Whoa, great bootstrap! Thanks again, Josh. Your performance notes are very encouraging. Pete
Aug 12, 2026 4:11:53 PM Josh Wyatt <[email protected]>: > Great, fun topic! > > I've been experimenting with meshtastic and meshcore for the better part of > six months, including putting up my own meshcore repeater (and subsequently > having to rework it due to bad sealant allowing water ingress, but v3.0 is > going up soon). > > For reference, my location is about halfway between Apex and Garner, just > north of Fuquay and Holly Springs in Wake County. Just north of the southern > edge of 540. > > Meshtastic is great for ad-hoc, smallish dedicated group comms. Think hiking > group, camping group, etc. It has a very easy learning curve. When I first > flashed meshtastic, I immediately saw and was able to communicate with a > human who had two nodes not very far (.5 miles or so) from me. > > meshcore is far better for established and scalable comms. When I first > flashed meshcore, I was able to receive messages from as far away as > Tennessee, Virginia, and Georgia, by virtue of an established network of > stationary repeaters. I was receiving line-of-sight signal from as far away > as North Hills mall (12 miles from me, there's a repeater on The Eastern > building) and Chapel Hill ("Tarheel backhaul" repeater, > https://rdumesh.org/tarheel-backhaul-how-chapel-hill-joined-the-mesh/) as > they are high enough to have direct line of sight to my location, and are > running at legal limit (1 watt). They couldn't hear me at first because my > nodes (heltec v3, heltec t114) were running much less power, my antennas are > crap, and probably most importantly, not high enough. > > Meshcore feels a little better engineered. Meshtastic feels more like a toy, > or proof of concept. > > My guidance for success is: > 1. Run meshcore on a repeater up high and some companion nodes inside your > house (within bluetooth range of your phone). > 2. Deploy your repeater with 1 watt output and > 3. Get the repeater as high as possible. With the low power firmware, solar > repeaters are trivially possible. Mine has a spot 80 feet up in a tree on the > back edge of my property. > > If you're going to flash meshcore, especially on the ESP32 based devices, be > sure to use the power-saving fork of the firmware. > https://github.com/IoTThinks/EasySkyMesh/ > The developer is VERY active and responsive, and works with the original > maintainers to roll changes upstream early and often. > > Thanks, > Josh > > On Wed, Aug 12, 2026 at 2:57 PM Pete Soper via TriEmbed > <[email protected]> wrote: >> Congrats, Glenn! Your raising this subject on Monday created a hell of a >> spark of interest. >> >> Pete >> >> On 8/12/26 13:45, Glen Smith via TriEmbed wrote: >>> As with all things, the documentation may not be up to date. >>> >>> I have the meshtastic app on my phone and prior to flashing my boards, >>> did discover a node. I don't remember now where I was at the time though. >>> >>> I have now flashed my 2 nodes and can report that I have sent messages >>> between them. >>> >>> Keep in mind that we can use this withing our own homes to report >>> telemetry - like Paul's freezer temp even if there is no other >>> infrastructure existent. If we find it useful, adding a routing / >>> repeater node would benefit the community and improve functionality >>> for everyone. >>> >>> A app called Flaresat seems to allow you to bridge to the internet via >>> a single phone that still has mobile connection. I have not >>> experimented with this yet. >>> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Triangle, NC Embedded Interest Group mailing list >> >> To post message: [email protected] >> List info: http://mail.triembed.org/mailman/listinfo/triembed_triembed.org >> TriEmbed web site: https://TriEmbed.org >> To unsubscribe, click link and send a blank message: >> mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe >> Searchable email archive available at >> https://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ >>
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