This seems like a great technology to build resiliency and redundancy in a community, especially for places where cell service is spotty, or in the odd event where normal lines of communication are blocked.
The LoRa boards can be easily powered with a small solar panel for continuous use, and if put in a high enough place with a good antenna, they can have a surprisingly long range!
In addition to being genuinely useful, they also seem like they’d be a lot of fun to experiment and play around with, printing cool 3D cases for them, or designing a better antenna or repeater setup.
If and of you already have experience with LoRa, I’d be interested to hear your thoughts! :D
More people are popping up on the network everyday. lots to learn and dig in to if you want, or you can set it and forget it. c/meshtastic
This sounds great. Just be aware that broadcasting on certain frequencies is ilegal in some places. You might need a license to broadcast in the ham spectrum, and even then, broadcasting encrypted messages could be prohibited.
Fortunately, meshtastic let’s you set your region on the mobile apps and it sets it to the legal frequency range in your area. It won’t broadcast in the ham spectrum.
LoRa is, as far as I know, legal to use in most countries without a license. They do not broadcast on HAM frequencies.
ah, that’s great. To compliment on this discussion,I found this site with a relationship of the used band and the corresponding legislation https://www.loraantenna.com/lorawan-frequency-plans-by-country-region/
True, but different frequencies per region. So if you used hardware in the wrong region it could be illegal. Still, in the US and EU at least, it is a public open band.
I have some experience with it but I am by no means a radio expert or ham radio buff.
If anybody is interested in setting up a node, I’d highly recommend the wisblock/rak4630. They’re very low power and easy to power indefinitely with solar. It can seem daunting at first but it’s actually pretty straightforward once you do a little reading online.
You just need the wisblock, an 18650 battery, and a solar panel along with JST 1.5mm and 2.0mm connectors to hook them up and it’ll start working.
Here’s a zine if you wanna diy it. https://github.com/iffybooks/3.3v-solar-power-station
There are also more plug and play options out there too.
