One day I was working with a friend on an aerial mast in Newport on the Isle of Wight when I saw a small box attached to the mast. My curiosity was triggered especially when I saw that it had no feeder cables to it. What was this strange device?
I took a photo and did some research and discovered that it was a Meshcore repeater. I’d not heard of Meshcore so I started reading up about it and found Meshcore.io which explained a bit about it.
It seems that a whole network of off grid, low power radios has been built up across the world and this repeater was a part of that network. Each person connected to the network uses a Lora (Long Range) radio “companion” node which is extremely low powered, to send text only messages to other users. The signal only goes about 15km but that’s enough to reach people near you. In addition, people can set up “repeater” nodes which do as they say and repeat messages from user nodes. This repeating can take place over and over again allowing the messages to be sent further and further afield.
The radios are generally connected to from a mobile phone via bluetooth so that an app can send and receive the messages but there are standalone devices available.
This whole thing fascinated me and I ordered a companion radio (for about £40 from Ali Express) and started experimenting. I quickly realised that my house location was perfect for a repeater so I ordered one from Ali Express for about £70.
I have great plans to fit the repeater on a mast up on the roof but currently it is still sitting on my office windowsill as I’m not that organised! It’s solar powered so I don’t really need to touch it and that explains what I saw on the aerial mast in Newport.
The repeater sits there, running on sunlight and forwarding messages being sent from user to user. What a great system! No licencing, no central system controlling everything and no one piece to fail and break everything. I chat regularly with other users on the Isle of Wight and farther afield and have even contacted people in France!
If you’ve not heard about Meshcore or had a go then I highly recommend it, even if you just read about it and join their Discord forum. It’s a low cost and easy to join project which can be a lot of fun. Oh, and of course it will save us all when AI takes over the internet and we’re all off grid!
