMesh. There are other distros using OLSR and/or
| B.A.T.M.A.N. routing too.
|
| Check https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-
| user/network/wifi/mesh/start
| zikduruqe wrote:
| https://berty.tech/messenger
| YoshiRulz wrote:
| https://hyperboria.net, formerly Project Meshnet
| woleium wrote:
| i remember something that was deployed in puerto rico after the
| hurricane in 2017.. a quick search later:
| https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/14/a-mesh-network-spontaneous...
| VikingCoder wrote:
| ... And it looks like the consumer products are all
| completely unavailable right now. Seems like they're focusing
| their efforts on rescue, emergency, and tactical products...
|
| Dang it!
| goodpoint wrote:
| Briar for sure, but Android is hostile to mesh networking
| (unsurprisingly).
| linuxandrew wrote:
| yggdrasil can use WiFi on Android, I haven't tried it yet -
| https://yggdrasil-network.github.io/. yggdrasil gives you the
| ability to use TCP/IP applications over its mesh network but
| doesn't offer any end-user functionality itself.
|
| Manyverse can use WiFi for decentralised social networking -
| https://www.manyver.se/. They're currently in the middle of a
| rewrite of the backend and a protocol switch away from Secure
| Scuttlebutt to their own protocol currently named PPPPP.
|
| Reticulum/Sideband offers a P2P messaging system over WiFi or
| other mediums - https://github.com/markqvist/sideband
| danesparza wrote:
| You're thinking of this, I think:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FireChat
|
| And it was discontinued in 2018 and not open source.
| weinzierl wrote:
| I just played with it a little bit and my first impression was
| that the Meshtastic app is exceptionally well made. I only tried
| iOS, so I can only speak for that, but I was pleasantly
| surprised.
| Hugsun wrote:
| Has anyone deployed and used a system like this here?
|
| If so, what was its purpose and why this technology over others?
| bilinguliar wrote:
| Preppers use it as a backup communication channel.
|
| The scenarios are: 1. Your country is invaded,
| and you are building a resistance. 2. Your government
| becomes a dictatorship. You want to fight back. 3.
| Natural disasters: the grid and mobile network are down. You
| want to organize and work together to help each other.
|
| Meshtastic nicely blends into the existing IoT LoRa traffic.
| And give you some sort of invisibility.
|
| Other scenarios are similar to ham radio - asking other dudes
| about the weather.
| n00p wrote:
| Or you are out in the mountains with spotty cell coverage and
| want to be able to send messages to other friends around you
|
| Not everything prepper-like is for prepper-only usage
| datadeft wrote:
| Yes. We use it to have a backup communication channel when all
| other networks are down. This is an extremely unlikely
| scenario. If that happens wireless communication is going to be
| the least of the problems.
| leashless wrote:
| We used it at Burning Man in 2023. Burning Man is hard on gear
| and a surprisingly busy RF environment. It was reliable and has a
| good user experience. I really liked it.
| reissbaker wrote:
| I used it at EDC this past year and it similarly worked quite
| well.
| danesparza wrote:
| My understanding is that LoRA isn't high bandwidth -- so just
| out of curiosity, what kinds of things did you use this for?
| eql5 wrote:
| The official meshtastic app can only transmit text messages
| (max ~230 characters) plus location data (GPS). Optionally it
| can also transmit sensor data (see RAK WisBlock devices,
| where you can add sensors for temperature, humidity, air
| quality).
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Can the mesh control plane be
| orchestrated/monitored/bridged by out of band comms like
| cellular IP or StarLink?
| 3abiton wrote:
| Any articles to read about it?
| moffkalast wrote:
| Never ask a woman her age, a man his salary, and a LoRA
| transceiver what its throughput rate is.
|
| At double digit bits per second, it has to be like a few
| characters per second at best or even less with packet headers,
| error correction, etc.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > Never ask a woman her age, a man his salary
|
| Wee bit sexist...
|
| EDIT: Yes I know it's a proverb, I'm not blaming the parent
| post.
|
| EDIT: 4 downvotes? Nice.
| Cort3z wrote:
| It's a saying
| ZyanWu wrote:
| You're taking things out of context and commenting on the
| newly created problem. HN's not the right place for this
| ac29 wrote:
| Reading the datasheet for one of the most common radios used
| for meshtastic devices (Semtech SX1262) the lowest bitrate is
| pretty slow: 18bps. But, with larger channel sizes and lower
| spreading factors, it goes up to 62.5kbps. I cant tell exactly
| which mode meshtastic uses by default, but it looks like there
| are 8 presets.
| suck-my-spez wrote:
| Used to use this but it's long gone.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FireChat
| antirez wrote:
| Related: https://github.com/antirez/freakwan/
|
| Disclaimer: I'm the author. The concept is similar to Meshtastic,
| but the goal was to make more documented and clear choices at
| protocol level, to have a much simpler to hack and adapt
| implementation, and so forth.
|
| If you happen to understand Italian, I gave a talk about it here:
| https://talks.codemotion.com/introduzione-alla-tecnologia-rf...
| spiritplumber wrote:
| https://www.robots-everywhere.com/cellsol/ magari si collabora?
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Oh very cool! Do you have any stats on distance and other
| things you can achieve? I can't believe you have a Mesh WAN
| project!!
| antirez wrote:
| Hey! With the maximum spreading, and the stock (very poor)
| omni antennas in the Lilygo devices, you get this:
|
| ~ 500 - 1km: urban landscape, tons of buildings in the
| middle. Like opposite sides of a very crowded block.
|
| ~ 5 km: open landscape, some small hills in the middle, no
| good optical contact.
|
| ~ 50 / 80 km: direct optical contact, especially if CRC is
| disabled.
| EGreg wrote:
| I wanted to be part of the "Decentralized Web" movement that
| TimBL spoke at but it died down.
|
| I signed up to go to "offline camp" in Oregon (anyone else?) but
| it was canceled due to a large forest fire (probably related to
| Camp Fire) so I wound up camping near a river instead.
|
| I've spent $1 million and over a decade to build open source
| community software that can run on any commodity servers -- on a
| plane, on a cruise ship like Norwegian Cruise Lines, in rural
| villages, etc.
|
| We want to help local education (including Afghan girls, but we
| are also in touch w the RohingyaProject.com and others to help
| stateless refugees).
|
| Anyway, these mesh networks exist and our cellphone hardware is
| great, what's missing is great backend software to wean people
| off Big Tech (Twitter, Facebook) the way the Web did for AOL,
| MSN, and the way Wordpress did for Web 1.0
|
| If anyone wants to get involved, or knows a good "decentralized
| web" or "indieweb" movement that actually thrives, comment below
| and let me know how to get in touch.
|
| https://qbix.com/blog/2021/01/15/open-source-communities/
|
| Recent article covering the platform:
|
| https://www.laweekly.com/restoring-healthy-communities/
| spiritplumber wrote:
| https://www.robots-everywhere.com/cellsol/ We made this in
| 2020ish and it respects meshtastic and disasterradio packets.
| AleaImeta wrote:
| Some real-life experience using the Android app, showing e.g.
| traceroute functionality from a very enthusiastic Brit:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmGr1pGJ4sM
| eql5 wrote:
| During summer I played around with this technology and built a
| simple messaging app (written in Common Lisp), see:
|
| http://cl-repl.org/meshtastic.htm
| fsmv wrote:
| It says it only scales to 80 nodes, so sounds like you won't find
| a mesh to join unless you make it yourself and it can only be
| people you know.
|
| I want a global mesh network to replace the internet
| xpe wrote:
| > I want a global mesh network to replace the internet
|
| What are your design criteria you have in mind? There are tough
| tradeoffs around discoverability, latency, availability,
| security.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Me too. I think the way forward--at least for now--is not large
| meshes, but partition tolerant apps.
|
| A search for "Is Taco Express open right now?" should not
| resolve a globally unique name to a globally unique address and
| then ask some distant server which will then ask for your
| location info so that it can figure out which taco express you
| mean. That's so fragile.
|
| Instead the search should propagate through whichever meshes
| happen to be in range until it encounters a node which is
| authoritative on Taco Express hours (which is probably a
| raspberry pi at the Taco Express). You get local results
| because they're local to the query.
|
| The problem of bridging these meshes is interesting, but it's
| just not that useful until we have an app ecosystem that
| doesn't rely on stable addresses for individual nodes.
|
| We need context addressing and pub/sub, not server addressing
| and request/response. It's going to require a pretty big
| conceptual shift. Sadly, I don't see that shift happening until
| some disaster convinces us that it's necessary.
| rj45jackattack wrote:
| I jumped head first into meshtastic. Sadly after setting up and
| 3d printing a case, mounting an external antenna ... No other
| users in my area. :(
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