[HN Gopher] Meshtastic 64 - A meshtastic radio for the Commodore 64
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Meshtastic 64 - A meshtastic radio for the Commodore 64
Author : geerlingguy
Score : 99 points
Date : 2025-09-23 23:54 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (64jim64.blogspot.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (64jim64.blogspot.com)
| simonjgreen wrote:
| Pretty cool. I wish Meshtastic had more focus on routing and a
| way to safely do store & fwd. It's difficult to actually mesh
| well with it. I run a few solar powered higher altitude nodes and
| provide reasonable coverage but I've observed many messages never
| reach their destination.
| NoiseBert69 wrote:
| Looking at their GitHub there are some things upcomming
|
| - They want to make device telemetry opt-in. This will cause
| the network to be more quiet
|
| - A few patches ended up in master for handling corner cases of
| their flooding and next-hop routing algorithm
|
| - There's also a merge request ("Add packet replay feature")
| which maybe can solve the reliability problem
|
| Currently bigger Meshtastic networks are very very unreliable.
| I almost cannot traceroute a device that is one or two hops
| away. And our channels are not very saturated (10-20% ChUtil).
| firesteelrain wrote:
| This. I like the idea of Meshtastic however APRS is much more
| extensive and even has satellite coverage like the ISS.
| rfmoz wrote:
| It would work a Meshtastic repeater from the ISS?
| NoiseBert69 wrote:
| LoRa is extremely robust and can work with super weak
| signals. At the price of being very very slow in the most
| reliable configuration .
|
| That combination is toxic for a high amount of parallel
| users.
|
| I think it would need big modifications: fast uplink and
| robust slow downlink.
| firesteelrain wrote:
| It would not. We would need to make a case to add
| Meshtastic. Amateur radio has had a much better chance
| since the days of the Space Shuttle. Astronauts routinely
| make ISS to Earth contacts with amateur radio operators.
| There is also ARISS.
|
| 5w ISS contacts are hard enough as it is
| Gigachad wrote:
| APRS requires a license right?
| firesteelrain wrote:
| Correct. Developed by the late Bob Bruninga. I had many
| email exchanges with Bob and we were able to send SSTV
| images through his NO-* series of amateur radio satellites
| with some technical advice a few years ago.
|
| APRS is much more extensive and even available via
| commercial ham radio
| mikeytown2 wrote:
| Checkout MeshCore, it has the concept of a room server which is
| a private store and forward server. Also see this
| https://github.com/mikecarper/meshfirmware/blob/main/MeshCor...
| thw_9a83c wrote:
| In case you didn't know what Meshtastic [0] is: Meshtastic(r) is
| a project that enables you to use inexpensive LoRa radios as a
| long range off-grid communication platform in areas without
| existing or reliable communications infrastructure.
|
| [0]: https://meshtastic.org/
| spiritplumber wrote:
| Cool! We made https://www.robots-everywhere.com/cellsol/ in 2020
| but I think Meshtastic is further along. However, ours can run on
| an atmel328.
|
| We also respect and forward Meshtastic and DisasterRadio packets,
| but there is currently no reciprocity. What can be done about it?
| khimaros wrote:
| how about reticulum?
| xtajv wrote:
| It pains me to mention this but I don't think it's responsible
| not to: https://github.com/meshtastic/firmware/issues/4030
|
| At time of writing (2025-09-27, plus or minus a timezone), there
| does not appear to be any serious attempt to secure application-
| layer message contents. (At least, not yet)
|
| My hope is that this cool new radio link option will still gain
| traction and grow and develop without painting itself into a
| corner, security-wise.
|
| To wit- security hints on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSI_model
| have improved _substantially_ since my last readthrough.
| ahdanggit wrote:
| I appreciate you pointing that out. I've been curious about
| meshastatic and wondered how well the encryption was being
| handled.
| mikeytown2 wrote:
| Check out the alternative https://github.com/meshcore-
| dev/MeshCore Seattle has the largest functioning mesh core
| installation in the world
| wtallis wrote:
| MeshCore seems to enforce a strict separation between
| client devices and repeater devices, which is a significant
| downside for many use cases.
| mdevttt wrote:
| As if the Meshtastic devs care about anything but pretending to
| be a business masquerading as an open source project.
|
| They are quite possibly one of the most toxic projects right
| now.
| leetrout wrote:
| I keep seeing folks in my circles playing with it but this is
| the first I have heard this opinion.
|
| Could you elaborate?
| geerlingguy wrote:
| It seems like there are some people in the Meshtastic and
| MeshCore community who have it out for each other, for
| reasons beyond me.
|
| I've only personally tested Meshtastic, and from a
| technical perspective, it still feels very beta, and I
| wouldn't put critical communications on it. However, it's a
| fun introduction to LoRa and long range low power RF, and
| can be a fun way to communicate much like I think amateur
| radio was to its early adopters.
|
| I think one thing that causes a lot of community
| strangeness is the strong push by some to make it what it's
| not, like some doomsday-proof communication system that
| will outlive cellular networks and atomic bombs. It could
| be useful but requires skilled operators and coordination
| to work well (like using different frequencies and coding
| at events for much more bandwidth).
| Hackbraten wrote:
| At least in the linked issue, the project member who, on
| request of an outside contributor, reopened the issue seemed
| pretty open towards a fix?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Jeri Ellsworth posted that she has her Minitel on Meshtastic:
| https://bsky.app/profile/jeriellsworth.bsky.social/post/3lzj...
| bullen wrote:
| What frequency is the one that you can buy?
|
| Is there an assembly application planned or will it be basic for
| now?
| jim-64 wrote:
| This is my project. I've only built 915MHz ones since I'm in
| the USA but I could provide 868 too. Thanks, I should note
| this! BASIC works well for parsing strings, printing to the
| screen, and using the Kernal serial routines. I do have some
| ideas of helper code using assembly that may get added, but
| plan to keep the main code BASIC.
| bullen wrote:
| I think 433 would be even better?
|
| Or 169MHz if meshtastic supports it? Edit: Seems no, sadge.
|
| If you add EU freq. I will buy!
| _joel wrote:
| Nice, Jeff Geerling / Adrian Black mashup needed
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Finally got to meet Adrian at VCF Midwest, as I've gone down
| the retro rabbit hole his videos are a great reference. And he
| and others have built up some invaluable tools to diagnose and
| fix quirks on these old systems.
|
| Would like to figure out Meshtastic on the Apple II as well!
| jim-64 wrote:
| Thanks! This is my project. Happy to answer any questions.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Thanks for showing it at VCF! I'm glad to have met you and
| gotten to talk about the setup, even better to see more of the
| story on your blog.
| tclancy wrote:
| Oh man, I have all my retro consoles, but the C64 and 128 were
| the only gear my parents sold out from under me. I should be
| happy it's not taking up space in a closet but stuff like this
| makes me miss it dearly.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| I built a Meshtastic and found a few nodes but made 0 contacts.
| Gave up after a few weeks. The community seems to be more
| interested in talking about it and showing pictures of their gear
| as opposed to actually doing anything with it.
|
| It's like a way less fun ham radio.
| indigodaddy wrote:
| I spy Trader Joe's balsamic vinegar?
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