#337 LoRa Off-Grid Mesh Communication: Meshtastic (ESP32, BLE, GPS)

cool projects are rare here I found one I want to show to you an undercover Personal Communicator it includes a lot of new technologies ESP 32 smartphones Laura ple GPS mesh and as you see 3d printing and it solves a problem which could be seen as a human right personal SMS style communication everywhere in the world without the need of any infrastructure and without mass surveillance everything open source of course how cool is that create see youtubers here is the guy with a Swiss accent with a new episode and fresh ideas around sensors and microcontrollers remember if you subscribe you will always sit in the first row Laura technology already offers a big range which can be extended by using meshes when I was searching for such a mesh network I found two projects disaster radio and mesh tastic both projects are founded in the bay area around Silicon Valley and both want to create independent communication meshes that do not depend on infrastructure disaster radio is more focused on the rare event of a disaster mesh tastic can be used whenever smart phones have no connection or are dangerous to use so it is much more attractive in this video I will introduce the mesh tastic project offer a glimpse into mesh technology upload the project to TP e SP 32 boards and build a small demo Network but what is mesh tastic it is the virtue of the two words mesh and fantastic and it connects a bunch of TT Co tip imports via an underground network each group member has to have such a mesh tastic device I use these t beams with Laura and GPS and added and elate but other devices are also supported these boxes offer SMS style communication you type a message on your smartphone and it appears on all OLED displays as well as smartphones of your group because the tea beams have GPS your location is shared with the group so you can organize yourself the position is also shared without GPS because then mesh tastic takes the position from the smartphone isn't this fantastic how does it work the unreached smartphone runs a mesh tastic app and the communication between the smartphone and the ESP device is done via ble the communication between the mesh tastic devices is done by a laura mesh network all devices are part of this network and can relay messages to others therefore the reach of the network can be significant it does not use any 2 3 4 or 5 G towers therefore it works everywhere in the world and it is hard to trace because the network providers do not see your communication and position of course only if you switch your mobile comes off kevin Hester the creator of this project is a mastermind he masters all these technologies and brought them together in a working and easy-to-use project and now he has the help of others to move the project forward so let's dig into the details we all know Laura ban the network with lots of nodes and gateways here there is no communication from node to node all communication has to go via gateways and the central infrastructure public 405-g networks are also organized this way this is why it is also easy to track all of us meshes are very different much more guerilla all participating nodes are the same and are connected of course not all nodes can connect to all others because of reach limitations because this fact meshes can become quite big you could say why do I need Laura I can create ple mesh with my smartphone this is true but its range would be minimal maybe your voice has a bigger reach because such a laura mesh can have such a long range kevin built another feature into his software you can create groups that are separated from each other notes from one group share the same channel such a channel has a name and from this name mesh tastic calculates a unique combination of a transmission frequency and a password in channel options you should be able to select if you want high volume at short range or low volume but longer range the first is for large groups with lots of interconnections the latter for smaller groups with fewer interconnections because of the password more than one group can share one frequency in the same location let's have a closer look at meshes particularly at radio meshes they are much harder than wired meshes because in addition to be ad hoc and dynamically changing the topology the medium is unreliable radio connections sometimes work and if you move a few meters stop to work quite a few PhDs were awarded to finding the best mesh strategy I decided to use a particular one to understand how such strategies work the name of this particular strategy is Batman I thought that this must be a good if not the best strategy available with such a name but how does it work if a node joins a network it does not know a lot in our case only the frequency the spreading factor and the password this is why it sends a hello message also called a GM or originator message to find the best nodes around its location all notes receiving the message retransmit the OGM received from the best neighbor they transmit it only once to avoid network congestions by oh GM's they also keep this best node information the right note to use for a message towards the originator of the OGM like that each note only has to store one best note for each other network note there is no database about the overall network structure as seen before the topology can change and therefore oh GM's have to be sent out from time to time to maintain the best routes fortunately this algorithm is already implemented and we do not have to care if we do not want the next problem Kevin had to solve was to save energy the TPM has an 8650 battery onboard we all know that the ESP 32 has to sleep most of its time if we want to get long battery life fortunately the lower receiver can't stay on listen to incoming messages and wake the ESP if it got a message by the way for people interested in learning how to program this project is an excellent example it uses platform i/o and Kevin has a professional programming style it is for sure worthwhile to look into the code also if you are interested in how to use Laura modules and ble you can learn a lot now I would like to show you how it works we find a ready-made pin file on the project page select one for your region and also download ESP home flasher select the comm port and the bin file hit flash ESP and radius the device of course you can also download and print this cool 3d case from thinners each mesh tastic no it has to be paired with a smartphone this is best done if it has a small wallet if as I did you buy t beams without all it it is easy to mount one yourself if you choose the one with VCC and ground in this place it's a no-brainer otherwise you have to improvise during pairing the display shows a number and if you heat this number into the app they are paired i used the default group and everything was ready to go one smartphone belongs to me the other to joe i can see the position of us on a map and if i send him a message i see it on both screens and he sees it also on his smartphone and of course he can answer me i only have two t beams so i cannot show you how all others would get the same message very important if you use the right lower frequency for your country everything is legal because it uses the same ASM frequencies and the same modulation as TTN for example now the interesting question what is the range no it will most probably not work across the 200 kilometers from video number 120 but it will work on a line of sight for a few kilometers and if you have a mesh of several nodes the range will be extended if one or two nodes are elevated and can be reached by many other nodes your network can become quite big without any infrastructure needed and as said before it is hard to track because first this is a new way and most organizations interested in spying on you probably do not watch this channel and second the transmission is password-protected so somebody has to put some effort into it if he wants to read your messages now a few words to the performance the transmission speed of Laura is quite low so do not expect wonders and because the device sleeps between transmissions you have to wait for the next timeslot for communication this time can be adjusted and Kevin has already put a feature request to change the sleep time from the smartphone like that if you plan a short events of only a few hours you can decrease sleep time to get more speed and also less latency of course you have to charge the device earlier or change the battery but even when the device always-on it should run for 24 hours on one battery and a word about quality the project is complex and many things can go wrong I had issues during my tests and would not recommend its usage in a productive environment but maybe you sign up as an independent test person for the project this would be extremely valuable for the project team because having independent testers always increase the quality of products and a word about future plans a few people are interested in building specialized hardware for this project interestingly they will not use the ESP 32 they will use the NRF 52:xx chips from nordic semiconductors these chips are perfect for low-power ble projects for me this is particularly interesting as you might know that I want to use these chips for my future projects this is all for today I wish this project good luck on its way summarized mesh tastic provides a underground communication possibility for groups it is based on a Laura mesh network it uses Android smartphones for message entry you can see the messages either on the smartphone or on a small omelette on the device the positions of the group members are also displayed on a map on the smartphone radio meshes need specific strategies to adopt to ever-changing topologies we looked at how the Batman protocol works it is effortless to build a mesh tastic device because you only have to flash ATP with a ready-made pin file the project still is in development so expect you have to do some sting and not everything works flawlessly Kevin started a port to the NRF 52 processors very promising even the famous youtuber sexy cyborg seems to be interested in the project as always you find all the relevant links in the description I hope this video was useful or at least interesting for you if true please consider supporting the channel to secure its future existence thank you bye

Channel: Andreas Spiess

Views: 737,088

Keywords: arduino, arduino project, beginners, diy, do-it-yourself, eevblog, electronics, esp32, esp32 datasheet, esp32 project, esp32 tutorial, esp32 weather station, esp8266, esp8266 datasheet, esp8266 project, greatscott, guide, hack, hobby, how to, iot, lorawan, nodemcu, project, simple, smart home, ttgo, wemos, wifi, BLE, Lora, Lora mesh, communicator, GPS

Id: TY6m6fS8bxU

Length: 13min 14sec (794 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 07 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/KeithMon]

I thought this was interesting. I really like the idea in principle. Just keep in mind it requires community adoption. If you know your neighbors and they are of like-mind, this could work.

[u/light24bulbs]

This is awesome. I wish Lora equipment was less expensive. Esp-now seems like it's also a good candidate for this use, but last I read the protocol was not capable of automatic peer discovery. It seemed like it was designed around clients knowing their own address and the address of other nodes ahead of time, and the address space is extremely limited. Seems profoundly and unnecessarily limiting. But I haven't worked with it, can anyone else confirm?

I'm envisioning a very small backpack for cell phones that could connect to the USB port and enable peer to peer functionality identical to meshtastic.

The frustrating irony of all this is that phones are already perfect for this type of signalling. Both the wifi and ESPECIALLY the LTE radios already have exactly what they need to mesh network with each other and communicate peer2peer. It's so screwed up to me that they are only enabled to communicate with towers because that is what they can monetize.

Lives have definitely been lost when hikers or other explorers were out of tower range and couldn't signal for help, when they probably could have signalled a nearby phone. Likewise, rescue aircraft could carry the same radios and try to connect directly with lost people.

[u/Omniwing]

Too bad you can't power these things with solar and never have to recharge. Seems like the recharging problem is the biggest drawback. And you couldn't use solar if you're going to bury them. If you do use solar, someone might just steal your little device.