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Any one use mesh networks like mesh core?
I don’t know if anyone is interest in mesh networks like MeshCore. I have been dabbling in it, and it’s an interesting concept of distributed LoRa radios making a community network.
There has been some recent drama with MeshCore where in a nutshell there has been a disagreement over control of the project and probably ultimately money.
If anyone else uses MeshCore (or meshtastic), what has your experience of it been? What are your thoughts about the future of the project with the drama? I don’t think it will be a big deal, I suspect it will blow over without a large fracture but it’s very much a guess rather than considered view.
My partner and I played around with some LoRa devices during a con at the start of the year- I had purchased a number of the Seeed Tracker L1 boards, and designed and printed some casings for them. I deliberately chose meshtastic over meshcore because the latter was giving off the wrong vibes (turf-war nonsense, and astroturfing on forums any time meshtastic came up). Unfortunately, while fun to play around with, they were never reliable enough to be useful. On top of that, the L1 devices would empty their batteries with no GPS lock. I will probably mess around with them again at some point- maybe they have other uses?
I also got some wrong vibes from mesh core, but then I equally got those vibes from meshtastic too. Ultimately I preferred the software architecture of mesh core and in the UK it seems a lot more popular. Having a backbone of repeaters seems to make it more scalable. I will reserve judgement about reliability at present until I have more experience.
I use a t-1000e device which is very portable but antenna is very limited. I was going to try the L1 actually, can you expand on the issue you were having? Do you mean when it can’t get a GPS lock the battery drained quickly?
I bought an R1 Neo during last Christmas. It was a bit of a pain picking a device and choosing between MeshCore and Meshtastic as a newbie, I went the easier route of buying a device that already "works" in the Mestastic network.
I use quotes because I guess it technically works as designed but it wasn't what I expected, there are a lot of nodes around me and still (or maybe because of it?) the communication is flimsy. It's definitely not for emergencies.
At some point I lost interest and simply left it on 24/7 to see the map filling up with nodes around my area. Not all of them share location but it's still kinda fun to see the ones that do.
Other than that I'll probably not use it again :/
I have a couple small meshtastic Heltec V3 radios which I've dabbled with, but unfortunately we live in a place with poor line of sight to neighboring areas (in kind of a depression) and even though I take it to work into a busy suburb of a metro area, I rarely see any local activity, so it hasn't been all that useful. Strangely enough, I'm now visiting my parents in a more rural area but with good LOS across a small town valley, and I'm seeing lots of devices and even some conversations.
I have it in a utility pouch constantly plugged into a power bank that I keep topped off, so battery life isn't an issue (but it does run down quickly).