You are at the edge of what I know If you find out, let the rest of us know. I only have vague and hand wavy knowledge at this point of lora slow means lots of latency. GL!

Yeah, whenever I tell the kids "WiFi is down" what that really means is "Comcast has killed our link, again."

Remember, that map is volunteer and only shows nodes of a day or less.

For example, I am the only node in my area who voluntarily puts myself on the map, but there are 10 others who do not.

Then what is it?

Gotcha. I read your post wrong.

The phones are one reason I don't think Meshtastic is good for emergency communications. My main Meshtastic devices run off a battery pack that can run them for 2-3 weeks, but I'd also have to keep a phone charged throughout the disaster to use them.

My wife and I each have a radio, as do several of my friends. They're handy for anything where you may not have cell coverage, like camping. We also use them at protests, to avoid the heavy surveillance that's being done on cell networks. Even if the authorities start looking at Meshtastic, everything except the public channel uses PGP end-to-end encryption, and there is no middleman that has access to the unencrypted data.

We have also put up a repeater node. It's on top of a house at the top of the highest ridge near us. Before it went up we rarely saw more than our own nodes. Now we see several dozen, and sometimes a lot more. And the repeater serves the whole community, not just us. The beauty of a mesh is that everyone contributes to everyone else's coverage.

The mesh in our city is growing rapidly right now. Not only are there a lot of people getting their own nodes, there are a surprising number of people putting up repeaters to help spread the coverage. It's amazing to watch our whole neighborhoods suddenly appear as gaps are filled in.

LoRa has been around for a while trying to break through with different devices, some of it does seem useful, but it's a tough sell to invest in something without knowing where the network will go. A carrier model or something else, maybe subsidies, is needed.

would the network be willing to carry my signals?

That is entirely up to the whim of your neighboring nodes to decide

Man I've been seeing so much about these over the last few weeks, I'd love to get my hands on one

That's a great idea. The area I live in is pretty mountainous so putting nodes on ridges provide pretty good coverage

Not much bandwidth to know do much beyond text, so use-cases are probably very limited already.

Everything I learn about this project is so cool. I can’t go through the docs right now, but I’m assuming it can prioritize things like emergency communication over sensor data.

There’s no public nodes in a 200+ km radius around me on that site someone linked, so something tells me I’ll have to do a lot of guerilla solar panel installation if I want to anonymously set up something.

I’ve thought about it on and off over the past two years, more of a private network for family and friends than anything, for emergencies and so on. The real, big problem is that I could be accused of espionage and thrown into jail forever if I do this. So I don’t think I’ll see anyone putting any nodes up for the foreseeable future. At least not public nodes.

I just picked up a 2pack of devices from the Amazon link in that article. Planning on messing with them this weekend. I figure I've spent more than $60 on random projects that went nowhere before, so this can't be that bad.

How do I do this? Shats the easiest way to get started?

Both a personal device and a repeater on my house

I sent this link to a friend who's really into internet radio (like CB used to be cool for nerds) who also loves to 3d print. He lives in a plains state, where this should work really well.

Easiest and least expensive are a little different, so I'll talk briefly about both.

The easiest is to go on Etsy and search for Meshtastic. You will find plenty of people who will build you a ready-to-go unit, both individual radios and solar-powered repeaters. (If you plan to put your repeater somewhere with power you can use any radio as a repeater, just put a good antenna on it.) Pre-built units start at around $60 and can go up into the hundreds, but $60 to $90 will get you a great personal radio.

The least expensive is to order a kit from one of the many companies that sell them. If the kit does not come with a case, check Etsy for cases that match your kit. Most kits do not require soldering, you just have to plug in various cables and connectors, then fit everything into the case. Some actually come fully assembled. This approach generally costs somewhere between half and two-thirds of what a pre-built setup will run. Kits start as low as $10, although most or $20 to $40, and cases are mostly $20 to $35.

One of the harder parts is to figure out which radio kit you want, but there are just two major types. Those built around the ESP32 processor tend to be a little less expensive and offer the option of WiFi, but they have a much shorter battery life. Those built around the nRF52 processor cost a little more, do not offer WiFi, but have nearly 10 times the battery life. WiFi is only used in a few specific cases, usually by repeaters and not personal units, so you may well not need it. Battery life is not usually an issue for personal radios, since nearly all of them will go for a full day between charges, but sometimes you may want more than that. Stand-alone repeaters that run off solar panels are almost all based on the nRF52 because of the battery life.

The most common starter radios are based on the Heltec V3 kit, which is based on the ESP32. It has been around a long time, it is relatively inexpensive, and it can do pretty much everything. The only downside is battery life, which may or may not matter to you. Unless that's a concern, you can't go wrong with a V3. My personal favorite is the T114 kit, also from Heltec, which is based on the nRF52. It is much like the V3, but without WiFi and with much better battery life.

I would wait until you've played with a personal radio before buying a repeater. Every Meshtastic radio acts as a repeater, so you don't necessarily need a dedicated repeated. Find out how many nodes are in your area and what kind of coverage you get. If there aren't many nodes, or distance is limited, you can consider a dedicated repeater.

Basically, a repeater is just a node with a good location that's put in a good location, up as high as possible. Because Meshtastic radios use very little power, it is practical to make completely self-sufficient solar repeater units that never require charging. You can put one of those on your roof, up in a tree, or on top of a nearby hill or mountain, without having to worry about regularly climbing back up there.

I strongly recommend that you go to meshtastic.org and read through the Getting Started documentation. It provides a lot more detail (and less personal opinion). And check out the Meshtastic communities on Lemmy. Have fun!