Is anyone here playing with Meshtastic?
There’s some activity building around town and fun to see more nodes coming online.
There is a Discord as well:
I’m sort of interested, but I’ve been busy lately, and so am unlikely to do the research. On the other hand, if you were to give, say, a 30 minute orientation class, followed by a 60-90 minute how-to class with examples, I would sign up (can’t attend on Saturday till after 3pm or so). Think about it and let us know. Thanks!
In trying to look into Meshtastic by myself, I ran across a couple of YouTube videos for beginners that are both pretty good:
Meshtastic For Dummies AND Heltec V3 Setup for $10
Meshtastic off-grid radio: Fantastic? Waste of Plastic? Or…
They operate (in the USA) near 915 MHz, and do not require a license, as they are considered experimental. The intent is for people to create an ability to send and receive something like a text message on their own improvised network, when the cellular network is either down or unfriendly.
It would be great if MakeICT had a node, both so people at MakeICT could test their own nodes, and so people in the neighborhood would have something to connect to. I will float this idea at the next Electronics Meetup on Sunday, in association with the Two-Way Radio Group. (Attn: @JosephPajor )
Related to this: https://www.reddit.com/r/wichita/comments/1qt58he/flyover_mesh_update_a_meshtastic_community_in/
Seems to be getting a bit more traction… may be worth checking out again
So i got a wild hair and decided to give this a shot. Got a heltec v4 board with the GPS module and a battery, printed a case for it, then began bashing my head on flashing the firmware on it. After many a video and googlefu search finally got it working. Connected up the cell and tested it out.
Come to find out my section of town is sort of a mesh-desert. Plan on hauling the device with me as I work to see what I can see.
If there is intrest it might be a cool little experiment to set up solar powered repeaters strategicly in members yards (with permission) and see if we could flesh out a citywide comms system.
Sidebar - joined the flyover group and they pointed out most of my issues were location based. They also have a few bots monitoring their network. Would be a fun idea to have a MakeICT bot for squaking out info on our own channel.
Edit - After about 12hrs here is my discovered nodes map. There seems to be a desert going from ne to sw.
