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.

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 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.

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?