I stumbled across a video of someone tinkering with radios to create mesh networks, and so began this week’s minor (major?) obesssion. It’s essentially a way to create off-grid messaging networks using small low powered devices and radios that utilise LoRa radio communication standard. For some, the attraction is being able to maintain communications in remote rural areas where proper infrastrucutre is patchy, for others it’s ensuring you have a way to reach the outside world in the event of disasters which take the grid offline. For me, it’s the nerd factor of seeing how far I can broadcast and whether it’s possible to reach people 100’s of miles away.
Meshtastic and MeshCore are technologies that occupy a similar space. There seems to be some mild community drama about which is best. The most level headed take I’ve seen is that these are two different philosophies of off-grid mesh networking. Meshtastic is primarily focused on adhoc networks, whilst MeshCore is primarily focused on infrastructure. Which is to say that Meshtastic works well with small groups and/or rurual geography, but struggles to scale in the same way that MeshCore can one you get past a certain number of nodes. In practice it also seems like MeshCore is more reliable for messaging once it’s setup and easier to troubleshoot when issues arise. So really this boils down to what your use case might be. The good news is that the devices used can be easily flashed to work with either standard. So I don’t feel too anxious of investing time and effort in the wrong thing.
There aren’t any meshes near where I live, or at least none that I can reach, so initially this is an excercise in talking to myself. I decided to go down the MeshCore route initially as I liked the idea of separating the repeater from the client device (aka companion device in MeshCore terminology). The job of a repeater is to listen out for other nodes on the mesh and forward any traffic on. This means that the companion and repeater devices can be tailored more specifically to their respective roles. For example, something portable and battery powered for the companion device versus something stationary, high up, with larger antenna for the repeater. It also means I can leave the repeater on and running, just in case anyone in the local vicinity does appear on the mesh as a node.
I took the companion device with me on a trip to Bristol earlier in the week, and I was able to get response from nodes as far as Manchester, North London, Hastings and the Isle of Wight! Blew my mind slightly considering how tiny the device and antenna are.
This encouraged me to start the beginnnings of a mesh at home and experiment to see what sort of range of communication I can get. I live in a valley, so the geography isn’t super helpful in terms of getting line of sight to other radio antennas. Before I go really crazy and try to figure out how I start covertly placing solar powered repeater nodes on the top of tall hills to improve reach, I thought I’d just start small and simple and iterate from there.
I 3d printed some better cases to house the companion device. This connects to my phone via bluetooth which enables me to use the MeshCore messaging client. I also printed a case for the repeater, which I’m going to put in my loft. I also purchased some better antennas to replace the very basic ones that come with the Heltek v3 radio devices that I’d bought. Apparently, when it comes to radio antennas, height is might, so ideally I’d attach the repeater to an external pole that extends above the roof line. But as I say, trying to start small and simple!
Once I’ve got the repeater situated in the loft (job for the weekend) I’m going to test to see what the reach is like by getting out and about with my companion device. The MeshCore client app has a very helpful tool to simulate different positions for repeaters, showing the potential reach of the radio signal on the map. I could feasibly reach the next village up the valley and the local town if this is to be believed.
I’ve been reading…
- How the light gets in. https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/15/how-the-light-gets-in/#theories-of-change
I’ve been watching…
- Star Wars : The force awakens (better than I remembered!)
- Star Wars : The last jedi (visually stunning, pacing is a bit uneven)
- Star Wars : Rise of Skywalker (worse than I remembered!)
- Rogue One : A Star Wars Story (still good!)
- Starfleet Academy, Eps 1 + 2 (Okay? I’m not sure if this is for me, but I’m sticking with it for now)