LoRa Meshtastic Range Test, Portable Relay & Your Questions - Off-Grid Communication

Here we go! Follow-on video from last week. You want to know ranges? Lets talk about it. Also I'll answer many of your questions to get you started with Meshtastic.

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0:00 Intro
0:37 Range of LoRa and Meshtastic
2:20 Waterproof Relay Setup
5:16 Suburb Range Test
8:00 How to solder the screen on
10:48 Questions from the comments answered!

[StripeyType]

Once more, for the people in the back:
"on grid" or "off grid" terms have nothing to do with any particular feature or capability.
These terms are used *solely* to describe whether or not a system is integrated with public infrastructure.
Solar power? OFF GRID - not because you can't get lots of electricity from solar, but because you are literally not required to be connected to the electrical supply grid.
WiFi in Infrastructure mode? ON GRID (with the caveat that we mean an AP connected to the internet) You're connected to infrastructure! it's in the freaking name!
WiFi in ad-hoc mode? OFF GRID - devices communicate directly with one another without the need for a router
RAIN BARREL FOR DRINKING WATER? OFF GRID
City Water Supply? ON GRID
Texting over LoRa? IT'S DECENTRALIZED AND REQUIRES NO INFRASTRUCTURE YOU ABSOLUTE WALNUT IT IS OFF GRID BY DEFINITION REGARDLESS OF YOUR WIDDLE FEEFEES ABOUT TEXTING.

SMDH

[BluestedSRT]

Next test, use 3 T-Beams, one at your home, one in your car, and one on a drone. Drive out until out of range, then fly the drone up 4 or 500 ft and try again. Keep going until out of range.

[Meshtastic]

Lots of good questions answered here! Happy to colab if there are other questions.

[frequencymanipulator]

* Grabs popcorn. I love this LoRa stuff right now for some reason.

[djk]

2 miles in a suburban environment seems pretty impressive for such a tiny little device. I live smack in the center of a roughly 4 mile by 4 mile town so I should be able to communicate from nearly anywhere in town except south of my home where the larger downtown buildings are located, and that's okay because no one goes there unless they're buying crack

[ricks]

Once again knocking it outta the park w this info. Intriguing concept. Got solar so I’m all in on this off grid comms. And this info is already 2 yrs old. The growth potential is amazing. Thanks again.

[veizour]

Thanks for answering questions, providing a channel suggestion, and running a test. This is great! Really appreciated. +1 upvote

[PrebleStreetRecords]

I love that every time I find a new project to start, you’ve just made a video covering it in great detail. 73!

[alaingoyette]

Thank you Josh and awesome videos from a Ham perspective introduction to LoRa. Just to add on to the conversation, we use LoRa(WAN) as an extension to the limited WiFi range on the devices we build using arduino and Pi to communicate. Some use cases are alerting of wandering cows beyond a limited area on farms by putting proximity tags on cows, humidity and temperature sensing in far away greenhouses from main building, etc the sky is the limit as to what can be developed and has very low energy consumption and very reliable all things considered. Thanks again Josh for very eloquently introducing this technology as a supplement to the Ham comms space.

[thomast]

Not being a HAM user, this is all good stuff Josh. Thanks for the breakdowns in both videos and any future videos as well. Very interesting tech.

[markmaker]

FYI the 3v3 is the 3 volt rail, the next is GND which is ground. Then
serial data pin : SDA (default is GPIO 21)
serial clock pin : SCL (default is GPIO 22)

[don_nskt]

I ordered a LORAWAN device and a couple of LORA devices just to see what this is about. Oddly, there is some crossover with Crypto currency and these things. Fascinating stuff.

[elchainrash]

Great videos on LoRa. You use basic language to describe the way it works which is great for someone like me who would definitely be considered ’green’. Sometimes too much information just causes me to lose interest because I don’t understand the jargon but thankfully you kept it simple which I personally appreciate.
I’m not into HAM but am interested in RC planes/FPV and will watch out for new developments in this field.

[WHJBill]

In a future video can you PLEASE look into using LoRa and ATAK. I have 4 nodes incoming to me and can't wait to get them. I've already scoped out several high points to put nodes and 10W solar panels with 12Ah batteries to make them self contained. Having multiple ATAK devices using the mesh would be invaluable.

[LoneWolf]

a good way to put this is the lora device is acting like a modern version of CB radio... you can use anything with Bluetooth to access it (ancient laptop, super budget tablet, old smart phone... anything)

a good use for this is in a power outage since everything needed can be run off solar and batteries so you can still talk to people.
these can be strung together so for example, here he started having issues at 3miles from his home, if you have a friend the lives at 2.5 miles out and they have one, it can relay your signal so now you have closer to 5 miles in that direction... as more and more people get these devices they will slowly become a larger and larger network that is not tied to a company like cell phones and the internet.
that youtuber with the world record also has a video showing how to make simple walkie talkies that us a mumble server, you can set up a mumble server on a raspberry pi and build your own private long range network.

[Highlander.]

this is badass. I think folks were genuinely confused about the fact it does not use wifi or cell service besides when you initially download the app.

[BenjaminHeyser]

Great video. Since your first video on this I've been thinking of possible uses for staff communications at scouting events. Almost everyone has a smartphone today, but cell service is spotty at a lot of scout camps, so this offers a way to use a texting like service where there's no or limited cell service. The no license part makes it much easier to use when the majority of the group aren't hams. I had thought of trying to use APRS in this situation, but LoRa really looks like a much easier to implement solution. With APRS you need an HT, TNC (assuming you didn't go with a higher end HT with it built in) and most often cables to connect. LoRa is much simpler, just the LoRa device and Bluetooth to the phone, tablet, iPad, etc.

[xtoorgaming]

this is perfect for SARs operations to give out location quickly where signal is less than ideal

[ThingEngineer]

Now… GPS+RSSI+data logging+drive around for hours+google heat map.
:) Great follow up video!

[markdupuis]

Really cool stuff. Thank you Josh for yet another great and informative video.