347
This Tiny Radio Lets Me Send Texts Without Wi-Fi or Cell Service
(www.howtogeek.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2025
347 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
73287 readers
3299 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Clickbait title. Just say it's meshtastic.
I mean it's an article for people like me who have never heard of that
Ok.......what's meshtastic? I still haven't clicked the article, and know nothing of which you speak.
I'd say this title is for people like me. I think it sounds cool.
It is cool! The barrier to entry is relatively low. The only thing to really worry about is:
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).
Where'd you get that map from?
I got mine recently in a dxent aized city and while there are plenty of nodes popping up on the map, the local channel is pretty quiet. Is that normal?
Yep, that can be normal. For my city, the local group has a private (but free to join) channel that's a bit more active.
Do a web search for meshtastic and your city and see if one pops up.
I don't know. It's the same for me but I got a pretty bad reception. The only time I saw some messages was when someone was sending some from a plane, so I guess it was a special occasion.
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.
Since LoRa devices use very little power this can be useful when there is no electricity.
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.