- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
- technology@beehaw.org
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😭
I should download classic wow servers game and addons for long term storage in case of WW3 🤔 and wikipedia too
This tech would be great if we had high power nodes all across the globe. But we do not. Maybe a cool idea could be encrypted data over FM radio. The radio stations already exist and are a dying business. Nonprofits could buy up radio stations and rebroadcast data broadly and only those with the encryption keys could decrypt. Cut the ISP out entirely. Like the difference between a local call and a long distance call.
Meshtastic communication would prioritize local hops where they are available and then where there are spans of area without nodes, they could hop across radio broadcasts.
Primary issue would be speed. Next to no bandwidth on a signal like that. Kbps not Mbps. Perhaps an incentive for much better compression as well.
Packet over radio does exist, and it’s sloooooooooooooow and there’s tons of loss. Imagine the first modems over phone lines, then slow it down more.
Legally, in the US, it can’t be encrypted, either. A single geostationary satellite would be faster, especially if latency wasn’t an issue.
I don’t think you’re going to be downloading a linux distro over this system. It’s probably just going to be text and the most basic data,
That’s what the internet was, at first
That’s what the last bit of my comment was about. Compression would need significant improvement before it were usable for most things people use the internet for.
I’m not sure compression would solve the issue I mentioned - this would be probably more akin to using Napster to DL a song in 2001 via dialup, or trying to get an image off a newsgroup at best. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be useful, just very limited. Like I said, you’re not getting a full distro this way.
For anyone reading this currently, it appears that regulation bans any form of encryption over HAM radio broadcasts. So I guess that’s one reason this won’t work.
How would they find out ?
A high powered antenna that transmits a lot of “static” would be a dead giveaway.
It’s not really static. It’s digital, the transmission scheme has structure. It’s only the transmitted data that is encrypted, but you’d have to first unpack the transmission to get to the data.
I understand. I was replying to how gov agencies would find out. Any digital transmission is basically “static” to an analog receiver.
True, you could send encrypted data via morse code. Nothing but a pure tone.
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Sounds like a better idea to implement as a reticulum medium.
So, I setup meshtastic.
Put an antenna on my roof.
Have a decent number of mesh radios. Put one in each car in relay mode.
Setup a locally run LLM and made an interface to it.
Working on setting up a BBS.
I’m in the high density suburbs, I can, when the weather is just right, reach a single node that doesn’t seem to be able to reach any other nodes.
If I go on a drive, I can see 5-10 nodes.
Adoption in the mid-Atlantic US is just so damn low, it’s not really usable.
We need some antennas up high, but there aren’t any reasonable options around me.
In my area, some people put small solar nodes on top of high buildings (office, university, and apartment). The node on my roof can directly communicate with one of these nodes ~20km away. Pretty crazy tor something that can run indefinitely on a 18650 battery and small solar panel. I’ve heard some people just place “guerilla nodes” to extend coverage.
Meshcore 😎 you could see if there’s more density of MC around you.
There are 4 in my metropolitan area, and I don’t have line of sight to any of them :(
There are about 30 meshtastic in the same area, but most of them are out of range to each other.
I even stood one up at work on the other side of town and mqtt’d them together.
The internet will get back up if it goes down. It is very decentralized. Sea cables and DNS is where most of the centralization occurs, and DNS going down is not at all the end of the internet. How man sea cables have to be broken at once for the internet to break, I’m not entirely sure.
Meshtastic is a cool thing and it is very useful, internet up or down.
That won’t help for situations where a government shuts down access to the internet.
Friend: do not underestimate how much greed the cel companies are capable of. Many have been working on their own satellite setups in preparation and blasting it in everyone’s face lately.
How resistant would this be to jamming? Iran managed to black out Starlink.
And how trackable is it? Not sure how many people would be prepared to run one of these boxes if the Revolutionary Guard are going to come knocking.
It’s pretty easy to jam as it’s just radio waves. Increase the noise on the channel and the chirps of your msg don’t get heard. That said there are some options to vary the channel as a group, and jamming a broad and robust mesh completely vs an area of nodes is a bit harder.
Trackable as in traceable? You mean finding your node location? By default not overly difficult but again, can be set up to make it hard to find you.
Wouldn’t it be pretty easy to track down the source since its just radio?
Riots fix that, not meshtastic
Riots are better coordinated when people can communicate wirelessly
A government can shut down a riot of 10,000
It struggles with 10 1,000 person riots.
I think at that point it’s more of a revolution than a riot, but I agree
No doubt, but meshtastic really is a temporary solution, but a very good solution since it’s only necessary for a temporary amount of time. I’m just saying there aren’t really many cases outside of a catastrophic mass human extinction event that would disable the internet infrastructure beyond maybe a few years if that. Won’t be a library of alexandria moment from a connectivity side, but which servers are still up is the real question
I didn’t know riots and protests 50+ years ago depended on the internet. Crazy.
they depended on communication
You missed the word “better”.
I never said meshtastic is a hard requirement.
If they shut the Internet and there is a decent meshtastic network they will jam that as well.
This is a non answer. yes, hypothetically they can, but the whole point of finding alternative channels is to make it difficult for them to do so, to the point that they might not even try.
That pessimism of “they can jam it anyways” is like saying do not wear a helmet while riding a bike, if you are meant to die that day, you will die regardless of head protection.
Plus, it will take resources for them to jam things, and the more resources they need to do that shit the faster it will deplete them and the less they can do, it is so obvious I do not know how to write it without sounding demeaning.
Maybe so, but incompetence is persistent within fascist organizations, and it adds an extra problem for them to deal with, which has value for that fact alone.
It adds a lot of extra risk since each node is a constant radio beacon that is easily trackable.
Compared with handheld radio that broadcast and disappear.
There are normally only a few points at which traffic enters the country. Shutting them down will effectively cut you from most of the Internet, and the rest that remains will be fully in the jurisdiction that oppresses you.
So much of our infrastructure uses the internet now that if it goes down I wouldn’t be shocked if electric grids, healthcare, shopping, public transport, etc also shit the bed.
Add some batteries to the meshtatic nodes. and even if all electricity and networks go down, you and your friends can still organize and plan.
Internet outages happen all the time. Most of these networks can run independent for a time. And are designed to be so. Only smaller networks have issues because they are not designed as such. But things like toast make a small store feasible to run. If electricity goes out then it has bigger issues, but I’ve seen stores go to hand swipe cards before to keep from closing.
I can only speak for the US, but our electric grids and production are supposed to be air gapped for critical infrastructure. Healthcare? I doubt it based on the continuous leaks there - and medical supply chains are tightly integrated with internet/cloud… Shopping still has a fairly sizeable local accessibility for staple items, certainly food distro where the internet wouldn’t matter for at least a short while, but it’s also tightly integrated for Supply Chain Management, much like Health care - so there could be a run on it.
I’m not sure on public transport, but most are goverment led, so probably air gapped.
There’s also a shitton of dark fiber laying about. Internet infrastructure COULD be brought back up depending on the damage that triggered outages in the first place.
Literally all the ordering for stores uses the internet now; we’d be absolutely fucked for a good while if the internet actually went down in the USA.
I can only speak for the US, but our electric grids and production are supposed to be air gapped for critical infrastructure.
Do oil pipelines count? 'Cos Colonial got hacked and everybody thought they were airgapped.
I think some water facility was too but no serious values were changed - 'cos and admin preferred to sit comfy at home.I’m not exactly standing behind it - just saying what I’ve read. I’m confident nuclear plants are after 9/11. Anything else is probably hit or miss, including petro/gas pipelines, coal, and generating plants specifically. Plus if a bad actor (likely state sanctioned) decides to, they can get through air gaps with spies/traitors/unwitting idiots with a simple USB drive. After air gapped uranium processing centrifuges were wrecked with an errant USB drive, I would expect all systems to disable or remove USB drive connectivity, but I’m sure that’s inconsistent… at best.
After air gapped uranium processing centrifuges were wrecked with an errant USB drive,
I’d forgotten about stuxnet, quite the (technical) feat.
I wonder if that fancy bed company that saw it’s beds freeze 'cos no AWS ever sold to hospitals…
Queue IT Crowd episode…
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How resilient is something like Meshtastic? My understanding is that anyone can configure their device poorly so that it can become overly chatty, congesting the network. Even in ideal an ideal scenario with properly configured nodes, could this actually survive if it saw more than hobbiest adoption?
I think it’s really cool and i like having this idea of a backup communication system, but if has serious range limitations and is likely to be overwhelmed in a no-cell scenario is it even worth it, or is it just fun to play around with?
By default it implements rough limits that you cannot exceed to make sure that you do not not transmit too much noise. Additionally, you can always establish private channels for your nodes and / or not retransmit at all.
Meshtastic isn’t intended for mission-critical uses or as an internet substitute. It is intended for very basic text based communication (e.g. between your friends) or remote IoT devices.
The congestion argument also applies to all radio based communication, there are always people transmitting with high gain, noisy outputs or spam.
Yeah, I understand the limitations of the frequency and the compromises mesh networks have to make. I wouldn’t expect it to be an internet substitute. My point is, and I do apologise because I cannot remember the source, I recall hearing about a convention or a protest or some larger gathering where people tried to use Meshtastic and it cratered due to load.
If that above case actually did happen and I’m not mis-remembering, then it doesn’t bode well for adoption by the non-tech savvy. You get into this odd area where you have tech and RF hobbiests that think this is cool beans, but they don’t make up enough people for a robust network. However the more people you bring on that don’t understand radio settings the more succeptible you are to poor performance. Then if it ever does it mass adoption it is likely oitside the abilities of the tech and scale just isn’t possible. You need this sweet spot.
With ham or something else you can have a few people in more remote locations because of superior range, but with low powered RF like Meshtastic you really want portable devices for people on the ground. All this is to say I love the idea of being able to give something like this to a loved one going to a protest or something, but I’m just not sure if it’s more than a toy yet.
I’m not sure what they could do to keep this open while ensuring stability unless they start to add dynamic settings to tje protocol. Something that detects if there’s too much congestion, or if signals are too strong to automatically switch from LongFast to something more applicable to a the dense group you’re in. Then manual settings get hidden behind an advanced menu? But that would be entirely on tje firmware to control.
Anyway, I’m rambling and trying to solution without actually owning one, so I could be way off. I just really like the idea of short range personal communication and want this to be more than a tinker tech.
What time zone?
Their website is .nl, so it may or may not be Netherlands time.
I am literally building a network in my town. Love this project, so much fun and useful
I’ve not been recycling my tin cans and I have a whole shitload of string. Happy to share.
I’ll take 3 bags full. One for the master (coordinator) and one for the slave (endpoints), and one for the little girl who lives down the lane (Fitgirl Repacks)
My remembering of that line is “and one for the dame”, and I grew up in the deep south…strange
I ad-libbed to make my horrible analogy work. I am beyond regret
Nah. It was good.
If this is something I can setup with no need of complex licenses, it would be interesting.
I live in a small town and it could prove as a useful city project for cheap, reliant, local communications.
setup with no need of complex licenses, it would be interesting
It doesn’t seem like you need any licensing, it’s like a walkie talkie.
it could prove as a useful city project for cheap, reliant, local communications
I’m not sure if that’s the right usecase. Meshtastic seems to be for short-range, line-of-sight-ish communication. Apparently, you can set up repeaters to expand the coverage area, but it seems like buildings, trees, etc will dramatically affect the signal strength. (I think?)
I’ll say what I just said on a similar thread: if the internet goes down tomorrow, mesh will mean very little compared to ham radio.
Any quality transceiver built in the last 100 years will be more useful. It is purely about how many exist, how lineg they last, and their requirements for use (which are effectively, power and antenna).
Yes, there is a license that you need in non-emergency situations. It doesn’t change much anything in emergency situations, and it certainly doesn’t affect the fact that there are already millions of radios out there.
I’ll say what I just said on a similar thread: if the internet goes down tomorrow, mesh will mean very little compared to ham radio.
For what purpose? Hanging out with friends? Watching porn? Getting vital information around?
AFAIK, ham is really mostly geared towards synchronous voice communication, whereas most of the Internet is asynchronous communication in a variety of forms: text, voice, video, etc. In an emergency, synchronous voice is pretty important. But, for day-to-day life, asynchronous dominates most people’s usage of things.
So, if the Internet goes down tomorrow and you need to know why, what happened, etc. your best bet is probably not ham radio but normal TV and radio broadcasts, not rumours being spread by other random people using ham radio. If you live in a country where a complete overnight shut down of the internet, and complete stopping of all news broadcasts is possible, then ham might be useful for the first few days / hours to figure out what’s going on. But, in the longer term, ham isn’t really a replacement for the Internet. For that you’d want asynchronous sharing of various kinds of data, which is more a mesh network, not ham radio.
I’ve come to the realization that mesh nodes are little more than a gateway drug into the world of ham radio. And for that I’m grateful.
It’s not as good, and does everything worse than radio. The only real world use I have found is for when cellphone networks get overwhelmed at things like music festivals and large sports games. No one else’s texts go through, but I can toss by buds a node to put in their back pocket and we can stay in touch.
our local mature club is building our local mesh network out now as an introduction to the ham world. And it’s working. It’s getting the younger kids and adults through the door. And from there, it’s an easy thing to get them interested in more useful and fun forms of communication.
our local mature club
You meant senior citizens or content?
Why not both? 😉
Great typo, I’m leaving it.
I like the idea of a ham radio, but too voice shy to actually talk lol, so I don’t bother with it.
JS8Call and FT8 are digital modes that don’t require talking. Plenty of other things to do as well
Now let me introduce you to APRS 😁
It’s pretty much the HAM equivalent of Meshtastic
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FT8 is fun and doesn’t require talking. CW too but you need to learn Morse code.
Now that I like. And I think there is room for both – IF people know and understand the differences.
Mesh against ham in an emergency is not even a competition, in my view. The numbers just aren’t there. But for random cellular failures etc, I see some utility.
Personally, I’ve just seen so much more about mesh lately than ham, and it makes me sad. If it’s a gateway, as you suggest, then great. I worry that people see it as a novelty and not a gateway.
There was a massive power outage in Portugal not too long ago and people used Meshtastic to communicate between cities to see who had power.
It does work, but it’s not a Final Solution
I expect they also used ham. It’s just a numbers game. Mesh doesn’t have them in comparison.
Both can coexist, more options is better when talking about decentralised systems
Oh it’s a hundred percent just the novelty communication technology that is in vogue right now. I don’t really know if it’s a true zeitgeist technology or if someone with a lot of product to sell who is playing with the social media algorithm. But I guess I don’t really care much.
The trick is to find a way to seize on that opportunity. Now that our mesh network is structurally sound and sufficient, I’m working on using a raspberry pi to automate our ham club meeting dates, testing dates, and field days, and then blast those messages once a week or so over the mesh network. That way, an impulse buy turns into the discovery of a fuctional network and afterwards, a random person can discover a whole local community of people with all sorts of new things to learn.
You can lead a horse to water. But you can’t make him drink.
first you need a trough. That’s the mesh network. After, the horse needs to be thirsty. That’s the curiosity people have. information, the when and how and where, you can automate and passively tell them about. that’s the water.
Good on you for using one to bolster the other! Smart use of the tech either way.
Meshtastic has some store-and-forward stuff that’s damn nice but someone has to set it up.
Meshcore has routers, repeaters and mailboxes.
It it could be pushed up to a few watts it would be far more useful.
I bring FRS radios (normal ol’ walkie talkies) to the local Renaissance festival which has awful to no cell reception. It works great.
But yeah the barrier to even getting a technician license is too high. You get people that get excited and wanna do stuff and then they’re told they can’t. So things like meshtastic where they actually can do radio related things without a license are great.
The question pool is so small you can memorize it :)
9/10 of the tech test is common sense or courtesy, and the bare minimum to make contact
I get you, it’s pretty easy, but I’m just saying trying to get somebody into a hobby, and then saying “actually you can’t talk to people until you schedule a test” is a huge barrier.
It’s likely why the hobby is dying.
That said, ham equipment is generally able to be operated in a way that could interfere with police, fire, and air traffic. If you’re operating bigger stuff, you can end up with RF exposure or even exposing your neighbors. It’s all fun and games till you burn out Mrs. Johnsons pacemaker :)
I’d say they should make some safer HT’s that don’t step on emergency bands and do a scouts honor web test, but those bands are so poorly defined, and GMRS/FRS is already in that headspace.
There’s no restriction to purchase this stuff, so licensing will only stop accidents, not intentional bad actors. Even Baofengs can be put into a “ham mode” so they don’t transmit out of band. I don’t think we’d see it happen, but a license class under technician targeted at getting people legally able to use lower power handhelds super quickly would be nice. Even the technician question bank has questions about things that ultimately don’t really matter for making sure people operate in band as they should. The metaphor I give folks is like if your driver’s license test asked you questions about how to build engines. (And part of the reason we won’t ever see that is because amateur radio licenses allow you to construct and use your own equipment, as opposed to things like FRS where the part itself has to be certified.)
I’ve been fooling around with Meshtastic for a couple years and haven’t come up with a real world use for it yet, other than scenarios like you mentioned.
What would be really cool is if cell phone makers could incorporate a mesh into their phones as a local public channel when the tower goes out. It would probably just be used by drug dealers or something, but it’s the only cool and functional idea I can come up with.
If they can’t charge an admittance fee or a per message fee, they won’t implement it. It goes against their business model.
But we can dream.
Controlling home automation remotely without any internet access.
Tracking dogs, people or vehicles - again with no internet.
I don’t see how you could get enough reliability to do either from any distance.
It all depends on the environment and the amount of nodes. I’m not exactly controlling Fort Knox here so 100% reliability isn’t a big point
It’s still cool to be at the store 2-3km away and get a notification that the fridge door is open, via a completely independent network 😀
I get the exact same notification via the internet, but it’s not as cool
FYI if you’re ham licensed, you can boost the output power of your mesh radio. There’s a setting in most firmwares.
If I recall correctly, you can, but it removes your node from the public networks everyone else is using because hams cannot use encryption for coms as part of the rules for ham operation, as the non ham network is encrypted by default. You would have to build a secondary network independent of the public node list.
Correct me if I’m wrong. But that was my understanding of the difference.
You’re probably right. I noticed the feature, but haven’t personally tried it.
But you lose encryption.
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What good is ham radio in a “replace the internet” situation though? Can you send data over it? I read early that you can’t encrypt it. I’m not an expert on the subject but as far as I can tell from reading about it here, it’s not an answer to this topic.
It allows for worldwide comms, even in situations where entire infrastructures cease to exist. This is especially useful for emergency situations.
There are many, many digital modes on ham radio. The encryption question is one of legality – not capability. But the short answer is yes, you can do various things with data on ham radio.
I guess it’s a question of the level of disaster / political strife / etc which causes the internet to no longer be usable.
Edit: worth noting that mesh is effectively a kind of ham radio device, which uses some ham spectra and can be subject to the same rules about encryption (it is specifically illegal in the US to use “messages encoded for the purpose of obscuring their meaning”, FCC Title 47 Section 97.113). Digital signing, for example, does not violate this.
The only reason you don’t need a license for mesh is because it is using specific, reduced power transmissions and specific parts of the spectra. Adjusting these settings beyond the acceptable range (e.g. boosting output power) would mean you need a license just like any other ham device.
Here meshtastic has become part of the emergency information network initiative. If there is a coms blackout, intercity/town civillian communications are to be handled by amateur radio enthusiast with licence and communications whitin the city/town will be handled by licence free systems. Meshtastic has been spreading well among the general public, so it has become most viable system to use at lowest level in the chain.
But it just isn’t. Why not put those resources towards ham, where there are considerably more handsets already there?
This seems like a solution in search of a problem thay was already solved, hidden by people who don’t want a $10 license.
Have you thought about not trying to drag meshtastic down to try and prop ham up?
I get it, you spent a bunch of time studying for your ham and you don’t want it to feel like a waste, but lets be perfectly frank here- most people aren’t going to get a HAM license. It IS, however, VERY accessible for someone to buy a cheap gadget on sale to try out.
I never understand why ham radio people always try to sabotage every other communication method, but you guys do it every time.
Let other people communicate how they want.
I’m not trying to drag anything down. But I think it is important for many people to realize that the meshtastic is ultimately a ham device. It is using specific parts of the spectrum and reduced power to avoid needing the license. There’s nothing wrong with that, but by definition, it isn’t really adding anything that can’t also be done on ham. In a similar vein, the only direction to go in terms of enhancing its capabilities is further into ham.
And no, I didn’t spend a bunch of time doing anything. People vastly overestimate the complexity of the ham radio exams.
But by all means, use what you want to communicate. I’m not trying to dissuade anyone from it – I just think it’s important that they know the limitations of the device compared to the greater whole in which it exists.
it isn’t really adding anything that can’t also be done on ham.
Encryption, affordability, ease of access.
It is a misconception that you cannot do encryption with ham radio.
Affordability – looks like a wash to me.
Ease of access – maybe. But it generally does less, so it’s a tradeoff.
It is a misconception that you cannot do encryption with ham radio.
Encryption: read the comments - in some jurisdictions you can’t (legally).
Affordability: in some parts of the work it’s expensive to get a ham license (required by law).
Ease of access: that one’s subjective, fine.
You get shitloads more people to buy a cheap gadget that’s easy carry with you.
If you start talking about ham radios and licences, most people loose interest before you finish the sentence.
The HAM license isn’t a trivial checkbox test, at least not over here
I’d love to know where a ham test is difficult.
Finland. The questions for the basic test require you to actually know your shit, they’re specifically worded so that you can’t wing it
I failed it, that’s how I know. By a few points but still 😀
Every year I see more on the map. Have a solar node, good fun.
Ever useful? I doubt it, HAM would dominate in a collapse.
In a true emergency? Yes, HAM is the way to go and I need to get around to buying one of those super sketchy Baofengs. In theory you can configure them to use without a license (which is also on the todo list) but it is super easy to tick into the licensed use. How much people will care will mostly depend on whether your local HAM folk are narcs. But, regardless, all bets are off in a true emergency and Baofengs are dirt cheap.
But in a “the internet is out” situation? Or even a “please evacuate in a calm and orderly fashion” for a wildfire or a bad hurricane? That is where meshtastic (et al) shine and it is well worth convincing friends to pick up a t-deck or whatever. Excellent for the “is it out for everyone or just me?” checks. Also useful for letting people know which field can see a cell tower a county or two over for emergency communication or to even coordinate whether you are all gonna head North or South to hang out for (hopefully just) a few days.
And anyone thinking of using any of that for stuff the government don’t want you to: You are an idiot and you need to learn about how insecure all of those are.
No wonder they’re insecure with you calling them idiots all the time.
🫣
you need to learn about how insecure all of those are.
By all means enlighten the idiots. Start with meshtastic’s weak encryption.
You just can’t legally transmit without a license. You can own a ham radio and listen all you want.
Perhaps where you live.
Internet 101: Laws aren’t the same everywhere.
Edit: My point wasn’t specifically about amateur radio (I’m also one) nor where I live, but about the old-as-the-internet habit of people scoffing about what is and isn’t legal without even knowing where the person they’re replying to lives.
On the radio front, numerous countries require licences to legally listen to public broadcast radio (Switzerland, Slovenia and Montenegro are examples). If your handy dandy Baofeng UV5 can pick up broadcast FM radio frequencies, in such countries it will fall under licencing requirements even if you never transmit.
Out of curiosity: where do you live where listening on ham requires a license?
In the US and other countries I am aware of, listening is allowed without a license (how would one even enforce such a thing?). In fact, you can even transmit on a ham radio in the US without a license provided there is an immediate risk to life or property.
What if the “laws aren’t the same” remark was about “you can’t transmit without a permit”? Not about the “you need license to listen”?
Could be. I expect the commenter would clarify.
Early evening in the western hemisphere, OP posted a large sum of perfectly native fluency English, so yeah, I’ll assume US or Canada. Can’t have a conversation without making reasonable assumptions. But please, feel free to add to the conversation, where do some of these exceptions exist? Don’t just “um, actually” the conversation, add to it!
yes they are
Keep in mind that without working repeaters, the baofeng will only have a range of a few miles on level ground with nothing in the way. If the power goes out, most of the repeaters will go down too. Some have battery backups that may last a few hours to a few days. Depending on where you are, a few may be solar powered, but heavy use will drain the batteries. Some repeaters are also reliant on the internet for linking to increase the coverage area.
What you really want in that case is a portable HF radio and a wire antenna you can string up over a tree branch or a support with a fishing pole. In the daytime, you can use the upper HF bands for long distance communication. That has a range of thousands of miles, but nearby stations won’t be able to hear you if they are beyond line of sight. Since the portable radio doesn’t have much power, you may need to use digital modes to get through. For more local contacts you can use NVIS propagation on the lower HF bands. That has a range of several hundred miles and can even be used to talk to someone on the other side of a mountain. Even 5 watts and an antenna strung 3 feet off the ground can work for voice contacts out to over a hundred miles.
I’d be interested in reading a debate thread on Lemmy about this.
What the pros and cons to different communication methods are following a disaster that neutralizes mainstream methods of communication.
Benn Jordan just did a video on Meshtastic and other decentralized tech, so I’m inclined to believe in mesh technology. But I’m also curious about the high frequency stuff you mention
Since the portable radio doesn’t have much power, you may need to use digital modes to get through.
I don’t know much about radio stuff, but ever since I learned about LoRA I’ve wondered what kind of range a station could get if the longwave or AM bands were repurposed for use with a spread spectrum digital protocol. And what kind of bandwidth something like that would have.
I think being able to do datacasting over really long ranges would be useful, so, for example, you could send emergency alerts to people even if the local cell infrastructure was down. But with the way things are headed I guess that role will be taken up by satellites.
For LF and MF, you typically want narrow signals, not spread spectrum. It’s hard to make wide band antennas for such low frequencies and propagation can change a lot in just a few tens of kHz.
I see
In your opinion is there anything useful we can do with that part of the radio spectrum as those stations switch off, or are those frequencies going to be silent in the future? Will they be turned over to hobbyists maybe? (or would the power requirements be too high at those frequencies?)
The AM broadcast stations aren’t going anywhere, at least in the US. Above the broadcast band is mostly aircraft, marine and the 160 meter ham band. None of that is likely to change.
Below the AM broadcast band are non directional beacons. Those are slowly being decommissioned. Eventually they will all be gone and that spectrum may get repurposed. I don’t know what the spectrum may get used for, but it would be nice if the 630 meter ham band was expanded.
LF and MF can be used at low power. The 2200 meter ham band has a power limit of 1 watt EIRP and the 630 meter band has a limit of 1 or 5 watts EIRP depending on the country. Actually radiating that much power is difficult because it’s not practical to build an efficient antenna. Luckily there is no limit on how much power the amplifier can put out, so we can put hundreds of watts into a very inefficient antenna. Narrow band digital modes work great on those bands.
In the US, we have LowFER, which allows hobbyists to use 160-190 kHz for experimental use without a license. The power limit is 1 watt input and the transmitting antenna is limited to 15 meters. People still manage to make long distance contacts with those significant limitations.
Yeah… if I am trying to reach people tens of miles away during The Apocalypse, I am already dead.
Anyone who is within range to be helpful (or… not) would generally be within signal range of a handheld.
What about after surviving the initial disaster? During the rebuilding? Or the ongoing survival?
Long-distance radios are useful as hell in stuff like The Last of Us.
That’s not an emergency scenario, that’s an apocalyptic scenario.
True, you make a good point.
I did know I was referring to an apocalyptic scenario rather than an emergency one. The giveaway was that I was replying to this comment:
Yeah… if I am trying to reach people tens of miles away during The Apocalypse, I am already dead.
🙂
If you are in a situation where you need help, the odds of someone (even the person you have been talking to for weeks on the radio) doing a day or two journey to MAYBE be able to reach you is pretty slim. And such long distance communication has other implications for bad actors.
And in the event of “rebuilding” some kind of community, you aren’t going to be using a handheld device at all. You’ll raid… I don’t even know what at this point (I miss Radio Shack) to install a radio on the tallest building you can find. Oh, a HAM Radio Nerd’s house. That’ll work.
Whereas if you are trying to communicat4e with others and signal for rescue? Whatever you can get from walking up a hill/mountain or climbing the stairs to said tall building with your handheld is probably about what you can expect.
Same with in stuff like hurricanes and the like. If you are in a region that is at all hospitable then the relief teams know to send helicopters/people to that area. And if you are in the kind of situation where even a few hours might mean the difference between life and death… odds are nobody is coming.
HF handhelds do exist. Do they have the range of a dedicated HF rig? No. Better than a Baofeng? Yes, and they’re about $10 more.
Like what? Can you name one?
Radtel RT-880 comes to mind. Baofeng-level handheld capable of HF comms. I got one for ~$50.
Oh nice. I see it for ~$80 on their site, but still, that’s cool. Never heard of it. I ended up getting a Xiegu G90 for HF. I’m curious how well the RT-880 works for HF. Gonna see if there are any reviews of it. I would’ve loved to know about it last year lol.
The four repeaters in my area are run by one club. They do the Field Day exercise every year and from what I remember they run them around 150w per repeater. A small jenny could run those fuckers on 15gal a day fairly easily. In a huge emergency, though, you can relay morse on just 5w through 5 or less relaying techs to most of the world without repeaters at all. (1 if you’re lucky, but I’m being fair to real life interference).
Get a TIDRADIO TD-H3 instead of a Baofeng. Essentially the same price but a nicer feature set.
Also, be sure to get the GMRS one. They’re all the same and can be reset to any mode, but the way the law with FRS/GMRS works is technically the part itself (the radio) needs to be certified.
It’s very important that you do not reset it and use it improperly. I would never do such a thing and I suggest you don’t either.
Ham radio played a massive role while the Internet was out following hurricane Helene. https://youtu.be/w8hSHq8dGsA
Yes. For true emergency/disaster relief, that is the baseline. I doubt most of the meshtastic repeaters will survive a real storm and you can bet people will be spamming/attacking longfast from the comfort of their homes a county or three over. And there is no good way to communicate proper regional channels ahead of time.
But not every internet outage is a disaster. I live in a region where it is not uncommon for construction crews to cut the fiber line and take out all traffic for the county… sometimes multiple times a month… And I can speak from experience that having a mesh network with locals is incredibly useful for “Yes, it is all of us. And Verizon/Tmobile/Spring is also out” as well as “If you go to the park on 5th and MLK you have line of sight to a working cell tower”. And even just “So… I got all of Frasier on my Plex if anyone wants to hang out for a few hours”.
If you whip out your emergency HAM radios (without a license) during that? You can bet ALL the narcs are gonna tattle on you because “you weren’t prepared”.
But even during the prelude to a disaster it can be an issue. We also have wildfires in the region and get a pretty big scare maybe once a decade. Last time we were in a state of “be ready to evacuate at a moment’s notice” for the better part of a week. And just a bit of gossip that “today is going to be the day” was enough to trigger panic and clog up cell service faster than you can say “9-11”. We even got an emergency push telling us that there were no planned evacuation orders for the day and to go about normal activities.
If you are someone frantically trying to figure out where the school took your kids? Yeah, you have an emergency. If you are someone who doesn’t have a strong support network trying to figure out what is even going on? The narcs are gonna whinge at you. But, like I said, it is very useful to coordinate your evac with that support network. You can plan ahead of time to try to all get hotels/campsites in the town a few hours North. Then you drive through the hell of the evac until you get a few cell towers away, pull over, and use an app to book a hotel/campsite. But if all the people with families have to go South to pick up their kids from the school drop off site? You can only communicate when you are all an hour or three away from town and… ain’t nobody going back through that traffic snarl.
Hopefully it ends up being a false alarm and you come back a week or two later to some smoke damage (that everyone TOTALLY fixes…) and not much else. But it’s the difference between a week or two where you are able to hang out with your friends and have some degree of normalcy versus a week or two isolated and worried that you are going to lose everything.
And that is where mesh networks thrive. I am not talking about “I have a repeater in my garden” (which I should get on…). Stuff like the t-deck is what is actually useful. Plug it in, turn it on, and the pseudo-blackberries mesh with each other well enough for coordinating because enough people in town are doing the exact same thing.
One thing that people trying to make Meshtastic/Meshpro/whatever work might want to try:
odds are that your town/community have a social media system that is generally used to discuss events and the like (probably facebook, sometimes reddit). Make a post on there basically providing a link to a “getting started” guide and the credentials/key for the local mesh.
And, most importantly: Schedule an event (maybe every other month or once a quarter) where everyone with a device should turn theirs on and either be near a window or stand outside. That is a great way to rapidly detect all the temporary nodes that might only exist during a “not emergency” and for people to debug all the messes because meshtastic is a cluster.
You legally need a license for HAM in the US, but there’s nothing really preventing anyone from configuring a radio to licensed frequencies. As for HAMs reporting you, if it’s an emergency the FCC rarely fines anyone if it’s for medical or safety concerns, were any amateurs to even report you. The whole reason for the Tech license for example is just to know laws and rules for operation. It’s damn easy, too. License exam was $25 a few years back, 8 year term. All the questions and answers are avilable online, they just pull (35? I think) from the pool of 400. Most is pretty basic rules of common sense and civility, a few laws. Most tech questions are just converting frequencies and basic math. They don’t require morse anymore (Thank god, or I’d never pass). And if you pass the Tech, you can go right back in for free to try the next exam level. I never use mine, but I do have an HT I keep charged in case of emergencies.
I think many people are unaware that you don’t need Morse anymore tbh. This makes the license extremely easy to get, but the knowledge you can get from ham radio is off the charts.
FYI, it’s not HAM (not an acronym)-- just ham. Named because the people fucking around with radios were “hamming it up”, back in the day.
They dropped the morse requirement because people just stopped taking the test
Which “people”?
Human people. My source is the old ham dude who gave us the ham exam I managed to bungle and haven’t gotten around to retaking.
He was the type who used morse code at gigabit speeds with a funky looking sideways key
What about more extreme cases, say Castaway (movie) type situation. Stranded on an island in middle of nowhere.
But conveniently, one of the packages has a functional 2m battery powered radio and a Yagi too. There’s no one you can make contact with, except… the ISS.
What if the ISS was the only station you could contact?
“Hello International Space Station, I am stranded on an island after a plane crash. Can you help?”Without a way of knowing which satellite passing overhead was the ISS, in the narrow windows each day where you could see them well enough to correctly point a Yagi at one, you’d quickly run out of battery before making a relevant contact. Also the people on the ISS rarely listen or respond, the most used ham equipment on the ISS is basically a glorified repeater so you’d also have to get above the pileup of all the satellite chasers just trying to log contacts.
One of the coolest things in my opinion about radio is the ability to skip off the upper atmosphere and bounce a signal back down halfway across the globe. You can also bounce a signal off the moon.
2m doesn’t bounce off the atmosphere. You really need 10m for that. 6m in the mist perfect ideal scenarios but it’s still very rare (and in this scenario you aren’t gonna know when). EME (the moon stuff) is also pretty tricky and requires a lot of power because of how messed up the signals get in the process.
I’ve been thinking about ordering some but I’m getting some analysis paralysis just looking through the options, any recommendations on a cheap unit I can hand out to some friends, I dunno if I truly need solar, but I guess it’s not a bad option
They sell 2 helteks so you can play around with them for about 50$. Used to be around 30. I have a couple, they do decently well.
Licensing means nothing in an emergency situation. I never understand why it is even mentioned in these arguments. In fact, even if the world isn’t ending, you can ALWAYS use a ham radio in an emergency with or without a license (defined by the FCC as immediate dangers to life or property).
More importantly, there are at least an order of magnitude more ham radios out there than mesh devices. It isn’t even close. If the world ends, find a ham radio. Ideally you will know what to do with it when the time comes.
I wish this energy was just put towards promoting ham, tbh.
Maybe you’d understand more things if you continued to read after the first opportunity you see to spew whatever you want to?
But in a “the internet is out” situation? Or even a “please evacuate in a calm and orderly fashion” for a wildfire or a bad hurricane? That is where meshtastic (et al) shine and it is well worth convincing friends to pick up a t-deck or whatever. Excellent for the “is it out for everyone or just me?” checks. Also useful for letting people know which field can see a cell tower a county or two over for emergency communication or to even coordinate whether you are all gonna head North or South to hang out for (hopefully just) a few days.
I’ll also add on that it is useful to be able to practice and get familiar with a tool without risking a fine.
I wish this energy was just put towards promoting ham, tbh.
I wish you put more energy towards reading the comments you are replying to
But in a “the internet is out” situation? Or even a “please evacuate in a calm and orderly fashion” for a wildfire or a bad hurricane? That is where meshtastic (et al) shine and it is well worth convincing friends to pick up a t-deck or whatever. Excellent for the “is it out for everyone or just me?” checks. Also useful for letting people know which field can see a cell tower a county or two over for emergency communication or to even coordinate whether you are all gonna head North or South to hang out for (hopefully just) a few days.
Disagree. Ham is better here, for the reasons I already mentioned.
I’ll also add on that it is useful to be able to practice and get familiar with a tool without risking a fine.
You don’t risk a fine if you get the license first. The test is not difficult and costs something like $10.
I wish you put more energy towards reading the comments you are replying to
I put in the appropriate amount of energy for the quality of the comment (and the rudeness of the response – be better).
Got it. Nobody should consider the need for a license because, in an emergency, you don’t need one. But also get a license so that you can use it in non-emergencies otherwise you’ll get a fine.
Good talk.
I guess here the topic is more of insurrections, like what’s happening in Iran right now or how it went on in HK
How fast could a group of 5 people that want to remove all nodes in the area need to do so? Are they all listed on a map with their location?
Mine is on a map, but in a radius of around 10 miles. Close enough to let people know I’m here, but not accurate enough to easily track me down.
That said, if someone wanted to hunt me down, they certainly could triangulate me pretty quickly.
Yeah all they would need is a small RTLSDR and they make them directional for police and such. Its how they get people interfering with police/fire/etc…etc… on different channels. At 1W or lower its going to be a bit hard to find, but anyone determined would be able to triangulate pretty quick.
Is it meshtastic? I’m pleasantly surprised by how much it’s grown around me in just a year
It’s cool yes. But my wonder is if it will be on anyone’s mind when things go south.
In a lawless world, could you trust anyone that said hello back?
I think the point is to keep in contact with friends and family. Maybe it would be used to blast news or alerts in a time of war idk yet, I just ordered some radios a few days ago and I am waiting to get started with it.
Yeah I’m thinking for flooding and generalized chaos but not a direct emergency.
No idea about an appocalypse situation, I don’t have solar so all my gadgets are going down anyway. And not that many solar nodes around me
HAM will work best for long distance communication but does not have enough capacity to support local short messaging for any major population sizes. Mesh networks scale in bandwidth and will not be overwhelmed as easily if tens of thousands of people suddenly hop on it at the same time.
I think that Starlink covers a lot of disaster scenarios.
Assuming Elon isn’t part of it or doesn’t restrict usage
Free Starlink during disasters for everyone, but for
surveilencechild protection and anti-terrorism you must accept X as a Certificate Authority.Starlink and the number of satellites we’ve got up there could absolutely cause a chain reaction if a few too many were destroyed.
Haha I didn’t mean that kind of disaster. But yes star link had the potential to wipe out a lot of LEO until the debris orbits all decay
Yep its a fun hobby though!
I never could really get ahold of anyone to talk to, most Elmers in my area died. So I just use the license as an emergency line. Talked a few times on my HT, but most HAMs in my area use their cell phones nowadays.
how do i make it go?
Check out the Quickstart: https://rootaccess.org/wiki/Meshtastic/
There are others but this is from a local makerspace and I have personally done this setup. It works well, as long as there is a node in a high place.
Honestly though its a hobby not something that can be relied on unless your whole community gets together. Hope you have fun!
thanks amigo
