Anyone play around with either?
I've had meshtastic previously and that seemed to work pretty well, albeit I'm in an area which doesn't have much activity.
I've recently re-flashed a t-1000e onto meshcore and find it a fair bit more stable in terms of holding connections to the app etc. There's still not loads of activity in my immediate area so the next step is to knock up a solar repeater, put it up high somewhere and fill in a black spot sitting between several other repeaters.
I'm not convinced it's as potentially useful as some proclaim but it's interesting to piss about with, particularly for outdoorsy stuff.
If anyone wants to have a go I've got 3 meshtastic nodes going spare albeit they're on the 443mhz rather than the more commonly used 868mhz. They'll be ok for a small, self-contained mesh but there's not going to be much activity beyond that group of devices. They are a bit homemade though, in fact they are home made, one has been on fire at least once but seems pretty stable now... Just let me know and I'll post them out for - batteries very much not included!
Wasn't totally convinced by the way it's "sold" as a comms method for the apocalypse, although tbf, that apocalyse might now be one step closer.
Had some success with it for a niche use out on the Scottish moorland where the GSM is proper bad and 4G almost non-existent.
We launch rockets there, which might land anything from 50 paces away to a couple of miles. In the past we tried all kinds of GPS trackers, never got around to implementing something similar to the ones HABs use. But Meshtastic with GPS telemetry kinda just worked with little effort, and the more Meshtastic devices there were (trackers and clients), the better it worked. Unlike the olden days of people having to make sure only 1 433 tracker was running at once. Bit like the RC guys when it went from a frequency peg board to digital and everyone can be on the same band at once with no interference.
That was Meshtastic on 868. I flashed one to Meshcore yesterday, but have had no success yet for general comms.
Meshtastic hit saturation in some areas. Meshcore might overcome some of the issues, but around here afaict there are no other clients, but maybe 2 repeaters in range according to the map.
As featured on
The only time I have seen it used is by people that run ATAC or the other backwoods tactial comms services. I've never really needed or wanted that (excellent 5G in my part of the forest), so I put it in the pile of "interesting, but not for me"
We launch rockets
Username checks out.
Interesting about the telemetry, I suppose line of sight from a rocket is pretty good tbf!
There is a bit of an anti-government / survivalist vibe about it in places, but I reckon most people just like dicking about with RF stuff and the apocalypse / zombies / aliens just gives them a context for that dicking about.
I suppose line of sight from a rocket is pretty good tbf!
Yes until it is in a dip in between clumps of heather. Then it is practically invisible unless you trip over it. Or get a mesh ping. Several times we'd go out hunting, and get a ping off either someone else out on the moor, or conveniently from another flight. Next time we'll have a few strategically located fixed repeaters too, to save having to go up to high ground. It is incredible how much the 1 hop range can vary based on terrain and height above the ground.
edit: oh and probably have a few on drones too.
A drone with a node seems a good shout for finding downed kit, be interested to hear how that all pans out.
Messed about with Meshcore a bit more. For me it doesn't work, and for our use case won't be ideal either. So back to Meshtastic.
For others who are more about fixed location off-grid chat (especially in parts of England that hit the Meshtastic saturation), then Meshcore should win any day.
Will keep 2 Heltec's flashed, one on each system, for now, but certainly will go back to Meshtastic for tracking the next time. Although ironically we were working on a tracking method before that was actually quite similar to Meshcore.
It's great though that the same device can be reflashed to work with several different LoRa based systems.
Yeah MC definitely seems better in terms of static infrastructure in busier area but MT seems a bit more fluid/flexible in quieter areas.
I await a middle ground solution!