Reddit post:

[tek@freeradical.zone]

Reddit post:

My wife called Meshtastic "Tinder for Linux users"

I'm never going to emotionally recover from this.

[davemwilburn@infosec.exchange]

@tek

I want to like #meshtastic but it has proven extremely ineffective in Alexandria VA. I have to walk a half-mile from my home and up a bridge to have any chance of being heard and relayed by anything, even when I use an aftermarket antenna. I hope it would work a little bit better in a regional comms/power outage because more people would probably be firing up their devices and joining the local mesh.

Also, I have to force-stop and restart the Android app most of the time whenever I lose and want to reestablish bluetooth connectivity with my T-Echo radio, and the radio itself seems to unpredictably hang and require a manual reboot every few days.

It'll probably just live in a drawer until/unless there's some sort of outage.

[loop0@freeradical.zone]

@tek I can’t think of anything cool to do with my meshtastic radio, and sending text messages to strangers gets boring pretty fast

[infopowerbroker@infosec.exchange]

@DaveMWilburn I’m sharing in case you have seen this - have you tried these NoVa specific settings? If not it may be worth a shot: https://groups.io/g/NoVa-Meshtastic/

[kura@hai.z0ne.social]

@tek@freeradical.zone @Jain@blob.cat so you wanna tinder as well ?

[tek@freeradical.zone]

@DaveMWilburn That’d be a bummer. In contrast, it’s hopping here in the Bay Area.

[tek@freeradical.zone]

@loop0 It appeals to me on a deep level. I made the BBS just because it feels like the old dialup days to me, in a good way.

[davemwilburn@infosec.exchange]

@infopowerbroker

Thanks! I'll give that a shot!

[tek@freeradical.zone]

@boscoandpeck @DaveMWilburn Today, I would not recommend Meshtastic for an outage. It’s a fun hobby but I wouldn’t trust my life with it. And in any case, it’s the kind of thing you have to have up and running before you need it.

I also have a ham (extra) license and would trust it in a disaster. The hardware is more robust, the range is much better, and it’s more widely used and practiced today. Meshtastic range can’t improve too much, but the others could change with time.

[davemwilburn@infosec.exchange]

@boscoandpeck @tek

I might be mistaken, but ham and meshtastic doesn't seem to be either/or. The venn diagram of ham radio operators and meshtastic operators has a huge intersection. The good news is that it's a very cheap system to experiment with. Rokland sells complete radios and radio kits for pretty cheap. So don't let my challenges dissuade you.

[kawaiipunk@sunbeam.city]

@tek I did try and cruise on Meshtastic at chaos Congress but it didn't work

[dianea@lgbtqia.space]

@DaveMWilburn @tek

I'm out in the sticks of the country on top of a mountain. I am gathering the hardware to aim high gain antennas to nearby cities and see what happens.

[tek@freeradical.zone]

@DaveMWilburn @boscoandpeck For sure. You can get going with the mesh for like $30, no license needed. It’s fun! I really enjoy it for hobby experimentation. I just don’t recommend it for life and death things. If you count on it to communicate in an emergency, or help your friends find you in a national forest, or find your lost pet, you’re probably in for a bummer.

[tek@freeradical.zone]

@kawaiipunk Interesting. It worked surprising well at Def Con.

[tek@freeradical.zone]

@dianea @DaveMWilburn Niiiice. I’d love to try that experiment.

[kawaiipunk@sunbeam.city]

@tek maybe it was me

[tek@freeradical.zone]

@kawaiipunk There are so many variables at play! If everyone there was on LongFast with 7 hops, I could see collisions ruining the whole thing.

[ericr@social.lol]

@tek I had someone slide into my DMs because they saw me on Meshtastic. They asked me where I was because they wanted to know how far their node was reaching. Sure, bud, sure

[tek@freeradical.zone]

@ericr OK buddy.