Meshtastic is an open-source project using low cost LoRa radios as a long range off-grid communication platform in areas without little or no communications infrastructure. It’s a portmanteau of Mesh and “fantastic”.
I found it shared on Facebook, which lead me to the subreddit post, which lead me to reading more about it and even finding Lemmy communities and local groups!
https://mander.xyz/c/meshtastic
I also made sure to check if this wasn’t a hail corporate thing. And I also felt like I missed the era of homemade radios. So this is exciting for me!
Have a node up in the attic which is bridged to my wifi and into my Matrix server. Of course, in the event of a catastrophe the usage will be direct bluetooth connection from a phone instead.
The range is impressive, my node connects to others several tens of kilometers away.
I’ve got a node on my roof. Solar powered RAKwireless. I can connect using my phone over bluetooth.
Can you give some details for how you bridged it to Matrix? That sounds interesting. (I have a matrix server too)
That is incredible! You’re doing what I’m just fantasizing about!
Any tutorials or videos on setting something like this up?