Meshtastic: Wireless Wonders For The Wandering Techies

Cheers. Hi all. Cheers for turning up today. There's more of you than I thought. I thought just actually uh yes, I'm here to talk about Mashtic. Uh I said it could be great one day. It's actually a lot better than I thought because it's actually been a lot updates in the last uh 2 months. Huge amount of updates. Was anyone at the mini meet when I gave the last talk? No. Has anyone used meshtastic or any mesh events? We got one there. Anyone else? Two. So, we got two. Oh, brilliant. That's really good. Uh, it fascinates me. It fascinates me. I just want to give a little introduction on myself. There's me, beautiful. There's me at 15

years old. Always had a massive love for radios. I have no idea why. Uh, I always really struggled with talking. I got started therapy all the way through my childhood and my early adult life. Uh, but I was always fascinated with radio. I have no idea why, but I've seen a lot of CB radio. I actually recently come I say recently. Yeah, I'm a licensed radio user. That's my pool sign in the hotel. We get any um radio operators in the room one over there. Awesome. >> Fine. That's fine. That's fine. That's fine. That's that's absolutely fine. Yes. So, the thing with me is I'm highly dyslexic. I struggle with talking and with words, which is a bit odd that I

love radio and I love text messages. That's it's a bit of a conundrum. I still don't understand it, but I've always loved it. This was me at 15 and I beta tested the Vodafone page go system in 1998. How I got involved in that was that my mom, I come from a very poor background, we bought cataloges. You pay 200 a week uh to get your stuff, whatever. And there was a form in the catalog my mom filled out to say, "Did you want to test this new mobile phone technology for free?" So, we got the phone. That's the phone I got. It was a This was an analog phone. So, literally signal would smiles in the face. They

know like your your signal would go in and out. You'd hear other people's calls on this. But this was like the start of my love of like mobile technology of like really It really caught my imagination. It really did. So, that leads me to uh Mastic. Mostic. Mostic is a meshing network. A mesh network. Google tells me a mesh network is a decentralized communication system where each node device is connected to another node creating multiple pathways for data transmission. Structure eliminates the need for central hub making the network more adaptable robust. Yes and no. I kind of disagree with that. I will go into that a later. Messi is an open- source for now. The

reason I say FEL is because it's actually been bought by a large uh company is multi-million dollar company that bought it. So, we don't know how long it's going to be open source for. It started as open source when it gets purchased. There's no legal uh reasons for them to keep it open source. So, that can be a positive negative. So, what is meshtastic? Meshastic are built on things called notes. The ones on the law is just pretty much long range radio communication. Uh easy line of sight going to get 100 mile range from like hilltop to hilltop. This protocol is license free. Again, that's good and bad. These are the nodes that they use and this is a 8 uh 8

68 MHz node. This is the mode. So the entire network are built on things like this. This is just pretty much like your Windows computer that you get to choose what operating system you install on it. We choose to install Metastic. So, Metastic gets loaded onto So, but you get to choose a completely free board. Not free to buy, but free. There's there's no system on it. Metastic. Who's got wireless headphones here? You've got some over. Yeah. So the data connect between my phone and her headphones, it uses uh the same amount of throughput of 100 milliamps to connect. That is crazy low. It's crazy to think that you can make 100 mile uh connections of 100 milliamps and that

limited that is limited by uh by the licensing. The the largest range I've ever got and this is I suppose How we got this that's quite me is that on my mesh I was talking to this guy called Richard and we didn't want to give our post code so we gave Costa to our house the nearest Costa so my nearest costa to which is nearest costa mine was the leisure parks uh ka uh was 364 miles I kept that contact for over a month we would regularly chat uh chat with each other and I couldn't believe that's [ __ ] That's miles. That's over 3/4 of way up the country and on 10 milliamps of power. That is

crazy. So that is the same amount of bandwidth as they have between your head and your phone. That I found out that that my mind here uh this is this is an interesting thing. I've got things that are going to contradict each other depending on the personality side. Yeah. Pros and cons. Let's just start with the pros. It's completely off. You wouldn't believe the amount of people I've told that word to completely off- grid and they not understand what it means. That means you need nothing. As soon as it's loaded on, you need the initial internet to be able to connect the device and load meastic. As soon as that mestastic's off uh loaded, you don't need any connection

connection. So you can use a mobile phone. So the way that easiest way of working this is got your node, you connect Bluetooth to your node and then you've got access to the uh mesh task network. So that pretty much acting like your modem to the network and you don't need anything else. No Wi-Fi, no internet whatsoever. So you so so all infrastructure can go down including the power system and I can go into that a little later. So you can have complete blackout as long as these no being powered and they're very low power. This is one watt. You can p directly from a solar panel. Many people do. They build my roofs with a small solar panel with a

small battery and it keeps going all year. It's completely off. It's cheapish. So, this mode I'm holding here. This is the uh Htech version three. And this will cost you £30 or two. And you do need two of them really. You can get away with just one, but you want a home base. You're definitely going to want to use two because the way the mesh works, you want your base. And I'll go into that a little bit later. And you want your mobile node that can connect to the base cuz then you've got further. So if you get this high up because height is right when it comes to radios, you keep your one mode up and

you got two. It's £15 for one messages encrypted. There's 200 encryption built into this. It can be very addictive, which is good. cuz we just ain't working. Like yesterday, I came in and I was working all day yesterday from 7:00 a.m. to genuinely 12:00 p.m. last night to get my network back up and running so I could do a regration later on. It can be it's exhilarating to see that message pop up. You're like, I did that, you know, gives you a sense of accomplishment. Uh and you can have your own private channels. So, in me, you've got a standard uh channel called Longfast, and that's what everybody has access to. As soon as you

load up, that's your default. So, everybody will have a long fast channel as soon as they uh update. You can delete that if you want. So, if you want it primary, purely just for P channels, you can set it up. So, for your friends, family, colleagues, whatever, you can set that up. Uh most people still keep the long cuz you want a range if you need get information out. Cons, as I said, I've got quite a lot of experience with me. Before I the update yesterday, I spent I spent months with it. So, it can take a lot of time to set up your own network and there are a lot of options to go through to get your uh

network running a really optimal uh thing. And the thing with the set network is they can be hit and miss. You set everything up right even now and it still won't work right. Uh you can't uh you can't trust people to get your messages and it can be inconsistent. So, so it can the system can still give you false quality of then your message has been received when they have it can be very costly. I just said here though it can be cheapish but it can be very costly. It could be costly if you want to set up your own network for yourself. So if you haven't got a established network in your own home or

town that's going to be on you to build that and then other people add to that and that's how the network grows when other people jump in. But if you got no one or just a couple of people, it's going to be up to you to set up the uh area where you want your network to run. So that that's when you can start running. It's got a couple of hundred pounds. Uh and then that loops right back to it take a lot of time to set up your network. It can be very addictive. I'll put both in. It can kind of take over your life like it did yesterday. I had like uh I'm

one of the owners of the Vice Tower. So I was actually helping set to upside yesterday but my focus I just kept on wanting to come back to getting this sorted out so it can be very veryiveive no offline messages right this is something I've got actually a demonstration I've got a participant here that's going to help me so this is this is going to demonstrate one limitations for meastic that again people don't seem to understand so my assistants just we go to the back of them right there we Just want to show the radio.

One second. >> The hard way. We tried this earlier.

>> Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

[Music]

Yep.

What I just demonstrate there is I was given a call out. So as an amateur, there's a calling uh channel called 14500. You call out hoping to get a contact, but there was two differences where there one was the radio was on the radio was off. When I gave that transmission on my radio while it was on it cuz the radio was on. When the radio was turned off, I gave the exact same call out again. I knew I was going to get respond. By the way, I radio set to var power. you can hear it, right? You could hear me through the door, but you couldn't hear from the radio. >> Mesastic is exactly the same. If your

device isn't on and someone sends a message, they're not going to get it. It's exactly the same. So, you're talking to the air and hoping someone can hear it. So, there's no way. That's why I said right at the beginning, there's no centralized uh server. That's positive and negative because then you could easily miss a message. Only if your device is on if there's interference which is my next slide when we go into the detail there interference just for a split second and someone sends that message once that window that message trans over the network completes there's no going back that message is gone so you have to resend it and hope that person gets it and you can get

false positives so I'll show you in a bit uh that the message delivered but uh that I I feel is a positive and a negative here. It'll be really good to be able to see some of on your own network. I know there are people that have built some uh like Pi devices that have been able to do this, but it's quite complicated and uh it's just well above my head. I seen it, but it's just literally over my head. The network can be very slow as well. The tick rate of the network, we all know what tick rates are of servers. I'm sure we do. Yeah. It's how often a server ticks over. It's

incredibly slow on meshtastic. So it will check for new nodes and new information from the nodes every default is every 10,800 seconds. The reason that is is because the bandwidth is so limited. So an estimated uh throughput data of the entire network of seven nodes is 9.2 kilobytes per second. That's incredibly slow. That's at peak performance. It's been measured at 2 kilo kilobits per second. So it's incredibly slow. is not built to have high demanded uh rich content go over. That's why they've stuck with uh purely they are looking to implement voice using uh uh compression uh video. I don't ever the way it works right now with the power limitations got I can't ever really see real time audio

maybe doing small clips. We'll see. I didn't think was going to come as far as has since my last tour. So I'm willing to be warned the death the mastic network. This is where uh yeah the death of meic network my network is dead long meastic everything working. So this was heartbreaking. So this is actually the time that I stopped talking to Richard. We never exchanged like WhatsApp. We quite use this. My home network just stopped working. I couldn't work out why. Uh I bought my notes there. So I bought a couple of new notes but nothing changed. Uh and this is by far the biggest weakness and limitation of meastic and it could easily kill a

network and you you've got no control over it and that is interference. Okay 868 is a license free uh protocol that any manufacturer can use for any application and the thing with China is that they don't care about power outputs. So things such as you know your uh your lights you've got one light they got road works in the middle they talk to each other wirelessly that can and very often is on 6 8 MHz and they've been shown to push over 10 W which is what 100 times more than the power you put. So if you've got temporary lights by your house that can wipe up your signal and there's not much you can do

about it. And also got these things called cycle rates. These cycle rates on watch devices they meet criteria where it can only send data for 90% of the time just to mitigate this issue. The problem is that things like lights uh mobile lights EV chargers and the reason that my home network died solar panels solar panels killed my network. My neighbor had I think 12 kW worth of solar panels put on their roof. absolutely destroying my network and I just gave up with it. I was like I didn't notice at the time. I gave up with it because I knew there was some kind of interference but I didn't have the energy to figure out what it was and

I found out yesterday exactly why it was and I mitigated it. So yeah, it can be really hard. So you can have a really really good network spend a lot of money, time, energy into this and then someone buys an EV and that will wipe out any chance of you getting any form of uh uh any distance on network. It can work locally like mine did, but as soon as it tries to pick other nodes from that direction, it can wipe out if it's too close to your nose, it will quite literally uh wipe it out completely. Another thing that uh to understand with uh with the uh interference is that when you transmit, you're never just

transmitting on 868. It'll go on a frequency. It's like grabbing a brick and chugging into a pond and you get that ripple effect. So you you'll be able to physically see uh other uh frequencies that that you're using by accident. That's what happened with like solar panels and E charges that they spurs out onto other frequencies. [Music] This was my this is my mechastic that built yesterday. So I got my mestastic working. How I did that is I moved my metastic from one side of the house to the other and that made a clear link. So this is my home network here. So that is my main node. Lucky enough I live on the highest point of base. It's 143 m above

sea level with the top of Winkleberry. So that means I get some really really good connections. I've reconnected to all my nodes. So my that's my uh tab downstairs. That's a Samsung Tab S9 I think plus. And this is my mobile node. This is this is I love having this. This is my car. It's got a power bank car that runs this. So this connects to this. This connects to the bigger network and then wherever I go I've got my LIG go. So I talk about how you can use your node with your phone but there are independent device by LIGO. This was a brick when I bought it. It was completely pointless. I've actually got

So you got the LIGO TE and you got the sorry the T plus. You got the one that you build yourself. This is a 3D printed case that I got that you build yourself. I thought they were a complete waste of money. I really They cost about £100 uh and they pretty much useless with the stock UI that came with Meshtastic. There's been massive uh jumps in uh the updates for these and now these are completely useful and I'm I'm really happy that I've got them. It means that my my network or I've been testing all yesterday works. Demo time. Let's see if this works. Yeah, I've built a network. Hopefully it's going to be so 2.1 mi away. It's

going to be private uh connection. There's only two hops. So, what I'm going to be doing is I am going to be using my TE. This is the home build. That's the thing I love about these is that you can still use them Bluetooth or serial connection uh to access the uh network. Right. Should we see if this works? Yeah. Yeah. Let's see if it works. I hope so. So we go to the let's test it using the web client. There is a [Music] this is this this is the web client. I'm going to go st. So we go to serial connected to serial. Here we are. We've got access to all these nodes. This this is an invas. So

I've actually got cuz I was going to bring my car in. So I nor park my car the car park which connects to my home node. I built a node with a battery pack which actually uh on one of the posts outside which this connects to that I connect to the border uh mesh. So hopefully as you see there's no messages here. So all these people could have been talking all morning. I won't have a clue because I've just loaded in because the network doesn't store the messages.

Here we go. That's all right. Oh, so we know it's gone. You can hear that noise. That's to my uh deck plus. So let's hope it's got a tick. So that means it's got onto the network. This is a bit where uh we'll receive response. I do have two children though. Yeah. >> Explicit instruction >> literally. Yeah. Yeah. We got a one-year-old who decides that he dies pretty much uh uh wants to kill himself. >> Let's see. >> Does that mean uh Yeah. So, exactly that. So, that means that the network and I definitely know that the network's got it, but I don't think my wife is at the she's not at that tablet I showed you. I

set it all up when we were talking actually before here before the message and I don't think she's there. Joys of >> Oh my god. >> Deos. >> Yeah, demos. It is the joys of demos. >> So, actually prepared for this. So, what I can if I were to get a reply is I can go show you how complicated the camera is set up cuz when you get sent uh one of these, it will come blank. And when you load up on uh your mesh plastic onto the node, it still needs to configure it. And you do that by oops configuration. So in the configuration, this is the important part. A lot of people skip

over this. This is where you set your region. So we we're running as I said on 686 cuz that's the license free uh that's the license free band. So but you have to select that. It comes as un set. Can you see this? So it comes unset. So it's still clear. So it doesn't know what country it comes from. You just loaded the data onto it. Uh there we go. And this hops. So this is really important. I set my seven because the network can deal with now before the default is three. So really limited the range of the uh the range of your your network. So the lab hops what you understand is that how many

how many hops from one to the other. So, when I was talking to Richard, it was seven when the network's quite unstable. I'm really excited to see if I still get back to him to see how good it was because it would still take a good 20 or 30 seconds to get reply each way. Uh I'd love to see the uh the uh the improvements. Let's not let's not do that. So, here's another one. Another thing I'll record is you see this 433. So that isn't license free that reserved for ham users. So it means myself and that gentleman over there we can set ourselves up a mesh meshtastic network that only we can use as uh ham users cuz

it's licensed. So it doesn't mean we can have that. You don't want to do that cuz there's better options for me networking for ham users. Uh but the option is there. And you see all these are mainly free. The option to be licensed is the 433. >> Yes. Yeah. So the way it works is that uh it's always a pit. So you longer range on 433. No, wait, wait, wait. Going down. Yeah. You get long range, but it's more it's easier. it's easier to uh interfere with and the reason you get on the range cuz it's got bigger hops. So I don't mean hops in the note mean the actual signal itself. So every time it needs to bounce it get that's

how signals work that they bounce. So uh you'll get better range but it's easier to interfere with I'm hoping I just gotation on my phone that we could get Oh no messages yet. Oh no. Let's get let's try again. >> Let's try again. No messages yet. Uh >> the region save. >> Uh I hope not because it needs to reset anyway. So whenever you change this uh so it's all gone. It's all back to what it was. Uh we were messaging this morning. Let's have let's have another go. Let's have another go. Uh

should definitely get a network. There we go. And this should

This should show up now. [Music] >> It's not. >> It should be almost instant cuz it's going out. It's not receiving. Well, that's demos for you. >> That is de back on that. No. But you remember when I said right at the beginning? >> Yeah. Oh, that was me. >> Yes. Yes, it worked. Come on. We got me up there. I really look at that. But this is again, you remember that I was saying about how things can interfere. I sent a message before that on here say testing for Bides. But another said hello afterwards. It's not showed the testing bides. So there's some kind of interference that blocks that from connecting to this. Even though it's

right there, it still might be connecting to the mode outside to connect this one cuz you're trusting the network. You have no control over that. That's a shame. That is a shame. That really is a shame. But I will refer back to this. This could be great one day. You know what I mean? If they if we got more control over the network, more control in the software, uh it give us a more I said it was more it's a more responsive what what did I say in the negatives here? Do you remember I saying this just proved my point? I was talking last night with the side staff here. No problem. I was so happy. I've got messages. The thing

with the this I've turned it off so the message is still there. We got messages all night last night from us testing when I was standing where that gentleman laying the back was. I was sat there talking all night eating my dinner being rather smug about myself. Oh well it is again it just proves the point of coms. It's it's inexistence that is a failed uh demonstration but really kind of confirming what I was saying about with the presentation questions.

options. >> So yeah, so the it depends on they have to use same server. >> Yeah, they have to use the same server. But the reason I haven't gone into that is because me personally is that is supposed to be off grid offrid solution. So what I want personally is to be able to use this if the internet goes down. So I want it to be consistent with itself before needing a backup. Yeah. [Music] >> But uses the internet as well. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you go into the uh MQ settings, it's not something I've delved into, but my understanding of it is if I go back into this uh my understanding of it is that you give it

uh you give it a address that your internet users is in there. >> That's not Oh, hang on. Oh, it's not it. That's fine. I can get out. >> Let's have a look. Let's have a look. One new message. Hello, Amazing. So, [Music] I got it. Oh, hell yeah. Let's see if it actually Oh, look at this. Look at this. Here we go. I can actually do you guys. Well, sorry to go back on myself. But look, if we go I've not clicked it yet. There's what that message says. Where is it? Where is it? >> Where is it? >> But the notification. >> The notification is there. >> The notification there. Why isn't it?

That is proof. You see what I mean? >> Yeah. Like it showed that the message must have been received, but it's showing up on air. It's obviously not going to be on the same. That is crazy. So, it's in there. It's there. Damn. Again, this is I think this is actually the presentation. There we go. Here it is. So anyway, back to the uh Q. My understanding is that it uses the internet as a backup. I might you might use network. It may do, but I know that there a uh a uh field where you fill in the port and the address. You don't see them

off there a bit. Right. Any more questions? Sorry good presentation wasn't aware of this thing until I've got all links across three different countries. >> That would be amazing. >> So So there are so you can go you can go on the tastic website and got a full list of uh boards that are compatible. But the thing they don't go into with me, they'll give you the list of the boards, but boards is completely useless without a really good antenna. So to have a good understanding of antenna theory, so you'd want your really a yard pointed at that direction cuz you want the because it's so low powered, you want the smallest amount of wire going from your board to the

antenna and pointed at where you're going. So a lot of people have like literally like in the cable at the end of their antenna because it's got such low power usage and pointed at that. Hence why I wasn't using the argu but Richard was it was pointed south just by luck which had made him be able to connect to us. I was actually spoke to my wife when I was in uh this is a while back when I was in fleet. I think it was going to work. We we do Costco on fleet. I was send a message from the car and it worked. Uh, so £15 each. That's the that is my advice there. It really is. And it's fun. It

really is fun. When you get that message, I know it's fancy today, but when you get the message come through, you feel a sense of accomplishment like I just waste my life. Brilliant. You don't you don't you don't question your any more questions? Brilliant. Love it. Last time I had four I suck. I've got two one in mobile phones have antennas for the A68 signals and also anyway they actually fight back against the solar panels and >> I love that that's a really really good question. So no to the first question, you have to have a a separate this is like a board that you need the software to run it. You can't run it on your

phone. I think there there's no reason why these can't be uh installed on normal mobile phones. If you want to do that, I highly recommend you person deck. The the T deck uh has a really lovely UI. See the UI? It's all touch screen so you can send your messages. Uh so hope it didn't work, did it? Before I send a message, you go into this, you go and just message

that there. So, it's like on Blackberry. So, it's trying to get away from the phone. So, you've got the app on the phone, but this again needs to have a phone. So, it changes that. But, yeah, I think that there's no reason Why a mobile phone can't have like like project phone let's say have a uh a tech or something equivalent to it where you can load it on so it'll be like two at the same time in terms of questions if anyone wants to run away now [Music] ask questions away just giving everyone the option yeah once again thank No worries.

Maybe I'll let you play some faster. Thank you for coming today. Thank you. Cheers.