[HN Gopher] Meshtastic is an encrypted communications platform f... ___________________________________________________________________ Meshtastic is an encrypted communications platform for the Lora RF protocol Author : buescher Score : 166 points Date : 2022-07-07 16:34 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (meshtastic.org) (TXT) w3m dump (meshtastic.org) | ComputerCat wrote: | Not going to lie, this is pretty neat! | nonrandomstring wrote: | Over the years I've had students doing "people net" style | meshing, BATMAN, opportunistic routing, stuff for warzones or | emergency coms for disaster areas. | | We learned a great place to test this is _festivals_. | | Lots of endpoint mobility. New nodes coming in and out of the | network. Terrible 4/4G cell coverage, so few alternatives. Dead | batteries. Shadow zones. Fairly chilled out delivery time | constraints. Everything you need to tweak your protocols. | | I hope someone into playing with this will set up a larger scale | experiment at Glastonbury, Burning Man or another big music | festival. | erichocean wrote: | You can do the same thing with Bluetooth LE, which everyone | already has. | | Low-bandwidth, but doesn't require any "human in the loop" to | establish the mesh. | eternityforest wrote: | I wonder how hard it would ve to extend the Meshtastic code | to send data via BLE phone to phone as well as LoRa. | | It's usually done on an ESP32, so fixed repeaters can already | handle it, and it would let you try it out without actually | having the hardware. | retrac wrote: | Bluetooth LE is aiming at something slightly different. When | people say several kilometres with LoRa, they do mean in | actual real-world applications. | | Two LoRa transceivers with dinky antennas indoors will do > 1 | km in a suburban environment. With a well-sited outdoor | antenna for one of the transceivers that will increase to 5+ | km. Two well-sited outdoor antennas can do 20+ km if they | have line-of-sight. | | There's nothing else quite like it at the moment. Cellular | networks are close, but higher bandwidth, power, and of | course, licensed spectrum. One could cover an entire large | city with a LoRa network with a dozen well-placed nodes. Its | most common application to date is along those lines, with | utility meters and such. | tagami wrote: | 100m vs up to 8km... | noman-land wrote: | LoRa can get you tens of kilometers line of sight, and | sometimes over a hundred. What kind of reasonable distances | can one get with BLE? | buescher wrote: | BLE Long Range mode can get somewhat over a kilometer line- | of-sight, open-field range. | Spivak wrote: | "My car can go 450 miles per hour 0-60 in 1.7 seconds" | | Well cool story bro but the speed limit is still 65. LoRa | is an amazing technology for exactly what you describe but | festivals are basically "I have very little line of sight | but a fuckton of devices." | | This leads to two different solutions, high bandwidth short | wave communication bouncing between everyone, and putting | towers above everyone which is what cell companies do. | Ground to ground LoRa is neat but not necessarily better. | wgx wrote: | Over my decades of visiting Glastonbury I can report that | cellphone coverage has gone from "it works for some calls but | no data" to "perfect 3G data everywhere on site". The cell | phone infrastructure companies ship in lots of portable masts. | dan000892 wrote: | I have this same need and am preparing an evaluation of | Meshtastic in the field this month. | | I'm part of a volunteer EMS division within a paid fire | department and we staff foot teams and medical carts at large | events at our 90,888-capacity stadium (football, concerts, etc; | well over 100k including tailgaters at our biggest game of the | year) and music festivals with 10-40k attendees on the adjacent | golf course. | | While we have fancy Motorola APX 8000XE, our on-site dispatch | wholly lacks visibility into unit locations and the abysmal | cell service precludes software solutions leveraging mobile | phones. | c7h wrote: | We have tested it successfully with 4 nodes last week at the | Fusion Festival in Germany - one of those where you have to | battle constant cellular network outages - and were surprised | to randomly see fellow meshtastic users extending the mesh | network. It was one of those "open source technology is | amazing" moments :D. | aaaaaaaaata wrote: | This comment will go down in history. | | Super neat stuff. | faxmeyourcode wrote: | Only if this comment can be preserved on the off-grid mesh | ;) | wrycoder wrote: | Paging Cory Doctorow | livueta wrote: | Burning Man is one of the the primary usecases of one of the | core devs, so yeah, it should definitely get some good exercise | in that kind of context. Another acquaintance is a PAX admin | and looking into it for similar reasons. | buescher wrote: | I bet! I can imagine festivals being a good disaster | simulation. | | Meshtastic appears to use a simple flooding algorithm which is | appropriate to what I understand to be the application - a | small group of outdoorspeople keeping tabs on each other with | short messages. One of my takeaways from a similar project I | worked on in a past life was that flooding works well for use | cases like that and just about anything more sophisticated is a | pretty serious research project. BATMAN etc looks like fun to | experiment with. | angst_ridden wrote: | Around October 2020, there was a group of people putting up | battery powered LoRa repeater nodes in the hills around Los | Angeles. I had a few LilyGo TTGO units, one with DisasterRadio | and one with Meshtastic installed. | | I could get occasional packets through to one of the nodes that | was about 6 miles away (line-of-sight). | | My conclusion was that for a city, a much higher transceiver | density would be needed if you wanted viable communications. It's | not outside the realm of possibility. The units themselves are | less than $20/each in bulk, and could be powered with a $5 solar | panel/battery rig. Placement of the units would be key. | | I saw some Hong Kong activists online post designs for | "throwable" battery-powered units. The idea there was to toss out | dozens of them during events where non-internet mesh | communications would be needed. Seems like an interesting use | case, although jamming and the end points (e.g., burner phones | with WiFi->LoRa or Bluetooth->LoRa) are still the weak points in | a scheme like that. | metadaemon wrote: | Is there any concern with encrypted packets sent over radio and | the FCC? | sitzkrieg wrote: | this is ISM, so no | metadaemon wrote: | Yeah I guess if you're on 915MHz in the US you're good. 868, | not so much. | buescher wrote: | Not if you're operating within part 15 limits. But if you're | operating your Lora radio as an amateur radio operator, then | yes. | thcipriani wrote: | I bought a couple of these from aliexpress fully assembled[0] | (along with some massive terrifying batteries[1]). They're cool | little devices. You can send messages via the app on your phone | or by plugging them into your computer via USB. There's evidently | also some wifi connectivity that I haven't experimented with at | all. | | Message shows up in the chat room on the phone and on the other | devices linked to the room. Planning to play with them for | camping Soon(tm). | | [0]: < | https://www.aliexpress.com/item/2255800992363816.html?spm=a2...> | [1]: <https://www.18650batterystore.com/products/sanyo- | ncr18650ga> | olah_1 wrote: | Another similar project: https://reticulum.network/ | RF_Savage wrote: | Meshtastic seems to be the most widespread one so far. And with | the best hardware support. | | Reticulum looks interesting, but what does it bring to the | table compared to previous efforts? | ryukafalz wrote: | Having looked at things like this before (including | Meshtastic) the thing that stuck out to me about Reticulum is | that it's carrier-agnostic. LoRa is cool, but being able to | extend the network over arbitrary channels sounds very | appealing. | rcoder wrote: | Reticulum also needs a general-purpose computer -- RPi, | laptop, etc. -- that can run the Python daemon that | actually handles network traffic. | | Meshtastic doesn't use or provide a TCP/IP stack (aside | from a limited TUN interface wrapper which is really more | of a proof-of-concept) but any device that can connect to a | node using WiFi, BLE, or USB serial can use the network. | ryukafalz wrote: | Yeah, that does seem to be the main downside from what I | can tell. Although Meshtastic devices seem to generally | require a companion device to use most of their | functionality, so I wonder how much that matters at this | stage. | | I definitely would like a small stand-alone communicator | type device at some point though, and yes, that's | probably more feasible with Meshtastic at this point. | (Though there are Feather boards that can run Linux too | which I've thought about playing around with.) | RF_Savage wrote: | But doesn't carrier agnostic in this context mean that it | is very hard to coordinate with people to have compatible | hardware? | | A nice compatible routing protocol does not help when | people have a mix of LoRa, commodity 2.4GHz and 5GHz wifi | as the physical layer. And then add in more esoteric stuff | like 3.6GHz CBRS, 433MHz NPR-70, 900MHz Ubiquiti radios or | new 802.11ah sub-1GHz radios. | ryukafalz wrote: | Maybe, but if you want to connect networks between two | nearby towns for example, it'd be nice to be able to run | that off commodity hardware that's a bit higher-bandwidth | than what you'll get on LoRa. | | And realistically I suspect that people using it for the | same sort of use cases they'd use Meshtastic for will be | using the same LILYGO (and similar) hardware. | nope96 wrote: | What kind of bandwidth and latency would you get using this? Say, | in the suburbs of a major city, two people 5 miles apart... how | many bytes/second? | | I'd love to see something like old school BBS systems take off | again, an off the grid/off the internet network for hobbyists. | | According to https://meshtastic.discourse.group/t/data-bandwidth- | and-late... "But for the default very long range config it takes | about 3 seconds to send 60ish bytes." Hmm, a bit slower than a | 300 baud modem. | airbreather wrote: | If you are licensed there are 5W repeaters for 70cm under $100 | - https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/194144864187. | | Also, you can buy 1 watt Lora modules made by Ebyte, Sparkfun | sell them. | wrycoder wrote: | In the US, the 70 cm ham band is 420 - 450 MHz. The | transceiver you referenced is listed for 410 - 441 MHz. It | could be used by a licensed ham to transmit data, if he/she | determines how to modify or control it to avoid transmitting | on the 410 - 420 MHz frequencies. It would also be necessary | to send station identification[0] per Section 97.119(a) of | the rules, which requires an amateur station to transmit its | "assigned call sign on its transmitting channel at the end of | each communication, and at least every 10 minutes during a | communication." | | It would also be necessary to assure that any harmonics of | 433 MHZ were within regulated limits. | | [0] http://www.arrl.org/news/fcc-proposes-18-000-fine-in- | louisia... | AdamH12113 wrote: | I'm not sure about Meshtastic, but in LoRaWAN, with the largest | spreading factor (= maximum range) the maximum packet size is | 11 bytes. And you get maybe one packet per second at most. | Meshtastic is its own protocol and uses repeaters (and wider | channels?), so I would expect them to do better, but not | several orders of magnitude better. | | I worked on LoRaWAN systems a couple years ago, and from what I | found the biggest determinant of performance was what frequency | band you're in. US915 has a 400ms dwell time limit for single | transmissions, while EU868 has a 1% duty cycle limit. LoRa was | designed for sending _small_ amounts of data _infrequently_ -- | that 's the "low-power" in LPWAN. Where I worked we were | pushing it to the limits to get a couple hundred bytes per | second at close range. LoRa does have some nice properties and | I'm glad to see people using it outside of LoRaWAN, which is | somewhat bulky for point-to-point communication. | rcoder wrote: | Meshtastic can carry a bit more data per packet -- 200-ish | bytes, IIRC -- but the same duty cycle/dwell time constraints | apply. | | The routing model also makes it hard to add more than a few | dozen nodes to a mesh. For small groups over wide distances | that's absolutely fine, but it isn't a great option if you | want to connect large numbers of _people_, unless said people | are clustered around a few devices sharing WiFi or BLE | connection time. (Meshtastic also doesn't really support this | use case b/c of a "one device == one user/identity/mailbox" | model, but that's an application-level choice, not something | imposed by the underlying network.) | jokowueu wrote: | I've joined their discord a while back | | But few time a year I go online and just try to find a simple | Lora device with good range a qwerty keyboard and a simple OS | | It still doesn't exist . Maybe in a few years | itintheory wrote: | There's a LoRa model of the Popcorn Pocket P.C. which will have | a physical keyboard and run Linux, however they're a couple | years behind manufacturing schedule so it's a little doubtful | if it'll ever actually be for sale. | noman-land wrote: | You still can't get this on one package but the closest I've | come so far is using a LoRa capable feather board [0] and a | keyboard feathering [1]. This gets you much of the way there. | | [0] https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-feather/lora-radio- | feath... | | [1] https://www.solder.party/docs/keyboard-featherwing/ | squarefoot wrote: | The Pinephone has a LoRa capable add-on case, but the software | still is in its infancy: https://pine64.com/product/pinephone- | pinephone-pro-pindio-lo... | | The Pocket Popcorn Computer might be closer to what you are | looking for, if and when it will be ready for purchase. | https://pocket.popcorncomputer.com/ | foobarbecue wrote: | What's a typical range between nodes for systems like this? Just | looking for order of magnitude -- are we talking 1km? 10km? | edrxty wrote: | I work with similar systems a lot, given the modulation and | power output, 1-10km would be a reasonable range band, 10km | being line of sight under real world conditions, 1km being | light urban propagation. It could theoretically be much worse | in a dense urban environment with a high noise floor but I | think you can safely put it around or slightly better than the | performance of those blister pack FRS walkie talkies. | | For comparison, my APRS mobilinkd modem attached to a 5 Watt | handheld 144mhz radio will routinely do an order of magnitude | better and the same modem on my 50w mobile car radio will | approach two orders (double the base range plus additional | antenna efficiencies). | londons_explore wrote: | Remember that if anyone manages to get any kind of mesh network | working that regular users can use, they will get immediate and | very hard pushback from mobile network providers. | | People will stop spending $1000/year to have a cell connection if | they can browse the web and message friends using your mesh | network for free. | buescher wrote: | My prediction is that no one will ever get the "join us now and | share the bandwidth" model of mesh networking to work for any | reasonable definition of "work", for both technical and | social/political/human-being reasons. No industry conspiracy | will be necessary. | z3c0 wrote: | That's only if they make it past major ISPs, who have all | decided that acting as a mesh bridge is against their terms of | service. | ajsnigrutin wrote: | I tried it some time ago, and the only way to communicate was to | join a channel with someone you already knew (so basically it | needed two(+) people to synchronize first in person or over some | other channel, and then chat via meshtastic). | | Is there something that supports a "public" chatroom? Something | that would allow you to set up a node on a window in a large | city, become a point in a mesh and be able to join a chatroom | with all the other people (that you don't know yet) and chat | there? | | I don't personally know anyone else who'd use this over some | "normal" chat platform, but live in a building high enough to be | able to set a possibly usable meshpoint to connect with other | enthousiasts and chat about random stuff there. | livueta wrote: | The firmware has a 'default' channel where the psk is well- | known: https://meshtastic.org/docs/settings/channel | | > Selecting a default or any of the simple values from the | following table will use publicly known encryption keys. | They're shipped with Meshtastic source code and thus, anyone | can listen to messages encrypted by them. They're great for | testing and public channels. | | In $west_coast_city I've gotten a fair amount of random pings | on default settings. | | Other projects (using other base technologies) like | https://www.arednmesh.org/ are more focused on joining an | already-existing network than making your own. | sharmin123 wrote: | goodpoint wrote: | It's a pity that LoRa is all proprietary and patented. | | An open alternative would provide more opportunities for | experimenting. | | EDIT: there are alternatives like HaLow and DASH7 on paper but | nothing you can buy (for 4 euro like LoRa) | marcodiego wrote: | I sometimes think about buying one of those LoRa arduino | shields for some experiments. What exactly is proprietary in | these? | goodpoint wrote: | The chipset, the modulation, the protocol itself, it's all | proprietary and patented. | wmf wrote: | Maybe HaLow is more open. | edrxty wrote: | M17 is possibly what you're looking for? Not specifically mesh | but could be used similarly or extended. It's a a protocol that | provides data and digital voice transmissions and works (with | some modification) on a few existing commercial grade handheld | radios running OpenRTX open source firmware. The only thing we | need is a radio that has a Bluetooth module. | ChrisMarshallNY wrote: | This project has been going on for a while. | | I heard about it (here), a couple of years ago. I think the main | reason that I didn't get involved, was because there's quite a | bit of "some assembly required" with the project. | | I don't really have a problem with that, but I wasn't really up | to setting up a tech bench, all over, again. | | I was trying to work with a proprietary system, and they were | quite uncooperative. Once I have the wraps on the project I'm | doing now, I may see what I can do. | livueta wrote: | You're correct that if you buy the most popular board for it | (LilyGO T-Beam) from the source, you need to do some light | soldering to get the screen on, and need to figure out a case | on your own. That said, there's now an ecosystem of people on | Etsy and other places who'll sell you a pre-soldered board in a | nice printed case, e.g. everything under | https://www.etsy.com/shop/QuantumShadow3D. Maybe worth | considering if you just want to kick the tires without | literally getting your hands dirty. | ChrisMarshallNY wrote: | Thanks! | | My dance card is a bit full, now, but this is the kind of | stuff that makes my heart warm. I've been messing with | hardware forever (my current project is all software). | | Is that the main guy behind Meshtastic? I'd probably just get | a couple of the prebuilt radios, but not until it was time | for me to start working on the project. | nullc wrote: | Does meshtastic still have the problem that if there are too many | nearby devices they will "capture" messages and use up all their | hop count before they make it far? | jcbcn wrote: | I've been thinking about this idea recently and finally I've | stumbled across a real world implementation! ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-07-07 23:00 UTC)