Meshtastic evening – The Presentation

From our member, Phil, G6DLJ:

A fascinating talk at the club on Friday by Mark G6OMT, assisted by Andy 2E0HVY, about the rapid growt

h of the open-source 868MHz Source Meshtastic network expanding in Devon, Cornwall and beyond. 

Mark kicked off with a basic overview of Meshtastic strength,  notably that comms can be made without the need for Internet connectivity and/or mains elec

tricity simply using phones and tablets connecting to a nearby node via a domestic Bluetooth or local WiFi connection in the home. 

He then went on to talk about the choice of equipment, starting from the popular ESP32 self-contained Mestastic transceivers with in-built antenns which can be purchased for under £20, (snap together, no soldering req) with optional expansion header pins for use with telemetry sources such as weather s

tations etc. at one end of the scale to very ruggedised outdoor gateways designed for very harsh conditions from £700 to to £150 for the solar powered versions. 

The wrap went into some use cases such as Parish Council resilience

planning, APRS and weather station reporting.  

The talk was followed by a very lively FAQ session with some hands-on discussions.   Several members have expressed

an interest in setting up personal nodes at home as well as a club gateway.