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#meshtastic

danie10@squeet.me
Danie

Video Overview of the Meshtastic Radio Mobile App Interface and Settings

Teal coloured background with title in white on the left saying Meshtastic Off-Grid Comms, Using the Mobile app. To the right are two small radio devices with antennas. One is while and the other is green and back. Both have small screens on the front.
This video explores what the Android app looks like, how to use the main screens, and what various settings and menu options it has. It gives a good feel of how you’d use Meshtastic radio communications from the app to control the radio settings and to communicate. I did a previous video that dealt with a non-technical intro to what Meshtastic radio is, and this is well worth just watching first if Meshtastic is completely new to you.

Meshtastic is license-free, so anyone can use it, and has really started picking up in popularity in the last year, so much so, that stock has often not been available for a month or two at a time. It’s a really fun way to also connect to neighbours nearby, or keep in contact in the wilderness when out hiking.

Watch youtu.be/GAGOkXUlbaY
#Blog, #Meshtastic, #offgrid, #opensource, #radio, #technology

danie10@squeet.me
Danie

A Non-Technical Introduction Video to Meshtastic Off-Grid Radio Communications

A teal colour background with two small Meshtastic radios shown on the right side, and text title on the left side saying Meshtastic off-grid comms, a non-technical introduction
This is an open-source solution that works with inexpensive LoRa radios, and your mobile phone or laptop, to be able to pass messages directly, or in shared channels, between the various nodes with no Internet or mobile phone coverage required.

The intention of this video is to give a non-technical overview of what it could be used for, how it works, and what you can expect from it. This is not a “how-to configure it” or a field demo video. Hopefully the video helps motivate some new users to set up these nodes in their own cities, and thereby help this form of mesh off-grid communication be more effective across entire cities.

Watch https://youtu.be/tNZdVxIIQ58
#Blog, #Meshtastic, #offgrid, #opensource, #technology

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danie10@squeet.me
Danie

Three Meshtastic nodes are active in Cape Town for off-grid communications during disasters or just to meet your neighbours

A green and black plastic box that is a little larger than a thumb. It has a small OLED display on the front saying "meshtastic.org". Protruding from the top is a short stubby black antenna, and on the right is a USB power cable.
Myself and two other ham radio operators have established 3 Meshtastic nodes that will operate 24/7 to help build out more connectivity across Cape Town.

We are using license-free 868 MHz radios, so anyone can buy these cheap (ish) devices and get connected. The more nodes we have, the better the connectivity gets across the whole city. These radios will keep messaging going regardless of whether there is Internet or not. So, if we hit Stage 8+ load shedding and cell towers and Internet starts to go down, this messaging network will still work.

This means that citizens can message for assistance needed, and this can be relayed to City or Provincial Disaster Risk Management. Or in cases of loss of communications during a disaster we can also send out messages to everyone on the network as to where water tankers will be deployed etc.

Apart from the public channel (which is much like CB radio’s Channel 19) anyone can also create their own private channels (with passwords) to stay in contact with groups of friends or family. The connections between all radio nodes are encrypted with AES256 encryption, so private messages will stay private even though they bounce across 3 or more other radio nodes to reach the recipient.

You have a phone, so all that is needed is the free Meshtastic app, and a Meshtastic compatible radio device. This is probably bad timing, as right now there is a global shortage of Meshtastic radio devices. The massive global uptake has also made this situation even worse. But the point of preparing for disasters, is to do that well before a disaster strikes.

I’ve documented a lot of my lessons learnt, as well as given some context to the situation in South Africa for this service at the linked web page below.

See https://gadgeteer.co.za/hamradio/meshtastic-in-south-africa/
#Blog, #capetown, #Meshtastic, #offgrid, #southafrica, #technology

Meshtastic

An open source, off-grid, decentralized, mesh network built to run on affordable, low-power devices

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