This morning a work buddy pointed me to the Thinknode M5.
Guess it uses Meshtastic. I was wondering if one has used
either this device or Meshtastic flashed device.

While not exactly ham radio, the reason I ask is because
as I was reading the article, the only thing I could think
of is how similar in basic capablities this thing is to
the old Gotenna Mesh or the original Gotenna. Both of which
I had at one point. As far as I can tell this devices can
send messages and GPS positions. Which to me really seems
exactly like the old Gotenna devices. I guess my guestion
becomes did I miss something in what these things do?

If not, I wonder if people even find them useful. I ask
because I never did find people that use or could use the
old Gotenna devices. I tried. I had like 4 of the Gotenna
Mesh units and no traffic and I could never get my buddies
to try them. So I wonder if these things have the same issue.
Of course a lot could depend o the Meshtastic capabilities
and use.

On a side note, I went to Gotenna website to see if they were
still around. Seems they are but they pivoted away from consumer
devices (as a mater of fact they sell nor support none now).
Instead now, they focus only on what looks like military, law
enforcement and goverment related stuff.


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This morning a work buddy pointed me to the Thinknode M5.
Guess it uses Meshtastic. I was wondering if one has used
either this device or Meshtastic flashed device.

I have an M1 that I carry when I visit the big cities w/ Mesh networks (like Tulsa, where I'm at right now for work).

I've used Meshtastic for a couple months now. Its an interesting system and I'm planning a home network project, using a remote weather station connected by mesh.

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of is how similar in basic capablities this thing is to
the old Gotenna Mesh or the original Gotenna. Both of which
I had at one point. As far as I can tell this devices can

Probably the same thing, just different in how the mesh acts and the messages are sent. There's also a Meshcore, too :). Runs on a lot of the same devices as Meshtastic. AND there's some defense dept used/back one, too. Tactical something something. Maybe it was just 'TAC'? I forget now.


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pyrewyrm wrote to nblade <=-

I've used Meshtastic for a couple months now. Its an interesting system and I'm planning a home network project, using a remote weather station connected by mesh.

So I guess that gets to a question I have about Meshtastic. Does it just send messages? In the case of your weather station, does it just send a message that is formatted a certain way (say JSON) and then at the the other end does it just
accept that message and then do something with it? Or is there a way to send some
sort of data packets via the mesh network?



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So I guess that gets to a question I have about Meshtastic. Does it just send messages? In the case of your weather station, does it just send a message that is formatted a certain way (say JSON) and then at the the other end does it just
accept that message and then do something with it? Or is there a way to send some
sort of data packets via the mesh network?

Meshtastic is intended as a text-based system. So I'd likely use pre-formatted text strings, in the case of the weather station. Wx station emits the message, listening radio receives. From here, I could either go w/ a MQTT bridge or, if my listening radio transceiver is connected to/a part of a computer, the Meshtastic python library can directly read the message.
In either case, once I have the message in hand, I expand it out to JSON or some such, commit the record to a database, and send the JSON to whatever I am displaying the current weather output on.

If I wanted to get fancy, Meshtastic supports me building my own protocol buffer schemas and sending raw data packets.

Actual JSON is a no go. The messages are tight on space and JSON (along with most other web data exchange standards) are just too much. In my formatted string concept, I'm thinking something more raw - ie 0814305 is decoded to 081 - Temp in F, 43 relative humidity, 05 wind in kts.

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