Both tools are completely different. The flippers used for IR, Ibutton, subghz, and RFID. The hackrf, while capable of recording a signal, is a traciever designed for radios. A flipper and hackrf save files are not interchangeable that I know of. At least not out of the box. The big brother to the Flipper is dependent on the frequency. That could be a small usb dongle for IR, a microcontroller, or an FPGA. The big brother to the hackrf are it's individual transcievers, which each have their own solutions.
Some of our points about Meshtastic are valid, but I think your missing the point of It. Its really designed for small groups as the max nodes supported is pretty small. Think emergency communications. Sure, you could do this with APRS, but that requires a license, has no encryption, requires more power, more batteries and a much larger footprint if your trying to stay low-profile. I agree that Meshtastic is more of a local area mesh network, and APRS is at its best in larger metro areas where the added xmit power (5W and up) can really reach out. Then add mobile APRS to this and its pretty powerful. But again, no encryption. Every message is available for anyone to read. This is not an option for a lot of use cases.
The range is basically line of sight between radio devices. I think the longest distance worked on Meshtastic is about 250 km. But you need your antenna up high and clear of surrounding buildings, trees and hills.
These appropriately should be combined with a mainline linux kernel and crippling the firmware to the cellular radio or else the android phone will just exfil the data at some point possibly
I tried doing this transmitting from my HACKRF to my flipper zero and the signal strength was pretty weak. For me, you’ve got to be standing within 3 meters of the device in order to pickup any signal… 🤷♀️
HackRF transmits at a power output level of less than 20 milliwatts and if you’re using a non resonant antenna the range is going to be even less. It’s not a powerful transmitter at all. It’s meant for short range local experiments.
@@sn0ren I’m just using the stock telescopic antenna that I received in the package along with the HACKRF. It works pretty well for receiving but transmitting like you mentioned isn’t the best. I also tried the other 3 antennas but they also didn’t output much power. I’m sure it’s gotta be the HACKRF because the flipper won’t even pickup the signal from my HACKRF when replaying a key fob.
Interestingly enough, Meshtastic is preferred for ad hoc communication among hams in many scenarios. For example, at Dayton Hamfest this weekend, even with all the licensed hams, Meshtastic traffic among them is greatly exceeding APRS traffic. One factor is that most devices doing APRS are far more cumbersome for messaging whereas Meshtastic and phone provide an easy and familiar interface.
You can get battery powered bluetooth TNC modems that can be fitted to a cheap radio and then use apps like APRSDroid on the phone as well. Meshtastic is the popular new thing though.
Another excellent video! That lesson was not only concise and informative, it was well produced and interesting to boot! Love and appreciate all your content. Looking forward to more! Thanks!!
hi! really interesting. I have experience replacing the MGA81563 on the older board, however I also have the new one and I experience power issues. What is the component to change in the new board? thanks!
I think mine is weird because iamp works on RX, but my unit just transmits very low power. However it does improve its power with the amp ON, so maybe i have another tx stage broken? The previous one?
I have been playing with cheap serial LoRa modules from Reyax, setting up my own mesh-like network, implementing a simplistic flood algorithm. Works fine, although with only 4 nodes (soon to be 6). I decided not to go for meshtastic, as my main interest is writing my own software, not just using something written by others. For my tiny networks, a flood algorithm is good enough, but I'd like to eventually introduce a concept of routing. Currently I'm using Raspberry Pi Pico's, coding in C, to interact with the LoRa modules. They run nicely for many hours off small powerbanks, for testing both range and algorithms. Currently I'm working on how to disconnect a node by pulling its power, and then reconnect it, and let all other nodes know that its' messageId counter for messages originating at said node, now start from zero again. The distributed nature of multiple units running the same software has unique and interesting issues. I store device address in Flash, and storing messageId in that way is of course possible, but flash has limited write cycles, and I hope to find a more elegant solution via broadcast messages. It is pure hobby, although originally inspired by the war in Ukraine, thinking it's nice to have options.
The only thing I'd add is that because of the power and licencing when using APRS on amateur bands your communications need to be unencrypted and open. Whereas Meshtastic on the licence free frequencies can be encrypted. Also, you can open up Meshtastic to be used with more power with an amateur licence. They are all great in their own ways. Great video, thanks!
@@arvaneret_329 I haven't heard of anyone having such problems. If you have a long wire antenna outside it could technically build up static, but so can walking across the carpet. If you're worried about it, just ground your antenna before plugging it in.
@@ruprecht9997 I was referring to the map in the meshtastic website. If that is true, then maybe there are nodes near me. I guess the only way to truly know is to run my own node and see if there's anyone out there 😂
I’m currently playing with Meshtastic while studying for my HAM, the big draw to me for Meshtastic is the ability to legally encrypt messages. If I could use APRS with encryption I would likely do that.
That hairy dude in the field in the opening kind of looked like a -sasquatch- Sasquach. I wonder if he can talk? I guess so, if he's repeating messages. 😆 As mentioned, I think there's a place for both Meshtastic and APRS. I really like the idea of having a private and encrypted communications channel for just my area with Meshtastic, and the advantages of APRS should be obvious. Regardless, the way this crazy world is going I believe that backup forms of communication are almost a necessity, just like having some extra food and emergency equipment and supplies on-hand. I'm sure some people probably believe that's being paranoid, however. People really should get their Ham license, if they haven't. When I got mine over 35 years ago you still had to know Morse Code. It was only 5 words-per-minute for a Novice Class License, but it was still enough to turn most people off from getting a license. It's now so easy most people could probably do it in a few days, max. Actually, learning Morse Code is probably much easier than most people would probably believe. From knowing no code, I was ready to take my Novice test in probably about a week. Although it was like (2) weeks before I could test with a local Amateur Radio club. Also, if you're in the US, the FCC publishes all of the test(s) questions and answers, so if you just want to get a copy/book, just read through and remember the right answers, you wouldn't be the first. Although, it's much more rewarding (and beneficial) to actually learn the material. If you choose the former option, some people recommend getting a book, highlighting the correct answers, and then repeatedly read through the questions and *ONLY* the correct answers. A great Meshtastic (and APRS) video. Thank you.
I love APRS. It's a lot of fun to play with and I love that it can assist if cell phones go down. Sending messages, texts and emails over radio is really cool, especially when camping. One big difference between Meshtastic and APRS though is Meshtastic allows you to limit who is a part of your mesh where APRS has to be public.
Finished it. Skipped the setup but there’s had some legit points about functionality post set up. Especially with the Lilygo T-Deck. But that’s a dev board in its infancy. That said, you COMPLETELY failed to mention encryption and the lack there of within APRS and HAM 📻 in general. The main feature of Meshtastic off grid low powered long range encrypted comms. Failing to mention this point in contrast to APRS is completely disingenuous.
The video was getting a bit long so I had to skip some parts, so I chose to skip the part that interests me the least. I'm not interested in encrypted communication, there are plenty better ways of doing that without having to resort to RF. My interest is in experimenting with RF, antennas and modulations and I think that's also the case for a lot of people that are getting started with Meshtastic. And for them I think amateur radio can offer even more similar fun things to play with.
Some of us in the area dug out our 1980's Kantronics KPC-3 packet modems and put them back on the air again. They still work great and have built in node and mailbox as well as can be used for live 1200 baud keyboard to keyboard. On 2 meters it is easy to go 100 miles or more with just a node or two in between. But yes I remember way back when packet was popular that if the band got too active and there were " hidden transmitters" stations that couldn't hear each other , the stronger stations took over and lots of packet don't get through. The positive is it is 100% error free but the negative is that a station will keep trying and trying to repeat packets cluttering up the radio spectrum. But if there was a backbone link on different frequency that helped. Aprs was amazing to me when I first tried it and worked very good. But then some people had to get their 7 hops in or send a packet ever minute and that congested up the network too. Anyway now with our old fashioned regular packet network up , there is hardly anyone using it so never any problem getting through to your ham radio friends ! I just got my Lora boards the other day and am learning how to use it - but might be a bit of letdown in this rural area where no one else uses it .
I think the T deck typing issue is hardware related and cant be mitigated or resolved by the Meshtastic devs. Something about the microcontroller being single threaded I believe.
@@sn0ren Well that firmware may not have as much to do on the UI loop. I am pretty sure the dev's said there was not much they could do in this case, due to single threading.
The range is line of sight. The longest range record for Meshtastic is 254 km. But that requires both parties to be very high up and have good antennas. If you are down by the ground and surrounded by large buildings, the range can be as low as 100 meters or less. Height is might.
LoRa is using the P sub band of ISM in Europe which is 869.4 MHz - 869.65 MHz with a legal max power output of 500 mW and a 10% duty cycle from type approved, narrow band devices. If you want to transmit fm voice you can use the PMR frequencies with type approved radios with a fixed antenna, that band is also 500 mW max output.
I have a APRS app on my iPhone. Apart from see ing other stations and their details on screen, I use it as a navigation aid to find my own iPhone on the satellite map. Very useful if lost ! G4BTI.
Interesting discussion about Meshtastic and comparison with APRS. The big selling point of Meshtastic for me is that you can choose to use AES256 encryption and private groups. And also that the price for the equipment to set up a few nodes is much lower than for regular Ham radio and APRS. Also as far as I know encryption and private groups on HAM Radio and APRS are as far as I know still impermissible for regular radio-amateurs; except for Law enforcement and with some expensive business licences who are legally allowed to use encryption. That means in reality that you can not expect any privacy using Ham radio and APRS. If my information is correct this means that anyone with the right equipment can listen to every voice communication or read all your text messages.
I don't think the price of an APRS-K cable and a Quansheng radio is much higher than the price of a heltec v3. As for encryption then yes, that is correct, if you need privacy in your messages you will have to use something like Meshtastic. However to me (and a lot of others) the interesting part of these systems are to play around with radio, testing antennas and trying to connect to others, not actually to use them for any real private communication. There are much better alternatives for that. Amateur radio is like hobby fishing. It's fun to try out new lures and techniques but the point isn't to actually be depending on it as your primary food source. However the skills learned will give you insights that could be useful in an emergency situation.
Signal, telegram, etc. If you want to go off grid use something like kouchat and just set up a wifi router. No need to bring unnecessarily complicated RF into the mix and you can do more than just text messages, but also file transfers, etc. Long distance WiFi is fairly trivial to set up, very secure, has much higher bandwidth and is much harder to jam than Meshtastic. Put a "internet in a box" server on the network, with a local copy of wikipedia and other useful knowledge for SHTF scenarios.
