An ideal application for mesh networking is off-grid communication; when there’s no cellular reception and WiFi won’t reach, wide-area technologies like LoRa can be used to create ad hoc wireless networks. Whether you’re enjoying the outdoors with friends or conducting a rescue operation, a cheap and small gadget that will allow you to create such a network and communicate over it would be a very welcome addition to your pack.
This is precisely the purpose of the Meshtastic project, which aims to take ready-to-use ESP32 LoRa progression forums and turn them into affordable mesh network communicators. All you want to do is acquire one of the compatible cards, install the firmware, and start with the mesh. An Android app that will allow you to use the mesh network to send basic text messages is now available in alpha, and eventually you’ll be able to run Signal via the LoRa link.
The developer [Kevin Hester] tells us that we’re still in the early stages and there’s still a lot of painting to be done. In fact, you will actively involve other like-minded people in the project. So if you’ve enjoyed the ESP32 or mobile app progress and making personal communications over long-range wireless networks turns out to be your kind of party, this may be your lucky day.
From the user’s point of view, this task is incredibly accessible. You don’t want to gather any traditional hardware, other than perhaps 3D printing a case for your specific board. The first time, you have to update the firmware with esptool. py, but after that, [Kevin] says that long-term updates can be managed through the smartphone app.
By the way, the main difference between the two maps is that the larger and more expensive one includes GPS. The mesh network paintings look and feel will work with any of the maps, but if everyone in your organization has the GPS-equipped version, all users will be able to see everyone else’s location in netpaintings.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen LoRa used to identify off-network communications, and in fact, it probably won’t be the last. The generation is the best for making devices communicate where no infrastructure exists, and we’re excited. to see more examples of how it can be used for this.
Thank you for this article! By the way, the Android app (yesterday) now has an early alpha version: https://github. com/geeksville/Meshtastic-Android/blob/master/README. md
It would be wonderful if anyone else would like to work on this (fun) task with me and I’ll be happy to help you if you have any questions.
You work with other people’s radio in the event of a disaster, your goals are very similar.
Oh! He had discovered them, but seemed more ambitious. I’ll send you a note. Thank you!
They are more complex than you might suggest; Tap https://github. com/fitzdoingprojects to get the latest information.
Fresh beans will do! Thank you!
Are you on APRS?
Hi Kevin, I work with Lora on remote farms without mobile or wifi coverage. I’m interested in creating a mesh or repeater type function for esp32 nodes with no line of sight. Are you running this or a solution?
Yes, this task is primarily intended for the use case of the “GPS Communicator for Hikers”. But it’s also designed as a generalized reusable widget for communications in any application. It will allow you to send packets and (slowly) generate results to some other node, and “how this happened in between” is not “your problem” ;-).
Of course, a certain amount of line-of-sight is required over a significant range, but this can be done across a series of nodes.
The idea would be to either put your code into the same ESP32 device with the existing network glue, or talk to the ESP32 from your device over bluetooth or serial. That’s actually how the current android app does its thing.
Dear Sir. First of all, thank you for giving me this to talk about.
God bless…..
Hi Vishal, thank you for your message. I think this task can (3 months, after the first completion of the initial deliverable of the hiker-focused mesh communication app) work well for this. Some of my other comments that I just made in this thread might also be helpful to you. .
In the long term, we may communicate this on the developer’s communication page: https://gitter. im/Meshtastic/community
Hi Tom, I’m employing Lora to control a water pump on my farm property, but I’d like to explore the mesh so I can charge more nodes (weather station, livestock water garage, etc. ), but my enthusiasm peaked. When I came up with this little messaging node, I could employ Signal (which we already use) to talk between our ambulance crews in case of calls during blackouts that bring down our cell tower. I will follow this task closely.
This is cool. I’ll contact you tomorrow after work to see if my skill set would be of any assistance. Used to work in electronics manufacturing as a prototyper and coder/debugger. Been really into overclocking again, and I’m honestly bored with it at this point… Sounds fun!
That would be great, whether it’s on our devchat channel: https://gitter. im/Meshtastic/community
Or email me.
1 to contact Disaster Radio. It would be if those LoRa projects were interoperable.
Does LoRa have enough bandwidth for voice? I’m curious about a voice-in-mesh solution that can be encrypted without the need for a license (unlike professional encrypted two-way radio).
Unfortunately, no. At least not in terms of the propagation points we want to use to succeed at a smart distance. Lora is not a smart candidate for the voice.
The Serval Mesh network could be the solution you’re looking for, it runs on the Batman protocol. It’s encrypted, peer-to-peer, and free.
This may simply be an application for a very low bitrate codec such as Codec2 at 700 bps. You’ll still have to deal with the CPU time it takes to encode/decode the samples, and maybe make it non-real-time. So, if the radio bitrate drops below 700 bps (due to channel congestion, interference, etc. ), buffer the clip and play it once everything has happened.
Hi Kevin,
It’s a concept, and it seems to have a wider scope of extension.
I can help I with making Prototypes and basic firmware. Let me know.
That would be great. How about chatting in our devchat? https://gitter. im/Meshtastic/community
Hi Kevin,
I’m looking for communicating over Lora with PGP encrypted strings when in range (and otherwise I fallback to the M2M Simcard), I already build an apk which is encrypting everything client side, but as you can imagine “hello world” is slightly longer encrypted by a 4K key. Do you think it will have limitations / any idea what will be a save string length maximum?
Sincerely, Patrick
Hello, yes, sending a large PGP key through Lora is very expensive. That’s why I opted for pre-shared keys, with the only charge of about 3 bytes of IV (on top of some bytes I was already sending). More information here, maybe you will find it useful?https://meshtastic. discourse. group/t/encryption-review-requested/195
Well, that’s an attractive approach, I’ll come back to that later.
@Kevin, there is a typo in the URL of the md file, https://github. com/meshtastic/Meshtastic-device/blob/master/docs/software/crypto. md is written as cypto. md on your page.
I’d like to try this project, but I only have the esp32 lora, yet the instructions say ttgo or t-beam. Is there is there an esp32 specific section for this project ?
I’m running a formula where the LoRa1 module transmits packets. In this configuration, when a user logs into module 2 (linked to an ESP32 card and which serves as an access point) and enters a URL as a google. com on their smartphone, I intend for the request to pass from the user’s device to the ESP32, then to the LoRa2 module, and then to the LoRa1 module. Module 1 is connected to a Raspberry Pi, which is connected to the internet. The Raspi will have to transmit the request over the Internet, retrieve the reaction and send it back to the LoRa1 module. Finally, the LoRa1 module will have to transmit the reaction to module2, which the user can then access on their smartphone. The main goal is to allow the user to view Internet sites with fundamental HTML text over this LoRa network.
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