Lilygo T-Deck and Meshtastic - Encrypted Comms

what's up everyone and welcome back to the comms Channel many of you have likely seen my video on the solar powered mesh tastic device for fixed locations but for today's video we're going to go over a portable Standalone lore device that doesn't require a cell phone to be connected to it for using mesh tastic it's this new lore device we have here called the T deck so hang around and join me as we test out mesh tastic on itest okay I'll be back in seconds we're approaching a restricted area restricted area is one mile West before we get into the video I want to give a quick shout out to the Channel's first coffee supporter St syntax hopefully I'm saying that correctly your support is very much appreciated and if you're enjoying these videos you can also help support the channel by either visiting my coffee Link in the video description or by clicking the thanks button on YouTube your support is greatly appreciated and it helps with the Channel's continued production here we have the tck which is from lilyo who are the same people that make the t- beams I've discussed in other videos about nastic with the t- beam of course you connect it to your phone over Bluetooth and then use the mesh tastic app on your phone with it what's cool about this tck is the screen and keyboard that's very reminiscent of the Blackberry phones from back in the day this gives it the ability to eliminate the phone from the equation and let you type up your messages on the device itself we recently had a comment from a viewer n busness 9257 where he says there are a lot of people out there that would like mesh tastic capability but won't have anything to do with cell phones being involved because there's no expectation of privacy at that point which is why you'd want encrypted coms in the first place and he makes a very valid point here with all of the tracking and monitoring that happens on cell phones these days I can see we're having a standalone device that doesn't require a phone to use much task that could be attractive well that has become more a reality with the tck from liligo there's also other Standalone devices that have been around for a while before this one came out like the messenger and the armat that is a mesh tastic supported lore device that n busness from the earlier comment also mentioned while mesh tastic does work and has some basic functionality for Standalone devices there is some room for improvement but more on that later let's fire up mesh tastic on the T deck so after the device boots up you're presented with the usual screens that you may be familiar with if you're using mesh tastic on a device like a t Beam with a screen you can use the track ball from left to right to cycle through these and see the last message receives other devices seene channels Etc now if you move the track ball up or down instead of left right you'll will be presented with the canned messages screen and this is where you can configure a list of preconfigured messages that you can select and send from here you'll use the track ball up or down to select the message to send and left or right to select who you're sending to after you've done that you can send by either pressing in on the track ball or hitting the enter key now I found the track ball to be a bit sensitive and pruned to changing who you're sending to as you press it to it's best to just use the enter key instead so that's sending a can messages which is something you can do with other devices already but now let's put the keyboard to use and send a typed message and to do this you can just start typing from any screen and use the track ball from left to right to select where you want to send the message and that's easy enough to do but it could use some improvements now I don't believe mesh tastic was originally designed to be used in this way and is more focused on using it from the phone app but with devices like the tck coming out and more people wanting to use it in this Standalone manner that could change if there's enough traction some of the current usability issues are things like the canned messages screen for example there's no way to get out of the screen once you enter it at least that I could find and you need to basically send a message to get out of the screen another usability issue is you're only able to see the last message sent and not a list of previous messages and who sent them like you can on the mesh tastic app or a traditional chat client only being able to see the last message sent becomes an issue for a more active chat if you're busy and you're not able to be at the device while a conversation is occurring there's a number of other things that would be nice to have like a map display showing the location of other users for example or a menu where you can adjust various settings directly from the device now there's been a detailed feature request with these things and more made on the Mish tastic GitHub page that hopefully will gain some traction and get some of these features implemented now those were some things I wanted to point out in regards to using mesh tastic with a standalone device but there's also a few things that need to be pointed out for the T deck itself this device is just a board with components and a keyboard there is no case for it so you'll have to print a case for it with a 3D printer if you have access to one and there's already a number of files available for it another thing to note is the device does not have a GPS in it so with no GPS the device is unable to know the current time so when you receive a message it will show the incorrect time is received in my case it was saying two days ago even though I just sent a message to it the fix for this is to have a mesh task stick device on the network that does have a GPS like a t beam or a whis block with a GPS module on it these devices will be able to provide time to the devices on the network with no GPS the final thing to note is the battery life on the tck is going to be much worse than other devices mostly due to the screen it would be great to see a version with an eink display with less battery consumption with that said though I think it is a cool device and I'm looking forward to doing some more testing with it and while the mesh tastic functionality is basic at the moment it's still usable for some basic use cases for those that don't want to be Tethered to their phone for use and hopefully more advanced capabilities will get added soon if you're interested in getting one of these there will be an affiliate Link in the video description below but that'll do it for this video on the lilyo T deck hopefully you found this video informative and useful if you did please be sure to give this video a thumbs up and subscribe if you haven't already done so and again you can also support the channel by visiting the coffee Link in the video description or by clicking on the thanks button on YouTube thank you all and have a good one

Channel: The Comms Channel

Views: 69,150

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Id: 1oaWRs2te68

Length: 7min 24sec (444 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 17 2023