Alternatively…
- Sideband: iOS/Android chat app (https://github.com/markqvist/Sideband)
- NomadNet: Desktop CLI chat app (https://github.com/markqvist/NomadNet)
- Rnode: Reference node hardware/firmware (https://unsigned.io/rnode/)
Plus: encryption is heavy when bandwidth is limited and over radio waves we aren't even permitted to encrypt data most of the times.
Please don't read my comment as bringing down the project. I'm a fan, used everything it was produced but ultimately is unusable for serious applications on the current state. I really tried hard to adopt it.
But it is fairly easy to hack on. I have no idea how to debug things without USB serial connected, though.
Maybe a bit offtopic and not LoRa, but I've been looking at ESP32 and they include an ESPMesh for the WiFi radio with a promise of about 500 to 1000 meters range from what I read. It isn't the same range as LoRa, but it is "larger" bandwidth and for the price of 3 dollars per unit seems promising on urban areas to connect people. I'm trying it out now.
It's just not awesome. Especially compared to what you can do with ham radio.
It does seem like the RNode radios are a lot less mature but they seem to be aiming to be less of a toy.
Also, it uses tons of CPU on legacy machines. It needs some rework. Not everyone it's a hipster with 256 or 32 bit colour terminals, shitty NerdFonts (nonstandards) and big displays.
And being written in Python3 makes it dog slow. Being rewritten in Go would get a few performance tweaks, (networking and GC there it's ideal), security and portability. But, please, no BubbleTea unless you can be sure it can work on a plain XTerm with 16 colors (I use Tango for readability, but 16 colors FFS). Keep 256 colours as an option.
Just don't mention MeshCore anywhere around Meshtastic, or they'll kickban you.
Thats not the problem. And Ive also mentioned Meshcore as well on their discord with no threats of banning or anything of the sort. Ive also seen people come in the group, with "Meshtastic sucks and Meshcore is best", and the worst by admins was 'we have no problem discussing but that tone was overly harsh'.
Liam Kottle, the head of Meshcore ran the first Meshtastic map from grabbed MQTT data. However, he was grabbing and saving everything, including public channels, direct messages, GPS, telemetry. Everything. 1.5y ago, people were going to his map and snooping on Defcon Meshtastic DM's, since even 1 node who reported MQTT would send everything. And then, DMs were simply filtered by the UI, but were effectively encrypted by the same shared key.
Normally there was a general expectation that the data was ephemeral. Liam basically created and caused this data problem by saving and making available everything sent to MQTT.
Meshtastic devs ended up having to tighten down the public MQTT broker a bunch. They also made the client on phones be more restrictive what was done and sent to MQTT. Also made "OK to forward MQTT" flag in the data packets too. And 2.5 introduced PKI TOFU for direct messages to prevent leakage.
Aside the personnel difficulties, the technical issues with Meshcore are similar at node capacity too. Messages still dont get delivered near capacity. Core requires infrastructure nodes. Its more like APRS+LoRa than anything like a mesh.
Some people want Meshtastic to be rock-solid communication infrastructure for use in a doomsday or disaster scenario. Some people want to use it to undermine the importance of cellular communications networks. Some people want it to be used much like CB radio as a local public conversation channel. Some people envision it used mostly with stationary transmitters, while other people want to use it entirely with mobile nodes. I use it primarily for group location sharing (many to many), since the location sharing capabilities Apple and Google provide for their smartphone platforms only easily support one-to-one or one-to-several location sharing.
Reticulum: full network stack (alternative to IP), mesh, focus on low-speed, unreliable connections. Transport layer agnostic. Current 'Hardware drivers' are written for LoRa, Internet Tunnels, Wifi, Amateur radio.
Reticulum sounds great? It is, but still has 2 problems: 1. The only complete & stable implementation is written in Python and 2. The existing end-user applications have confusing and complex UIs (except for the command-line tools for remote shell and file copy).
Meshtastic at first glance seems silly. No routing, one spammer could mess up the whole thing. Hopefully this is better.