You can't get things done if you are running for your life.

[Oogiem]

My Husband is a major supporter and contributor to Meshtastic.

In light of the LA fires this is a way to maintain communications without resorting to fixed infrastructure that is subject to disruption and destruction.

We use it when traveling the back country because, in spite of StarLink, this is better for real time "blue force" style communications with cheap infrastructure and it "just works"

- YouTube

Auf YouTube findest du die angesagtesten Videos und Tracks. Außerdem kannst du eigene Inhalte hochladen und mit Freunden oder gleich der ganzen Welt teilen.

www.youtube.com

Please watch to the end and support a really important open source emergency communications system available to everyone.

we all need to get things done and most important is staying alive TO get things done!

 

[gekko]

A very cool concept .. I've never heard of it but a bit of googling tells me people are using it here in Australia.

We live remote and have regular electricity/landline/mobile(cell) outages in times of fire or flood. We have a satellite internet connection but have had one instance where it failed also ...

We have UHF radios but lack of repeaters makes them not so useful for anything other than local comms - and rugged terrain is an issue.

Our main telco is apparently teaming up with Starlink to allow satellite messaging in areas of no/poor mobile coverage --- this would be a big comfort. My new iPhone can also send a distress call via satellite ...

Meshtastic looks very interesting ... although perhaps very technical for the average person?

Has it come from the ham radio world?

Our thoughts go out to everyone in California.. It's crazy how we are in peak fire season here and there are fires in LA too ....

 

[TesTeq]

Meshtastic looks very interesting ... although perhaps very technical for the average person?

@gekko Yes, tell an ordinary human being about frequency bands and slots, and you lost her/him.

@Oogiem I don't understand why an emergency device is not standalone. Why do you need to pair it with a phone or laptop to send messages? As I read radios need very little power but phone or laptop will be dead after 24 hours…

 

[Oogiem]

Where we are there are places that have no GPS signal so satellite isn't really an option. Meshtastic builds a map base on GPS when it has it but can then go "off map" and still keep comms open.

although perhaps very technical for the average person?

I don;'t think so. There re meshtastic devices that do not requre much technical knowhow.

Not from Hams per se but there is a lot of overlap. I have a Ham license but never really use it. Hubby has one as well and does.

I don't understand why an emergency device is not standalone.

You seem to think there IS an emergency service. Where we are ther is not really one, except for volunteer services. Meshtastic allows us to function as our own support and retrieval group for us all when we travel via side by side in the backcountry.

As to power consumption there are many options. Some of the Meshtastic devices are betting on Moore's law. Why not take advantage of cheap powerful devices you may already have? Why build in a keyboard and display when you can attach to one that is already there?

Anyway I am not a developer I am just a user and I do not know or need to know the gory details of how it all works. It's simple and easy to use.

 

[schmeggahead]

we all need to get things done and most important is staying alive TO get things done!

I'm doing some investing now in our emergency preparedness. This fits perfectly into what I'm working on.
It also seems to be a great way to support a community in being prepared for interruptions in services for whatever reason.

I'm working on our evacuation plan in case we need to do so for some reason. Do you have any tips for accomplishing that and how meshtastic devices figure into that?

Thanks,
Clayton.

Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome is call practice. - unknown.
It's called practice! - Ted Lasso

 

[TesTeq]

You seem to think there IS an emergency service.

@Oogiem No such assumptions. I simply think that if you have two devices: a radio that can operate a month without charging and a terminal (phone or laptop) that can operate 12 hours than you have a system that can operate just 12 hours. Implementing a low power screen/keyboard connected directly to the radio solves this problem.

Why not take advantage of cheap powerful devices you may already have? Why build in a keyboard and display when you can attach to one that is already there?

Because they are power hungry and astonishingly their battery is discharged when needed.

 

[Oogiem]

I'm working on our evacuation plan in case we need to do so for some reason. Do you have any tips for accomplishing that and how meshtastic devices figure into that?

If you've got the small ones and keep them turned off until an issue and everyone knows the conditions for when you will turn them on they can be part of the solution but they do depned on more users nearby to forward signals and messages to the intended recipients

 

[Oogiem]

@Oogiem No such assumptions. I simply think that if you have two devices: a radio that can operate a month without charging and a terminal (phone or laptop) that can operate 12 hours than you have a system that can operate just 12 hours. Implementing a low power screen/keyboard connected directly to the radio solves this problem.

Because they are power hungry and astonishingly their battery is discharged when needed.

OTOH there are mestatic devices that DO include keyboards and displays so you can your choice. There are so many devices in use with the sytem that I ams ure there are some that meet your requirements. In our case we use tablets with displays because we also hav a rolling map of terrain on the devices that we download before a trip and we are on powered equipment so have a way to keep them charged if necessary. Everyone carries basic emergency backcountry survival geat and between us in the groups we hav emost of the spare parts and tools to handle machine breakdowns. We also usually have somneone with a chainsaw (to clear and maintain the trails we use and more. Our use case is different than some. Othher people use them strictly for emergency locaiton/messaging. You can find and fit the device the systems run on to your exact use case an if your's is a bit different it's open source and you can modify and work on it until it DOES fit. That's the beauty of the system, the open nature of development and the plethora of available hardware to work with it.