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Helium just used the same radio technology as Meshtastic (LoRa) and that’s about it. Helium was some lame attempt to develop a mesh network tied to a cryptocurrency as incentive for users to deploy nodes. AFAIK Helium is basically over.

Meshtastic is free and open. The hardware and tiny amount of electricity are your only costs to get involved. A lot of devices are efficient enough to run on a 1 watt solar cell and single 18650 battery.

The reliability will depend on where you’re located and how many nodes are running in your area. If you happen to be in a particularly dense area, you might also look into MeshCore, which is essentially the same idea but designed to scale a lot better.

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Brkdncr@lemmy.world ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I have helium nodes near me. Not sure how blockchain fits in, but they offer money if you donate your wifi or LoRa, and you can buy service to use that wifi or LoRa.

I like the idea but WiFi doesn’t have the range to be very useful except maybe in an apartment building.

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semperverus@lemmy.world ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Do note though that MeshCore is proprietary and has a licensing cost to unlock all of its features whereas Meshtastic is open source and free as in freedom.

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- Malcolm@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I could be off the mark here, but I think it’s a little more complicated than that. I believe Meshtastic has trademarks on the name and logo, and they went so far as to shut down a project that was attempting to allow a device to switch between Meshtastic and Meshcore firmwares.
  
  On the other hand, Meshcore is all open, however the client apps are closed source and on a sort of fremium model aimed at supporting the developer. Mobile apps have a 10 second wait to admin router nodes, which can be removed by a one time fee ($9, I think?). And then there’s a more feature rich firmware for the LilyGo T-Deck (cool standalone Blackberry-like device) which has a paid option.
  
  I’d like to see open source community developed apps, and I don’t think there’s anything to stop anyone from writing new ones, other than the fact that the existing ones work well and the paid features make for a cheap an easy way to support the project.
  
  If I’m wrong about any of that, I hope someone else with a better understanding can chime in.
  
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