We used it at Burning Man in 2023. Burning Man is hard on gear and a surprisingly busy RF environment. It was reliable and has a good user experience. I really liked it.
My understanding is that LoRA isn't high bandwidth -- so just out of curiosity, what kinds of things did you use this for?
The official meshtastic app can only transmit text messages (max ~230 characters) plus location data (GPS). Optionally it can also transmit sensor data (see RAK WisBlock devices, where you can add sensors for temperature, humidity, air quality).
Can the mesh control plane be orchestrated/monitored/bridged by out of band comms like cellular IP or StarLink?
Yes to all of these, there is a managed mode where nodes are controlled via commands from a command channel. Bridging networks is done via MQTT so you can use virtually any transport.
Thank you!
I've also used it then, it worked fairly well but it seems that I might need to tweak it to update my position faster.
I also made a fork of a modified firmware that gives you your playa location