this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2025
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I always thought these were more like walkie talkies for messaging than telephones that you can call anyone.
Like it would be good if cell serivce goes down.
That's pretty much exactly what they are. Text message in walkie-talkies. With the added benefit that if your friend can't hear you, but another friend is in between, your message automatically gets relayed through their walkie-talkie.
If I wanted to transmit, for example, temperature and humidity from a sensor once every 5 minutes, would the network be willing to carry my signals?
That is entirely up to the whim of your neighboring nodes to decide
https://meshtastic.org/docs/configuration/radio/device/
SENSOR is one of the defined device roles. And whether for personal automation or public information, it is a reasonable use case for the network.
Everything I learn about this project is so cool. I can’t go through the docs right now, but I’m assuming it can prioritize things like emergency communication over sensor data.
There’s no public nodes in a 200+ km radius around me on that site someone linked, so something tells me I’ll have to do a lot of guerilla solar panel installation if I want to anonymously set up something.
I’ve thought about it on and off over the past two years, more of a private network for family and friends than anything, for emergencies and so on. The real, big problem is that I could be accused of espionage and thrown into jail forever if I do this. So I don’t think I’ll see anyone putting any nodes up for the foreseeable future. At least not public nodes.
Can you message random people or have to already know their contact info?
It is channel-based, using Pre-Shared Keys (PSK).
There is a public line where you can message pretty much everyone with the blank PSK.
Oh, now that sounds fun