Off the Grid, On the Mesh: What I’m Learning About Meshtastic
A couple weeks ago, my friend and podcast co-host Jason Neiffer shared Meshtastic as one of his “Geeks of the Week” on our EdTech Situation Room podcast, the almost-weekly show we record together where we talk educational technology news and geek out over the tools we’re each discovering. I made a mental note of it, ordered some Meshtastic-compatible radios, and this week I finally went down the rabbit hole. I’m glad I did.
Meshtastic is an open source, off-grid text messaging system that runs on small, inexpensive radios and pairs with an app on your phone. No cell towers, no WiFi, no Internet required. The radios use a long-range, low-power radio technology called LoRa to form what’s called a mesh network: Each radio hears and rebroadcasts messages from the others nearby, so the network keeps extending itself as more people join. It runs on a slice of radio spectrum called an ISM band that doesn’t require a license to use, unlike HAM radio, which I’ve dabbled in (I own a Baofeng and can listen to weather broadcasts on it), but haven’t gotten licensed for yet. That’s on my list. You can read more about the technology itself on its Wikipedia page or dig into the project directly at meshtastic.org.
As an unrepentant “communitarian prepper” (you can read more about what that means to me, and find a bunch of resources I’ve curated, at commprep.wesfryer.com), the idea of having a working communication tool that doesn’t depend on the Internet or the cell network being up really appealed to me. I asked Claude to research the hardware options and lay out the pros and cons for me, since there are quite a few different radios listed on the Meshtastic site. I ended up ordering two ThinkNode M1 radios from Elecrow, about $50 each. You need at least two if you want to actually message someone, since each person needs their own radio paired to their own phone. I also picked up a Meshstick USB LoRa stick, a $23 little USB radio that plugs straight into my computer and turns it into its own node on the network. These did seem to “ship on the slow boat from China” (literally) but two weeks and $150 later, the radios arrived.
Once I had the radios, I got everything paired up and immediately started tinkering. Meshtastic’s default public channel is unencrypted and open, anyone nearby can see what’s on it, and I was honestly surprised how many other nodes I could already see just from my house. So the first thing I did was create my own private channel with a 256-bit encryption key, which is more secure (and a little slower) than the lighter options. I also turned GPS off on my radios for now, since I wasn’t ready to broadcast my exact location to anyone, though on a private channel with people you trust, sharing live location is actually one of the more useful features, especially if someone’s out on a trail and you want to be able to find them.
The real test came when I paired a radio to my wife’s phone, then drove around our neighborhood, down to our local park, texted her from there, then kept driving out to our nearest grocery store, maybe half a mile from the house, and texted her again. All my messages went through and she was able to reply. That’s genuinely exciting for two radios with stock antennas and no repeater in between, though it helps that it was mostly line of sight; if you’re down in a valley, expect worse results. I also learned about MQTT, the piece of the system that lets certain nodes bridge the mesh over to the regular internet, extending reach even further if you want that.
Now I’m thinking about what’s next. Our house sits at the top of a hill in our neighborhood, one of the tallest points around, which makes it a genuinely good spot for a fixed antenna that could act as a relay for neighbors. That raises real questions about mounting height, lightning protection, and grounding, so I’m planning to talk with the HAM radio folks who meet at the Mint Hill Historical Society’s Carl McEwen Historic Village on first Saturdays of the month. (The “Tower of Power Radio Club W4TOP.”) HAM operators know antennas and grounding well, and this feels like exactly the kind of knowledge worth borrowing before I put anything on the roof.
I keep coming back to something I believe as a communitarian prepper: the best time to build capacity for when the grid or the internet goes down is right now, while everything’s working fine. There’s a media literacy thread in here too, worth sitting with for a moment: Understanding how your communication actually works, and having at least one option that doesn’t run through a corporate platform or require an Internet connection at all, is its own kind of literacy. I’ll keep sharing what I learn as I go, including whatever I find out about that rooftop antenna. If you’re curious and want to try it yourself, start at meshtastic.org, and let me know in the comments if you’re already running a mesh of your own.
This video is also available on my Communitarian Prepper channel on YouTube.
