Meshtastic is a mesh protocol (peer-to-peer, network by proximity) based on LoRa technology. LoRa is not LoRaWan, just as WiFi is not IP. It is therefore possible to use LoRa for networks without infrastructure.

Meshtastic was designed for communication outside of any public infrastructure, with a survivalist spirit of autonomous and (more or less) secure communication.

Due to its structure, it is difficult to estimate the size of such a community, but the map seems to indicate that more than 10,000 nodes are currently active. However, it seems that there are actually around 40,000 active nodes, with strong participation from the global ham radio community. In practice, the network is composed of clusters of nodes communicating locally with each other and expanding as clusters become visible to one another. In reality, without linking infrastructure, it won’t be possible to connect from one cluster to another but some MQTT relay features exists.

The use and development of the network require very few resources, as simple DIY nodes based on widely available devkits, such as the T-beam, are sufficient. The user interface works via a mobile application interacting through Bluetooth. The investment is just a few dozen euros. In a previous Meshtastic blog post, I detailed its implementation with small LoRa modules.

You may be familiar with LoRa, not that girl, but the LOng RAnge communication solution that is used for long-distance, low-power point-to-point communications. It was invented by the Grenoble-based company Cycleo in 2009 and later sold to the semiconductor giant Semtech.

You might have heard more about it in its usage with an infrastructured network: LoRaWan, which allows public or private networks to connect thousands of sensors. In this blog post, I am going to talk about another implementation of LoRa, this time in a mesh architecture named Meshtastic. Multiple mesh, LoRa based solution are rising, this is one of them.