Comment by ChrisMarshallNY

Comment by ChrisMarshallNY a day ago

23 replies

Huh. Hadn’t heard of Meshcore before. Thanks for that. It sounds more organized than Meshtastic. Seems more polished, but also a bit more opaque (from my cursory examination). That may just be, because it’s not had as much time to get established. It has all the open credentials.

From her article:

> Their answer was both depressing and freeing: “You can’t. All you can do is be prepared with tools and a plan for when the crisis arrives. That’s when the organization will listen.”

That is so sad, but also, so true.

I was fortunate to have worked for a company that is over 100 years old, and that had weathered a couple of wars, depression, recession, market disruption, etc.

They were about as open to disaster planning as anyone, but they could also be head-in-the-sand knuckleheads. The biggest thing was the company had a fiscal and cultural conservative bent; quite unusual in the tech industry, these days.

Anyone that has managed a DR system, knows how difficult it is to get support. Disaster Recovery is expensive, resource-intensive, and difficult to test. It is also stuff people don’t want to think about. Sort of like insurance.

nunobrito a day ago

My suggestion as someone preparing for this kind of stuff since quite a while:

+ Quangsheng UV-K5 + Android phone with 3.5 mm audio jack + APRSdroid installed

Forget about LoRa, that is basically a toy. It is far more useful to have a functioning walkie talkie capable of talking with satellites and other stations at 50 kilometers of range.

  • bigfatkitten 12 hours ago

    > Forget about LoRa, that is basically a toy. It is far more useful to have a functioning walkie talkie capable of talking with satellites and other stations at 50 kilometers of range.

    You’re not going to reliably get that without terrestrial infrastructure, unless both you and your correspondent are conveniently standing on mountaintops.

    5km in the suburbs, maybe. Closer to 500m at street level in an urban environment.

  • ChrisMarshallNY a day ago

    The issue with satellite stuff, is that it’s pretty sensitive to active attack. It will be available for things like natural disasters, but not necessarily for war.

    In either case, jamming is a possibility.

    • nunobrito a day ago

      That is inaccurate. You will NOT be able to jam a satellite outside local areas, the amount of power to do is monstrous and likely to cause cancer for anyone around.

      In a real scenario these things work. Please don't fall into "what if's" which are exotic and confused as things bigger than what they are.

      • ChrisMarshallNY a day ago

        Well, from the comments, here, this sounds like a passionate topic, for folks.

        I've always been interested in helping folks that help folks.

        I started looking at Meshtastic, some years ago, but found the ecosystem to be a bit overly-complex, as is often the case, with "Swiss Army Knife" approaches.

        • nunobrito 20 hours ago

          Yeah, indeed. If you are in the mood, dive a bit into APRS.

          Best thing is the android app combo with the walkie-talkie. Tends to give a usable setup that works for voice and data.

      • elevation a day ago

        > You will NOT be able to jam a satellite outside local areas

        It is true that you will not be able to jam the _downlink_ frequency outside local areas.

        But due to the FM capture effect, anyone else in the same hemisphere with a basic 100w transmitter (and appropriate antenna) on the _uplink_ frequency will be able to deny the satellite service to all the 5W Baofeng radios that preppers are stockpiling.

  • MaKey a day ago

    You need a ham radio license to send data on APRS frequencies.

    • detaro a day ago

      Depends. Various parts of Europe have bands that can be used licenseless and allow data, e.g. in Germany there was somewhat of a community doing APRS-over-CB (past tense because I haven't kept up if thats still a thing).

    • nunobrito a day ago

      Except under emergency situations, which are the cases we are talking here.

      • detaro a day ago

        Things like this really benefit from experience and practice though. If an emergency is the first time you try to really use your radio, it's probably not going all that well.

        • nunobrito 20 hours ago

          That is indeed true. Practicing is important. To remember: APRS is available on other frequencies and methods, one does not need a radio license to receive text messages.

          APRS is friendly enough to permit sending messages using normal internet and receiving messages from friends while on the outdoors. However, all of this requires practice and know-how.

    • dahrkael a day ago

      i always wondered if in case of natural disaster/war the state does really have the time and resources to chase unlicensed use of radio frequencies

      • detaro a day ago

        it doesn't, but if you only start learning and using your equipment once disaster has hit you are a bit late (and possibly getting in the way of others trying to use radios properly).

        • nunobrito 18 hours ago

          Yes, that is the case. By the time you learn and get more equipment, you might as well get a proper radio license too. If you are interested on the topic, it is worth doing (in my opinion)

MaKey a day ago

AFAIK Meshcore was started by a disgruntled Meshtastic developer. It has got a smaller community and is messaging only, no sensor data transfer.

  • nunobrito a day ago

    Then maybe time to know more rather than just throwing such claims.

    The network itself does far more than what other projects were doing and is being fast adopted across Europe.