MeshCore, a new lightweight, hybrid routing mesh protocol for packet radios
github.com100 points by cuu508 4 days ago
100 points by cuu508 4 days ago
Really excited about all the new mesh networking protocols being worked on. As mentioned in the repo, also check out Meshtastic and Reticulum.
Would love to see something like this for Bluetooth/wifi. Maybe Wifi Aware will be that.
I think local-first networking is going to be an important part of local-first apps.
Reticulum will work over wifi.
How's the UX? I'm looking for something along the lines of my device uses bluetooth to scan for local devices, I select the ones I want to form a mesh with, the owners of those devices confirm, then we're in a hi-speed wifi mesh.
Meshtastic UI is pretty far along that path right now. You can purchase a device for like $50ish that gives you a few miles of reach in the right conditions and has a decent UI built in (on the latest rev). If you want to run firmware on chips and use UI from your phone over Bluetooth you can run on like $12ish per endpoint.
It doesn't result in a high speed local network I could use for transferring files or hosting a LAN party though, right?
With the new mesh over UDP features in the beta, you can set up a long range directional WiFi mesh, and only use LoRa for the last hop.
LoRa itself is sub-mbps though.
In so far as communicating without going via the internet. This would work by 2 or more people sharing the same wifi network, but they they talked to each other would be over Reticulum?
Can a wifi mesh with no internet connection be made between different routers / access points?
Really I am wondering if people cooperating by operating wifi areas t could expand quickly in more populated places.
Perhaps the trick would be to run them all the wifi networks fully open?
Yeah basically how does one create a city wide mesh with a few hundred people involved?
Meshtastic will too, if you get the 2.6 version. You need the beta version of the Android app to enable it because it's so new though. But it does work, and it's rather easy to receive the packets in Python and do all kinds of interesting routing from there.
Interesting...
Does this mean Meshtastic is evolving toward a more general purpose system with multiple interfaces (not only LoRa) and other applications (beyond messaging) ?
That would be pretty cool!
It seems like it's really only missing a few things.
The big things needed for IoT, as I see them:
* The ability to use it as an Arduino library
* Global routing without preconfiguring the relays, as in Amazon Sidewalk or The Things Network
* Some more generic abstraction for telemetry and control, as in Mobus
* The ability for a firmware to define custom config options that the app can set(Something like a JSON schema, maybe local only because of bandwidth)
I actually started a few discussion threads on some of these, and did a few proofs of concept for the P2P global routing.
But I don't particularly want to spend much time on it unless it seems pretty clear it might actually get merged one day.
I don't understand how this is different from Meshtastic. Can someone compare and contrast?
so far it seems like better routing protocol, the ability to set what path your packets take if needed, and some different ideas about roles on the network. i’ve been playing with it for a week or so and people at my hackerspace have been contributing and i’m excited to see how it does, but it’s not good enough to the point where everyone is just going to switch over. some board support and polish needed before that happens imo
Meshtastic has unicast next-hop routing since firmware version 2.6 released, like, a week ago.
Meshtastic's routing system (up until this last version), wasn't great. I haven't tried the latest version, because it's gonna need to take a while for people to update their firmwares.
Also, a lot of nodes tend to flood their battery state for the entire network, which uses up the airtime for something that could be more important like routing information, and also wastes their battery.
Even though things like AlohaNet have been around for years, Meshtastic chose to reinvent the wheel. The primary difference is that Meshcore started with "routing" first, and then save the airtime and therefore battery for routing messages.
geerlingguy did a video on it, and it's highly worth while checking it out. I think he was kind enough to use the term "Beta".
Supposedly the new firmware from Meshtastic fixes a lot of this, but it's gonna be a while for people to upgrade, and I'm not too keen on wasting time again on something if it's not fit to work for it's stated purpose originally.
> Unlike Meshtastic, which is tailored for casual LoRa communication, or Reticulum, which offers advanced networking, MeshCore balances simplicity with scalability, making it ideal for custom embedded solutions., where devices (nodes) can communicate over long distances by relaying messages through intermediate nodes
Yeah... that doesn't say anything. "Advanced networking"?
Meshtastic can also communicate over long distances by relaying through other nodes.
So what's the difference?
Right now, Meshtastic's core comms protocol is based on flood messaging - no significant smart routing, although the Devs have recently introduced some route discovery features on private channels, but not in the public one.
MeshCore started out with the concept of static router nodes as well as clients, so it performs better if there is a router nearby to use, otherwise it falls back to flooding.
The previous version wasn't "flood" routing. Because flood routing would have worked better. I called it "spray and pray" routing.
It was something like this:
1. Router repeats first
2. Weakest repeating device by signal strength next
What if both of those options are in a basement, or say have a damaged antenna, or are miles in the opposite direction of where you want the signal to go?
By simply putting up a router somewhere you might be severely impacting the comms of people at your edge.
This ^.
I struggled to get messages delivered with Meshtastic in my location. I'll try Meshcore when I get some time.
To provide another perspective: where I live, I can basically reach the entire country if I’m lucky (Netherlands) or my entire city when I’m extremely unlucky. It totally depends on the amount of people / nodes strengthening the network. I’m deploying nodes near dead spots up in trees and the like, with solar panels and batteries, to work even better and without power.
why don't just contribute to Meshtastic then?
The devs involved apparently tried...then MeshCore became a thing.
You can read between the lines here.
Those are still very experimental and Reticulum is definitely a research project. So I don't mind them exploring different designs and ideas.
I believe the most important is to keep an option to be able to setup gateways between the different networks and if possible the messaging systems.
Like for example yggdrasil, tor, I2P dn42 and the clearnet are interconnected. What is really cool.
JAQing off eh?
Have folks ever tired to even communicate with the devs? They are the most toxic group of individuals that I have ever encountered. Saying that they act like children is insulting to little kids.
Is radio like LoRa actually usable for useful things like file transfer, or is it more like a toy?
Out of the box, it can be useful depending on the infrastructure of your area. I live in the Seattle area and we have a strong Meshtastic network here. I can occasionally even can see ACKs / testing from Vancouver CA. I own a node that sits at home all day and there's always messages being received in the public LongFast channels. The protocol makes use of all nodes for any type of messaging, so private channels also benefit.
As for files, not possible out of the box for most people, but tools like ATAK-Civ can make use of 'data packages' and send them over radio. I've used it to successfully send memes and map files in testing.
A few people have implemented file transfers over Meshtastic. I believe there's a repo out there with Zmodem over Meshtastic.
LoRa is optimised for low power usage and range. Not for moving 1TB 4k videos over the air.
So if you want to move your home videos from one place to another, or if you want to have a wireless security camera with 1080p streamed video, it's the wrong choice.
But if you want to have a battery powered motion detector + environment sensor in an off grid shed 1km that way, LoRa is perfect for that.
For example: I have a Meshtastic device in my car with a small 18650 battery + plugged in to the car's USB that charges it when it's turned on. It reports the car's location and internal temperature to a Meshtastic channel. It also works as a router so if I'm inside a store with my T1000-E, it can't reach the local relay, BUT it can reach my car, which in turn can reach the relay, which again is in range of my home node - which is connected to Home Assistant.
Yes, I could just send an IM, but where's the fun in that? =)
It's not ideal for file transfer due to low speeds. But it's great for things like having a bunch of battery powered sensors in a field somewhere that report some telemetry every hour. Or in the meshtastic case, sharing your location and short text messages in areas without cell service.
"It depends". Out-of-the-box Meshtastic configurations are tailored more for relatively infrequent and short plaintext messages. You can look at nominal data rates here: https://meshtastic.org/docs/overview/radio-settings/#data-ra...
It is intentionally designed for longer range, with lower datarates, with lower power consumption. It's in the name. "LOng RAnge".
Not to be too annoying but "Radio like LoRa" reads to me as "microwave" which includes "WiFi" which is plausibly something you use for file transfer all the time. So some more clarification would be helpful.
A big use for LoRa is sensor telemetry. Anything with low data speeds and are impractical to cover with a wired or Wi-Fi connections. Perfect for Ag and remote monitoring. Definitely not just a toy.
peopple have done loop to loop picture or video transfers so far, but usually higher bandwith is better, Lora supports 2.4ghz so probably do able in that range
There’s a lot of space between “file transfer” and “toy”.
If power goes out, or the internet, or both, I can still contact my entire family spread all around my city, because I gave them all a node to set up in their attic / on their roof. Additionally, they all got a t-deck charged and ready to go.
When shit hits the fan, at least we can find each other.
meshtastic plans to support more radios then only LoRa so worth updating,
so for example you can use esp32 lora node not only for lora low bandwidth comms but also high speed wifi transfers, for example pictures of intruders !
no just joking.