1 00:00:01,050 --> 00:00:02,950 Alright, how's everybody doing? 2 00:00:03,450 --> 00:00:06,550 This is getting started with Meshtastic. 3 00:00:07,890 --> 00:00:11,090 Anybody here heard of Meshtastic before? 4 00:00:11,090 --> 00:00:11,590 Yeah? 5 00:00:11,590 --> 00:00:12,190 Awesome. 6 00:00:12,190 --> 00:00:14,690 Anybody who has not heard of Meshtastic before? 7 00:00:14,850 --> 00:00:15,670 Awesome. 8 00:00:15,670 --> 00:00:17,730 You are the people I'm trying to reach. 9 00:00:18,670 --> 00:00:20,410 So who am I? 10 00:00:20,770 --> 00:00:24,630 I am... I go by Ahriman2001 on Twitter. 11 00:00:24,630 --> 00:00:31,070 I'm KD2WUB and I enjoy making stuff sometimes with antennas. 12 00:00:31,210 --> 00:00:34,370 Generally, you know, pretty interested in RF. 13 00:00:34,370 --> 00:00:36,350 So yeah, that's me. 14 00:00:36,470 --> 00:00:38,790 And what's this talk about? 15 00:00:38,790 --> 00:00:44,970 So Meshtastic, it's kind of a new thing and I would like to see more of it out there. 16 00:00:45,430 --> 00:00:48,910 It's pretty boring to just message yourself in the house. 17 00:00:48,970 --> 00:00:52,990 So if I can get more of you guys using it, maybe we'll see more people out there. 18 00:00:53,730 --> 00:00:55,450 Yeah, that's all awesome. 19 00:00:56,310 --> 00:00:57,930 So what are we going to cover? 20 00:00:58,010 --> 00:01:11,110 Basically just what is Meshtastic, high level, what is LoRa, which is what it runs on, and then why would you do it, what do you need to use it, and hey, let's make some mesh networks. 21 00:01:13,650 --> 00:01:14,950 So what is it? 22 00:01:15,090 --> 00:01:20,270 Meshtastic is an open source project aiming to create mesh communications. 23 00:01:20,270 --> 00:01:30,430 Off grid, no infrastructure needed, basically you just buy a little board, maybe you put it on a hard hat, maybe you don't, I don't know. 24 00:01:31,490 --> 00:01:41,990 That board uses LoRa, which is a method of modulation for RF that is basically long range, very low data rates. 25 00:01:43,470 --> 00:01:59,830 That board then piggybacks to your phone, either over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, and allows you to type text messages back and forth to people on the mesh, or share GPS data, basically anything you want. 26 00:02:00,870 --> 00:02:18,490 So it's based on the CHIRP's spread spectrum, and it's basically just making a trade off in your link budget to basically do slower speeds, smaller amounts of data, to get a longer range, and better signal to noise ratio. 27 00:02:21,230 --> 00:02:39,010 If you want to know more about how LoRa actually works, and under the hood, there's an amazing talk, it was at DEF CON 24, it was by Matt Knight, and I highly recommend you go check that out, he goes into way more detail than I ever could, and talks about all the frequencies, 28 00:02:39,570 --> 00:02:42,370 spreading factors, coding rates, and all of that. 29 00:02:44,510 --> 00:02:53,470 So in Meshtastic, a pretty big concept is a channel, and a channel is just a collection of settings that the radio needs to communicate. 30 00:02:54,070 --> 00:03:06,370 So it basically comprises of a channel ID, a modem configuration, a channel name, a pre-shared key, and a region. 31 00:03:07,070 --> 00:03:09,490 So what are all of these things, right? 32 00:03:09,710 --> 00:03:17,350 Two of the easy ones are channel ID and channel name, they're just an integer and a string used to identify all these settings. 33 00:03:18,750 --> 00:03:26,650 Then you have the modem configuration, and this is where all those LoRa settings get set. 34 00:03:26,710 --> 00:03:39,590 So you pick your bandwidth of your signal, your coding rate, your spreading factor, and that is going to determine the maximum speed that you can transmit data. 35 00:03:40,290 --> 00:03:43,490 And so all of these settings in the modem config... 36 00:03:45,870 --> 00:03:49,710 Oh, sure, all good. 37 00:03:49,890 --> 00:04:00,790 So each of these settings are basically just... they have some shorthand names, as you see on the left there, and they have some common names as well, like short-fast, short-slow. 38 00:04:01,710 --> 00:04:10,930 There is a default if you flash Meshtastic to your board, and that's what I've seen most people using during the con here, which has been great. 39 00:04:12,710 --> 00:04:17,670 And there's all sorts of extra documentation that you can find at that link right there. 40 00:04:19,210 --> 00:04:22,650 Also, it uses a pre-shared key for encryption. 41 00:04:23,170 --> 00:04:30,070 It can use AES-256 encryption, doesn't always though, so you can set it to none. 42 00:04:30,430 --> 00:04:37,010 There's also a default key, which I believe is included in all of the source code, so anybody can decrypt those. 43 00:04:37,070 --> 00:04:39,130 You might have some fun with that, you might not. 44 00:04:39,990 --> 00:04:49,670 You can also use random, which will use that randomly generated AES-256 bit key, and is generally the most secure of those settings. 45 00:04:49,670 --> 00:04:53,410 You can also just use a single byte to encode. 46 00:04:55,930 --> 00:05:14,630 Next up is your region, so depending on where you are in the world, you may have different regulations controlling what you're able to transmit and where, and so when you pick your region, it actually sets the center frequency, the spacing between those frequencies and the channels, 47 00:05:14,630 --> 00:05:19,050 the number of channels, and also the power limit, if you have one. 48 00:05:21,110 --> 00:05:23,210 So let's say, hey, you want to get into this. 49 00:05:23,250 --> 00:05:24,670 You do need some hardware. 50 00:05:25,470 --> 00:05:27,430 There's generally two form factors. 51 00:05:27,430 --> 00:05:42,030 There's ones that are based on the ESP32, and there's also ones that are based on the NRF52 chips, and generally you can get a radio for anywhere from like $30 to $50, depending on how fast you want to get it shipped to you. 52 00:05:43,630 --> 00:05:46,850 I've had a lot of experience with the Heltech. 53 00:05:47,150 --> 00:05:52,590 I've yet to try the RAC card, but I want to check it out soon. 54 00:05:54,790 --> 00:05:55,650 So that's great. 55 00:05:55,650 --> 00:05:56,530 You have the hardware. 56 00:05:56,530 --> 00:05:58,630 It can talk over the radio. 57 00:05:58,630 --> 00:06:01,610 How do you actually type a message and interface things? 58 00:06:01,610 --> 00:06:04,970 And that's where it piggybacks to your phone, generally. 59 00:06:05,710 --> 00:06:10,530 You can get an app either in the Google Play Store or on iOS in the Apple App Store. 60 00:06:11,530 --> 00:06:21,890 To get it on iOS, you actually have to download this TestFlight app, and then from within that app, you load in basically a beta version of the Meshtastic app. 61 00:06:22,990 --> 00:06:25,290 I'm going to warn you, it can be a little buggy right now. 62 00:06:25,290 --> 00:06:32,670 It's definitely a project in development, and go out, try things, and submit bug reports. 63 00:06:34,830 --> 00:06:37,810 Next up, we have the Python CLI. 64 00:06:38,470 --> 00:06:45,290 In there, you definitely get a lot more options to all of the settings, especially if you're on an iPhone. 65 00:06:45,350 --> 00:06:48,270 The app is a little more limited than the Android app right now. 66 00:06:48,950 --> 00:06:54,070 If you want to do things like change the name of your node and things like that, you should check out the CLI. 67 00:06:54,450 --> 00:06:58,930 It's installable via PIP, and pretty easy to use. 68 00:06:59,050 --> 00:07:04,530 If you just type it, it'll give you all the options that you can use and instructions for that. 69 00:07:06,450 --> 00:07:08,470 What kind of information can you share? 70 00:07:08,790 --> 00:07:16,710 Like I said, it's very slow speed, so you're going to be sending small bits of data, generally text messages. 71 00:07:17,350 --> 00:07:21,470 You can also share your location if you so choose, and if you have a GPS connected. 72 00:07:22,510 --> 00:07:24,450 There's all sorts of applications for this. 73 00:07:25,130 --> 00:07:32,470 I always think of if you were on a search and rescue team or something, you could get everybody on your crew and you could see where they're at. 74 00:07:33,810 --> 00:07:37,690 I mean, it definitely has lots of uses for that. 75 00:07:38,730 --> 00:07:40,150 Also, sensor data. 76 00:07:40,150 --> 00:07:52,690 There is some support for temperature sensors and things like that, so you could distribute different nodes across a property, for instance, and monitor different things with different sensors. 77 00:07:54,630 --> 00:08:04,190 There's also extra modules within the software, so if you want to do something extra than what the app does, there's room to tinker, and that's always fun. 78 00:08:04,190 --> 00:08:09,570 So you can connect different I2C sensors like I was talking about. 79 00:08:10,010 --> 00:08:21,630 You can also set your module to send canned messages, either triggered with a button or a rotary encoder, and there's also serial input for messages. 80 00:08:23,110 --> 00:08:38,570 There's actually a whole group of people trying to build little communicators, where you have an embedded keyboard and everything, and you can talk via serial from one microcontroller to the Meshtastic node, and then do things that way, too. 81 00:08:40,030 --> 00:08:54,830 If you want to find out more, you can go to meshtastic.org, and there's a whole docs page on how to get started, how to flash your board, and yeah, definitely more information there. 82 00:08:55,410 --> 00:08:59,690 So hopefully now you guys all know a little bit more about Meshtastic. 83 00:08:59,690 --> 00:09:03,610 I hope some of you get interested in it and maybe try it out. 84 00:09:05,050 --> 00:09:06,590 Any questions? 85 00:09:10,480 --> 00:09:11,280 Cool. 86 00:09:29,850 --> 00:09:36,050 I'm not, but that kind of makes sense to me, like that it would, because you're really just seeing it on the frequency. 87 00:09:36,230 --> 00:09:38,550 You probably can't see what it is. 88 00:09:38,550 --> 00:09:47,670 It'll just show up as an encrypted message to you, but it probably will try to, you know, act as a mesh and retransmit that out to other nodes that may have that encryption key. 89 00:09:47,810 --> 00:09:52,930 I don't know if that's as designed or not, but I haven't run into it personally. 90 00:09:54,890 --> 00:09:55,610 Cool. 91 00:09:57,010 --> 00:09:58,170 Yeah, 92 00:10:02,510 --> 00:10:11,090 so I did a little test from my house where I set up an antenna and then I just kind of went walking around my neighborhood. 93 00:10:11,090 --> 00:10:12,430 I got to about a mile. 94 00:10:13,210 --> 00:10:15,850 I know you can get better with more line of sight. 95 00:10:15,850 --> 00:10:18,410 I've heard people get up to like three miles almost. 96 00:10:19,330 --> 00:10:25,490 It really depends on your, you know, what's in the middle and what kind of antenna you're using and what your transmit power is. 97 00:10:28,630 --> 00:10:29,950 Anybody else? 98 00:10:31,050 --> 00:10:31,770 Yeah. 99 00:10:40,650 --> 00:10:41,310 Sure. 100 00:10:45,870 --> 00:10:53,230 I think that they're just more developed, so people have made firmwares for them that, you know, they know which module is on there. 101 00:10:53,230 --> 00:10:56,510 I don't think there's really any reason it couldn't be done. 102 00:10:56,510 --> 00:11:00,690 It's just, I don't think it's been developed yet, but I think you could. 103 00:11:06,880 --> 00:11:07,600 Sure. 104 00:11:13,100 --> 00:11:13,620 Yeah. 105 00:11:13,620 --> 00:11:13,980 Oh, yeah. 106 00:11:13,980 --> 00:11:25,580 I didn't mention, but there is also a Meshtastic Discord with a whole bunch of people that know way more about it than I do, but it's been a great place to hang out and just, you know, ask questions and see what people are building. 107 00:11:25,580 --> 00:11:32,420 And there's a whole bunch of people like doing 3D prints for cases and things like that and different designs. 108 00:11:32,420 --> 00:11:34,920 So definitely a cool thing to check out. 109 00:11:37,220 --> 00:11:37,940 Cool. 110 00:11:38,420 --> 00:11:42,240 Well, if there's nothing else, thank you for your time and I'll be around. 111 00:11:42,240 --> 00:11:44,940 You can probably find me with a hard hat if you have any other questions. 112 00:11:45,060 --> 00:11:46,140 So thank you very much.