When smartphones fail — free P2P wireless mesh networking

Open source, off-grid, decentralized mesh networking on small, affordable devices. That's Meshtastic!

They did not pay us anything to make this video, but they did send the radios that we're using to learn Meshtastic (thus the 'Paid sponsorship' disclosure at the beginning of the video!).

Contents:

00:00 - What is Meshtastic?
01:33 - Setting up the node
04:30 - First mesh message!
06:08 - We're still learning
07:41 - Meshtastic uses?

[StevieCooper]

I dunno if this sounds silly, but I appreciate the quiet conversation, talking about a product. No music or loud talking about whatever. I can just pop this on while I empty this dishwasher and it’s calm.

[tunnelvision]

Over in Vancouver BC we have over 250 nodes now with all the islands connected!

[optical_ideas]

2 things are amazing:
- the idea with these little devices, also they look great
- a new video with jeff and his dad

[Sylvan_dB]

Meshtastic currently uses "flood" routing, which (simplified) means every node on a "channel" gets every message and forwards that message to other nodes. This is easy to implement and conceptualize but has inherent limits to mesh size. There are other more sophisticated mesh routing topologies which can grow mesh networks much larger, but are of course more complex and take more state memory on nodes (which on some meshtastic devices is in short supply).

[earthling_parth]

Jeff, just a gentle reminder that many people including myself really appreciate the subtitles you put in your videos. This is really interesting tech though!

[RyanHenrie]

Please keep doing more on this subject. Digital communication using ham bands would definitely be a reason I would get a license, but the bandwidth and range always seemed too low to make it useful. Would love to see some actual data.

[KevinBourgeois]

Love playing with Meshtastic. Glad to see a video on your channel about it. Thanks for helping get the word out about this

[OuijTube]

just wholesome content: a father and son and some new radios

[wollinger]

Planning on doing that and install repeaters on top of the hotels i work, would cover pretty much the entire city.

[Meshtastic]

Very well done sir! Very very well done.

[turboltr]

Put my node up on the roof a few weeks ago and built up a T-Deck. Tucson has a thriving Meshtastic community with lots of nodes and several high profile nodes that give excellent coverage.

[StariusPrime]

I’m so glad to see you do this Jeff. I’ve only just recently learned about Meshtastic and I’ve been curious to know more but didn’t know where to start.

[frogandspanner]

It's fun to see a youngster and his son presenting together.

[fronbasal]

So glad you guys are talking about Meshtastic ❤

[ErikPelyukhno]

My broken brain saw the purple unit and thought “that’s a big vape” 😅

[tomgidden]

Back in 2008 or so, my friend and I pondered how well a local neighborhood mesh network could work based on equipping (implanting, even) nodes on neighborhood cats, using kinetic power recovery. Low bandwidth, obviously, but could be useful for signalling and/or location. My memory's hazy though... considering the idea, I think you can guess why.

[Credon]

Thanks for the video, you guys make a great team. =) I just ordered 2 today.

[warmon]

For most people, the range is going to be a couple miles "at most" unless you have the antenna placed up very high to give another node line-of-sight to it in my experience (been running a couple nodes since April).

In the Hampton Roads region (Virginia), I did get a connection to a boater's node in the Chesapeake Bay 13 Miles away from my node (LOS, no hops), but it's not the norm for these ranges (and I haven't seen that node in a few months now). Most nodes that connect my node is about 1/2 mile away before I loose connection.

For my base node, I am using the Heltec V3 and the Rokland 8.5 dBi Omni Outdoor Helium 915 MHz Antenna (40 in) mounted in my attic space (would mount on roof but got solar panels in the way so its the 2nd best place I can put it).

[zerofoxd]

Yay Jeff is on the mesh! I’ll have to send you some of my cases when I’m back from my hols!

[arekx]

People in UK (so 10% duty cycle max as required by law causing oversaturation problems) are troubling with meshtastic reliability. Messages get lost, you don't get info on why and so on. People tried to use it at some convention (I think it was in USA) - it failed miserably due too much nodes in one place. Here my meshtastic devices haven't seen single other meshtatsic user so far (there are some > 10km away but that's not in reach due to woods/hills). Fun project, fun to play with it but we have to wait for a lot more development for more serious uses.