Companies are starting to manufacture repeaters and they are not that expensive. You can get one for about 100 Federal Reserve Notes.

WiFi goes down and people sometimes NEED to communicate instead of streaming Netflix.

This is just an alternate channel, if Eheran doesn't have the imagination to understand how low bandwidth can still be extremely valuable, as compared to, say, screaming at the top of your lungs to attempt to be heard 5 miles away, then... I'm not really interested in what they think.

It is cool! The barrier to entry is relatively low. The only thing to really worry about is:

1. What band/frequency is appropriate for you country.
2. Are there others around to which you can connect?

If there's not a lot of people around it's not the end of the world. Nodes can connect over the Internet via MQTT servers. Yes, this defeats the purpose of having an offline/decentralized communication platform, but it is a good stop gap until more nodes are put up.

Here's a sample of what I can see in a somewhat large-ish Midwest City in the US (there's about 63 nodes I can reach by hopping through relays).

It allows us to make a mesh network (interconnected nodes where you can contact a node even if it's not in range for you, by using other nodes) with Lora radio devices. Lora is slow but has long range. I think it works better when you have line of sight, like if someone can put a node on a mountain, it would help everyone.

I think people might have sent audio with it but it's mostly useful for text messages. It could be useful if the Internet is down, maybe, but it's more like a toy.

At that point, given the extremely small bandwidth, we might as well just use a massive wifi, everyone already has the required hardware for that instead of producing more trash for a pretty much non-existing use case.

WiFi goes down and people sometimes NEED to communicate instead of streaming Netflix.

This is just an alternate channel, if Eheran doesn't have the imagination to understand how low bandwidth can still be extremely valuable, as compared to, say, screaming at the top of your lungs to attempt to be heard 5 miles away, then... I'm not really interested in what they think.

Yeah, I’ve seen some clever stuff where they take a solar powered light and wire in a Heltec V3 for $30-$40. But I thought one of the new upcoming standards (WiFi? Cell?) incorporated a mesh capability.

What about without line of sight? If I get one of these is it going to work while it's sitting on my desk, or am I going to have to mount some antennas on the roof to actually make it usable? The maps only show like three other people in my city with one, so I'm not sure how useful this will actually be for me.

How does this differ from IP over ham radio? It seems like in general, it would just be lower distance and greater reliance on nodes near you, with the trade off being smaller equipment.

IP over Ham Radio via New Packet Radio - TheModernHam

New packet radio by F4HDK offers the ability to create a LAN or connect to the internet via amateur radio RF links on the 70cm ham band.

TheModernHam (themodernham.com)

Where'd you get that map from?

Its biggest + in my book is that you don't have to be a ham to make it work. There are better systems if you want more reliable communications. But its a fun side hobby and, in the event of a power outage, a decent little communicator. Although from personal experience, most of the devices piggy back of your existing cell phones and bluetooth. So ironically as long as the cell towers aren't blown to hell, your still fine either way.

You don't need cell towers. Your phone is just used as an input device for the radio.

They're a godsend for camping, and would be legendary in a disaster event.

I mean it's an article for people like me who have never heard of that

Definitely clickbait. The phrase "send texts" as it's been used for the past quarter century means "sms texts" or maybe "text messages to other people on mobile phone networks", which is not at all what this is.

I maintain three of these devices, if anyone has any questions.

What kind of data rate can they provide? Can it support audio? Low bit-rate video?

I've seen LoRa when Pine64 announced some related products some years back, but I haven't really gotten into it. If the community is big enough and the bitrate reasonable enough, I might get one to connect my home to my parents home (about 10 miles away, so at the edge of the range) for fun. It would be cool to set up some smart home stuff at both ends that I could host on my own so I can keep an "eye" on my parents stuff when the travel (mostly just door and occupancy sensors, no video).

Have a look at meshmap.net. That shows people who have voluntarily put themselves on a map.

Although it can be a serious underestimation, for example in my area, I'm the only one who lists myself on the map, but there are about 10 other nodes that don't

Edit: Also, the number of nodes on MeshMap has pretty much doubled in six months since I started playing with it.

In theory the protocol can support those formats. With meshtastic it's only designed for text. You can get some really basic emojis though since they are Unicode.

If its simple enough, I could probably abuse it to send binary data by encoding everything in base64 or something, and writing a simple translator for whatever my app is.

But what does the usable bandwidth look like, and what about latency? If I'm going just out of range from direct communication, I assume I'd be going through other peoples' nodes, but is that intelligent enough to route messages through efficiently? Or could I see crazy latency spikes?