Has anyone used meshtastic?

I’ve got 6 radios running it! A couple use mqtt to push the messages off the mesh and onto the cloud where it’s a little more convenient to receive messages.

Overall I am using it to set up a little emergency comms for friends and family, but I hope to use it hiking/biking/backpacking as well.

Super active community on discord, and they have a subset of users on matrix as well.

This Meshtastic, I take it? I haven't personally used it, but it sounds interesting! Not too surprising there's not much info about it though, as it does sound rather niche.

I did! Don't expect too much stability out of it, but I was surprised to say that the latest version worked pretty stable and nicely for me. I can definitely recommend it.

Yup got some Lora32s for hiking trips. Works great. They work out of the box, but you'll have to get some lipos and print a case.

I’ve got a few devices running and it’s pretty cool. Don’t really have a use case for it though!

I ordered four of the simpler devices this weekend (LilyGO T3-S3 LoRa 868MHz - SX1262) and I have been reading about antennas.

Since I live in a city I am not super optimistic about the range. But I am still very curious about the concept, and I would love to be surprised.

After doing some search about antennas, I have decided to test the following combination:

• 3dBi 868MHz ISM Band Dipole Terminal Antenna for the LoRa that stays at home:

• Sighunter 868 MHz to bring with me.

I also have a vector network analyzer (LiteVNA) that can be used for checking antennas, so I will also try to build some antennas myself. I doubt that my custom antennas will approach the performance of the professional ones... But I just find it such a cool concept.

Have you already gotten to play with it? What is your experience so far?