Comment on What if the Internet Goes Down? - 15 Jan, 7PM CET
sefra1@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Meshtastic sounds great in concept but IMO it’s useless in most parts of the world due to it’s extreme low power.
If all your neighbours have one or there aren’t many buidings around blocking line of sight then meshtastic has great potential. Otherwise I would stuck be sending messages to myself.
Now, they made boards with more power that operated and crossed at several different frequency bands, specially shortwave, then meshtastic would be an incredibility powerful too. However illegal.
Now, they made boards with more power that operated and crossed at several different frequency bands, specially shortwave, then meshtastic would be an incredibility powerful too. However illegal.
Sounds like you should look into getting an amateur radio license!
I will never get a ham license, one day I will get a 100W out of band CB rig, but as a matter of principle I will never become a ham.
There are several reasons for it, reason number one is privacy, I would never say my legal name to strangers on the internet, for obvious safety reasons, why should I have to identify with a callsign when chatting over radio?
Reason number two is that you can lose your license just for “swearing”? Like what the fuckl? What censorship is this?
Reason number three, it’s illegal to use encryption on ham bands, so I can’t even have a private conversation over ham radio.
Reason number four, I understand that licensed hams don’t want unlicensed noobs jamming their frequencies, I understand the need to reserve some of the spectrum to people who actually understand that just because you can’t hear anything, doesn’t mean you’re not jamming, but there should be parts of the radio spectrum reserved for free personal use. Reduce ham bands by half for all that I care, but I should be able to just buy a radio and transmit how many watts I need on those free bands without needing authorization from the government.
Even if this is a very specific setup, I still think Meshstatic could be used as an external internet pretty much anywhere if there are enough nodes scattered around. Could be like a LAN network. Also, probably would be used by bad actors too.
used as an external internet
It seems to send messages p2p, not provide broad web access.
Everything gets used by bad actors. Internet, cars, roads, kitchen knives, bicycles, hoodies, … You still use these because they’re handy and useful. If criminal acitivity means to not use things, we’d use very little. I wouldn’t think too much about it.
With the way things are going anyone with a moral compass is going to be a “bad actor” before long.
All the low-frequency free stuff that has range is severely limited in bandwidth. It’s good for sending 100 characters at a time. More like text messaging.
Now, they made boards with more power that operated and crossed at several different frequency bands,
Some nodes have up to 5 watts, but you have to put them in ham mode with your license, it also disables encryption (ham requirement)
You can stitch together several different cheap radios in different frequencies using MQTT.
TBF, I’d be super happy just to move back to APRS, (i’m a ham) but the equipment is stupid expensive.
lepinkainen@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
Antennas and location.
I can see one node on top of the tallest building around here and it allows me to connect to nodes 20-30km away.
sqgl@sh.itjust.works 17 hours ago
The map does not say if a node is high.
JackbyDev@programming.dev 17 hours ago
They list the elevation.