THE RISE OF THE PRIVATE MESSENGER - BUT DO THEY WORK? 

Why

Yeah mate! 👍🏻I was impressed you had instant connections as soon as you turned it on in your area!

​@andykirby Hi Bro very cool video the cases are cool ++

i read that as Methtastic

does that mean that theoretically I could record it with a good field mic, slow it down, and possibly hear it?

A dish? What kind of diameter. At the low frequency Meshtastic uses, I'd imagine you'll need something like what the EME folks use?

Good stuff! It's good fun👍🏻

Very good point. Meshtastic does seem to blindly forward packets onto whoever is listenining, which sounds good at first, but is a bit like UDP, so your packet might get there...who knows! Amateur packet radio and Meshtastic should get together and have a baby?!

A low-bandwidth wireless mesh with mobile nodes running on microprocessors is something else than a fixed wired network (with wireless end-points). Apart from the required memory usage for routing tables, every "smarter" routing protocol requires control packets to find out the best paths, which will create overhead that quickly outweighs the inefficiency of the current "managed flooding" approach.

@@GUVWAF depends how dynamic you want to make it, but anything seems better than the message in a bottle approach. Maybe some nodes could adopt routing roles with 2+ yagis to carry trunk traffic to other router nodes, and avoid bothering uninterested user nodes. If packets contain rough gps locations some routing could be obtained for free as long as there is a continuous path of cells to a destination. Then you have an issue of how to jump continents. It's complicated but optimal algorithms could be derived.

What frequency in UK ?

Yes, you are on the right track. Meshtastic has a CLI. A linux distro like Meshcommander running on a Raspberry PI can over USB control a router or node completely, with python or what not. You have all the processing power and storage space needed to implement proper routing.

Grow up kid it's 2024, you don't get a prize for being on the Internet....🤡

It actually works very well...your personal experience is more likely b/c of lack of nodes near you to connect with.

The best thing to do is have a mobile node if you're not getting any action at home. I live in a massive hole where there are no nodes but I get out and about so I get a fair few connections then.

@@InVinoVeritas. no, thanks. My area is saturated with nodes, there are too many. Issues such as packet collisions, corruption of data, people driving MQTT traffic into the network, people using too many hops, people with setting their poorly located bode as a repeater. Mine was a gateway between North Yorkshire and South Yorkshire, had loads of traffic, antenna was a beast but it’s just not stable enough to be useful. But thanks for your feedback, based on zero information.

@@restojon1 I had an antenna in a high location, a mobile node, a car node and multiple solar nodes, I got loads of traffic, but it is mainly corrupted, pointless, unstable nonsense.

@@Mellow_Wood_Hill sorry you had a bad experience. I'm only having a bit of fun with my stuff and just hoped others would too. I'm really new to anything radio-related tbh.

really well

Very well, Looking forward to playing with Meshtastic at Glastonbury this year!

There's a node called Palmer road near me which has clear line of sight to Bishop's Stortford (the higher part) I have regular contacts to Vlad (bishops stortford west) so I think you have a good chance! Might need a yagi 😁

Either use the web client interface in a browser over the USB cable, or do it in the app.

That is not the thing I was looking for, but thanks. I don't want to use another interface when I have T-Deck for such use cases. Heltec or others are suitable alternatives.

Similar but every radio is also a repeater in a mesh network.

Repeaters are still a single point of access between you and someone else, Where the mesh I a multiple path approach, meaning rather than a repeater on top of a hill to get to other side, ita possible to take multiple routers, maybe either way around said hill. Simlar to cellular networks but without the backbone between the towers. Wi-Fi has been all all over the mesh method for a few years now and it's a big improvement over boosters(repeaters). Amateur Repeaters are poor these days because of internet linking like HubNet (echolink), No longer being local Repeaters, but essentially Skype calls to the world.

@@seanyem im aware its not the same.. but for people to give up repeater systems and voice systems that are stand alone is a huge mistake. When people shift over to something else they try to take away communication we had before.. you see this by the ham community being pushed into digital systems

Yes exactly.

Shipping batteries around the world complicates things and buying Heltec's in bulk to compete with the AliExpress prices is hard too! The battery is easy to get hold of from Amazon and Heltec's arrive in a week from AliExpress ;-)

Seen the price of just the files? Could be half that.

Laws only work on those who follow laws. This hardware is open source, you can build it at home and it works whether you have a license or not!

@cyleleghorn246 so does telly.. plus anything can be taxed, and since you give yourself away on a map, it won't be hard to enforce.

@@timhull8664 the gps transmitting functionality has been around for years in the ham radio community, known as APRS. If you're going to use a radio without a license, you turn features like that off! It's different here in the US though, we have the big bad FCC (Federal Communications Commission) who has only enforced the law of being licensed to transmit on certain frequencies 6 times in the last 20 years, and that was for willful interference where The person was warned Face to Face at least one time, and they continued to interfere with paying users of that specific frequency band. The NSA and CIA don't care, they've been listening to everything on the air since 2001 anyways. Life will go on and nothing will happen to the criminals out there ✌️

@@timhull8664 just dont use mqtt and you wont be on the map

Not if you strap it to a tree with a small solar panel and battery and leave it alone. you could drop hundreds of these around the world and not be discovered.

I suspect they need something a lot more reliable.

Odd comment. I really do not see why they would use such a unrealisable system. I also don't know what this county lines crap is. Dealers move shit around the UK always have. Why the new name?

I host a node, I'm struggling to see the point of it to be honest!

@@M7BXR It's just a bit of fun to noodle around with. Definitely diminishing returns for those spending lots of cash on multiple nodes, expensive antennas, waterproof boxes, solar panels, etc. Fun as a hobby for a couple of weekends, and then leave it running for the benefit of others joining the mesh, I guess.

bro its just infrastructure-less communications?! its not a solution looking for an issue. you yourself might not have an issue to solve with it but people in tougher less permissive environments def get use from it

@@ryemuehlmeyer192 That works fine as long as you have nodes near you. Once you lose that, it becomes useless. I give it a year at most before critical nodes dissapear. Weve had similar in ham radio for decades.

If it was hot garbage then you would have the right to be disgusted. But... it includes all hardware required (SMA pigtail or PCB antenna etc) and.... I pay tax lol. Yes, of course the materials cost is a fraction of the £22 that goes into them, the rest of the cost is a huge amount of honest hard work that goes into producing them from myself, my wife and my Dad. I've barely left this office in two months ha. It's easy to discount it as a rip off, the truth is no where close to that.

€32 Euro plus postage 😮

And you have to order the battery separately

Guys I have to take the bait here because it’s fun to argue on the internet, it’s what we’re all here for! 😜 I’m happy for anyone to visit my offices and see how they are produced, I’ll break down all the costs and processes. You can then tell me how I can produce them for less and feed my children 😂 (He feeds his children! That’s the problem, they should be packaging orders!)

@@zerofox3d It's less than £1 for the plastic and another £1 for the pigtail. For comparison a RasPi clear ABS case costs £4 (or £1 on AliExpress) Now explain what the other £20 pays for ?

They love encrypted msgs on Android phones more...

@@edwardfletcher7790 "encrypted"

It isn't even that exciting