Mesh Communications

A starter page for my meshcore hobby.

What are mesh communications?

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Mesh communications revolve around an open source, off-grid, decentralized, mesh network built to run on affordable, low-power devices, typically over the LORA band. There are multiple implementations of this, with the two most popular being Meshtastic and Meshcore.

Meshtastic

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I discovered Meshtastic in 2023 thanks to a colleague at SiXworks. I had the opportunity to play around with a couple of devices from Lilygo, and thought they were cool but didnt think too much of it.

One late evening in 2024 I was browsing the internet and came across the meshtastic subreddit. I immediately thought it looked cool and remembered trying it a year prior. So… why not… it’s fairly cheap to get into, so its worth trying.

I went through a period of buying some cheap inexpensive nodes, and also assembled a solar node for semi-permenant outdoor use.

Meshcore

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After about a year and a half with Meshtastic, I noticed that I was starting to loose interest in Meshtastic. I’d heard about a competing network called Meshcore which reportedly fixed a number of shortfalls present in the Meshtastic system. Device support was a little more limited, but I installed it onto all but one of my nodes to test.

My Nodes

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RAK Solar Node

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• WisBlock Meshtastic Starter Kit
  • RAK19007 base board
  • RAK4631 (Nordic nRF52840) module
• Unify Enclosure IP67 150x100x45mm (Solar model)
• EEMB Lithium-Ion Polymer Battery 3.7V 2000mAh 103454 Lipo Battery
• Gainfi 8 dbi 868 MHz Helium-Lora-Antenne