#meshtastic #lora on #crossborderail #train

[sebastian@social.itu.dk]

@Szescstopni

i see quite a lot of nodes from the train.
my main observation is - most people see meshtastic as an infrastructure project. there s mainly roof installations and the likes. Routers, repeaters.

But noone is *using* it for talking

[_sama_@radikal.social]

@sebastian

LoRa travelling is a thing!

[szescstopni@circumstances.run]

@sebastian This is something we're attempting to do here. We'll know everything works well when our small village store a few kilometres away will be able to let me know they have fresh eggs. We're close to that

[sebastian@social.itu.dk]

@Szescstopni

exactly.
so far, no village stores here to use it.
villagers use META, M$ and Google to talk to their neighbors

[becha@social.v.st]

@sebastian @Szescstopni we have a #mesh club in Amsterdam , with lots of testing …

Cc @vaurora @douwe @marleenstikker et.al

https://bowshock.nl/irc/

Would be good to exchange experiences with Denmark & Poland too !

Cc @battlemesh

[sebastian@social.itu.dk]

@becha @Szescstopni @vaurora @douwe @marleenstikker @battlemesh

and as Elektra in Berlin and me have been talking about -

working on making cross-border pan-european mesh connections.
how many hops from Copenhagen to Berlin, Amsterdam, Warszawa ... ?

[sebastian@social.itu.dk]

@_sama_

almost passed by your place i guess

[szescstopni@circumstances.run]

@becha @sebastian @vaurora @douwe @marleenstikker @battlemesh Exchanging information would be interesting. I mostly see people from big cities using Meshtastic – our rural area is sparsely populated and there are very few people willing to test it. Still, the danger of comms loss is quite real, due to the war raging less than 40 km from where I live, so we're working on running an emergency channel.

CC @m0bi

[sebastian@social.itu.dk]

@Szescstopni @becha @vaurora @douwe @marleenstikker @battlemesh @m0bi
(and adding @andersaardvark )

it would certainly be interesting to see if we could establish a backbone of long distance routers/repeaters, placed in good places to close the gaps.
there s no reason why a single hop can not go 100, 200 km ... so a handful of hops would do Poland - Germany, Germany-Denmark, and so on ...

[szescstopni@circumstances.run]

@sebastian We're thinking more locally, talking to people on the other side of the world is fun, but I imagine it would come with lots of clutter. @becha @vaurora @douwe @marleenstikker @battlemesh @m0bi

[sebastian@social.itu.dk]

@Szescstopni @becha @vaurora @douwe @marleenstikker @battlemesh @m0bi

I agree the local is more important.
But the Cross-Border could be a nice demonstrator.
Plus I m in Denmark but have family in Germany;)

[vaurora@mstdn.social]

@sebastian @Szescstopni @becha @douwe @marleenstikker @battlemesh @m0bi the meshtastic users in Innsbruck are a little grumpy that someone put in a repeater that connects them to Germany and they get tons of messages from far away flooding the public channel

[szescstopni@circumstances.run]

@vaurora I can understand that @sebastian @becha @douwe @marleenstikker @battlemesh @m0bi

[m0bi@mastodon.com.pl]

@vaurora

If this is done via mqtt, can be disabled in device. If via lora radio, primary 0 channel is special, available for all, and only migration to/communication on channels 1-7 can help. Also with private keys for these channels. Channel 0 has own key, known by all. Can be changed too, but then its not default anymore.

@sebastian @Szescstopni @becha @douwe @marleenstikker @battlemesh

[andersaardvark@tldr.nettime.org]

@sebastian @Szescstopni @becha @vaurora @douwe @marleenstikker @battlemesh @m0bi

I am talking to people in Malmö to do cross-border reticulum perhaps through directional wifi antennas as well as sprinkle it with some local governance (since this part is not that clear in reticulum as in meshcore+meshtastic), but also sounds interesting to do this for other protocols. For longer distance communication it would also be interesting for us to send packets through HAM radio frequencies through the ionosphere (should reach thousands of kilometers) when we all got our licenses. Perhaps there is a way, if we can fund and setup repeaters, to make them useful for multiple of the protocols

[andersaardvark@tldr.nettime.org]

@sebastian @Szescstopni @becha @vaurora @douwe @marleenstikker @battlemesh @m0bi

I would similarly love to reach people in know in Germany, Poland, Netherlands etc. I am up for start planning these deployments soon-ish (start next year or so if we should collect a group for this.

Once in a while I am in Amsterdam, and perhaps moving their for my PhD exchange in early 2028 so I could potentially drive between to do maintenance

[sebastian@social.itu.dk]

@andersaardvark @Szescstopni @becha @vaurora @douwe @marleenstikker @battlemesh @m0bi

this place here might be the right one, to initiate this -
pls CC people, feed into your non-fediverse networks, lists etc

ps.
(i know there s #meshtastic groups and things over on the old corp networks, but i ve never understood how you could organize autonomy on #META ...)

more tags for reach: if
#meshcore #lora #mesh #freifunk #CCC #community #network #activist #bornhack #solarpunk
u might b interested

[publicvoit@graz.social]

@sebastian I had a #ThinkNode M5 with #Meshtastic LongFast running while being on a train from #Graz, #Vienna, #Brussels, #London to #Scotland (#Glasgow, #Oban, #Edinburgh).

From the train, I may have detected a handful of nodes. Not more. Never being able to send to the public channel. I guess the train blocks most of the signal and there aren't many nodes running.

Outside of trains, I've had perfect network in Graz, a bit in Vienna and almost nothing at the rest of my tour.

[rapha3l@not-x.g2od.ch]

@publicvoit @sebastian

Medium or short range?

[publicvoit@graz.social]

@rapha3l @sebastian LongFast as I've learned by misc guides on the web. This seems the common configuration for Meshtastic.

Maybe there is more MeshCore but I haven't played around with that because my 2nd device Cardputer Mesh died after 2 weeks.