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- Hacker News
- There was apparently drama, should we be using this or meshcore?by boredatoms
- I would try to select based on the merits of the project and its adoption instead of drama.
For me the team behind meshtastic needs some help behind their approach to APIs, the app releases frequently break that contract and they probably just need a little help in that area to improve it.
Meshcore sounds compelling to me because it has that fixed vs dynamic target approach which I suspect is more true to the real world given folks are standing up solar powered radios attached to fixed points and then trying to send messages from their phones.
Edit: I guess meshcore isn't really a real project.
by srmatto - Comparison of Meshtastic vs MeshCore:
https://www.seeedstudio.com/blog/2026/03/23/meshcore-vs-mesh...
- And why MeshCore forked from Meshtastic:by pabs3
- I have a node running 24/7 (I also happen to be hosting one of the dozen or so things network nodes in my city) and while the idea is great, the adoption is close to 0. In a city with a 2+ million residents, I see a handful of users, as in less than 10. Same with the things network actually.by axegon_
- Love meshtastic. There’s something about the setup friction that has the vibe of early internet, select community, high signal, nobody trying to monetize your attention.
- Agreed. And opt-in. Early internet access required some knowledge about computers.by joemazerino
- Somewhat related thread from the past days https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47999636 that also discusses Reticulum which is an interesting project in the same space too.
From what I could see the general vibe seems to be shifting from meshtastic to meshcore.io in the past months.
by dewey - It's a natural direction to hop from Meshtastic to Meshcore.io as the community grows.
They are implemented a bit differently. The chatty nature of Meshtastic works very well in small groups, or unknown area, when you need to talk a bunch of your friends scattered during a trip, to monitor your tracktors on a large field, etc..
Then you try to scale it to a larger city and it just completely breaks. Then Meshcore.io enters the picture. Every larger community that switches says the same - it's a huge reliability difference. It also comes at a cost of some discipline and more infrastructure planning (repeater nodes).
The more I play with both the more I respect both projects.
As for Reticulum, I don't see it competing in the same category at all. It has much higher aspirations, but also it seems at the moment it's much less practical and popular.
by szszrk - I'm surprised there's many comments here, and so many folks even still who haven't heard of Mesh. And no real comments on them as an organization.
Mesh topology like this is cool, and the concept is cool. Meshtastic as an organization with one of their leadership being a lawyer and being very litiguous to protect their naming scheme, not so much. They go after so many projects, ideas and other things that say they are 'Meshtastic' powered. There's a whole discord of them. It is disheartening and very jarring. They want to use the moniker of M-Powered or M-PWRD which has no identity or meaning.
by darksim905 - If you're interested in Meshtastic, just try Meshcore instead. It's the natural hobbiest progression. Eventually you'll get tired of Meshtastic being nothing but telemetry from unknown nodes, nobody talks, it's a ghost town of weak links. Meshcore on the other hand has people actually having conversations, networks that span whole states, and diagnostic tools that actually work and are informative for describing the network around you.by lu5t
- Is there something preventing people from just setting up both?by Larrikin
- This is bad advice. The choice depends on which is more popular in your area. For me in Phoenix that’s meshtastic.by blhack
- I assume there's no firmware that can speak both, or create a bridge?by RobotToaster
- The biggest problem with Meshtastic is that discussions about it inevitably get spammed by Meshcore evangelicals.by dpedu
- Maybe it depends? In my city, the online map shows only 2 Meshcore nodes, while Meshtastic 36 nodes.
And I've never spent time learning about it, but I'm under the impression Meshtastic is all about open-source and closer to ham radio philosophy, while Meshcore is backed by some for-profit organization?
by 3x35r22m4u - Having tried both, I definitely agree.
* MeshCore has a lot more reach than Meshtastic. Often 100+ kilometers compared to just a few kilometers. Even if MT is more popular in your area, there's a good chance that MC will give you far more actual range.
* The online node maps for both are unreliable. I don't recommend relying on them for anything.
* Meshtastic uses a basic flood algorithm, up to 3 hops by default and with a hard limit of 7. Every device works as a repeater.
* MeshCore distinguishes between Companions and Repeaters. It uses flood routing by default, and attempts to establish smarter direct routes where possible. Companions are end-user devices for sending and receiving messages. Repeaters are ideally mounted high up in a static location, and they forward packets they receive. Companions normally don't act as repeaters, but can do so if needed in off-grid situations using the "off-grid repeat" setting.
* Some are concerned about whether MeshCore is open-source. The firmware contains everything important, and is fully open-source. The official companion client app is closed-source freemium. But it's simply a GUI that talks to an API over Bluetooth, TCP, or Serial. The official CLI client is open-source, and you can use any client app you want, including the popular MeshCore-open app.
by uyzstvqs - I don't think this is quite accurate advice. Go where the activity is. Around me, in a city of ~1.5M, the Meshtastic community is quite active. They've worked with local ham radio clubs. They have members setting up a larger mesh that stretches the state from north to south. Meshcore isn't as active, although people are experimenting with it just like Meshtastic. But because Meshtastic has more local users, that's what I would recommend to people here. Meanwhile, places like the PNW and Boston have adopted Meshcore. So I might recommend new users there to try Meshcore. It's okay to have both.
This us vs them/there must be a winner attitude that I see in both communities is really toxic and unnecessary. Look at ham radio: some people use CW, some people use SSB, some people use SSTV, some people use FT8 (but not everyone! There are still hams using other digital modes), many operators dabble in a mix of the above. There are a variety of options and nobody is pressuring other operators to use a particular mode or band.
by doom2 - I've been using Meshtastic for years. Still have a few Heltec v2 nodes running. It's been a lot of fun. It also encouraged me to get my HAM license since most of the local meshtastic/meshcore users are also in the radio clubs.
It reminds me of the early internet. In the early 90s the entire list of URLs could fill a notebook. And it was my first exposure to P2P nets. Meshtastic is a bit like that where it doesn't work well until you have a large enough community of nodes and gateways.
by yardie - Same. The internet isn’t fun anymore, and hasn’t been in a long time.
These local meshes remind me of BBS days. You have to know a few things to access it and the community is all the better for it.
by mingus88 - I tried meshtastic but there is literally nobody around me.
It's like trying to get friends to use signal. I've moved to Meshcore recently and it gets me connected to the rest of the UK. But it took me 2 dedicated repeaters.
I love the meshcore homesassitant plugin, managed to setup some alerts to send out a message on a private channel every 5 minutes if I lose power as an example.
by prism56 - I recently received my ham (Technician) license. This was mostly a result of the state of conflict between various nations, but something I've long perceived as vital for community and individual resilience and stability in difficult times.
Many are using GMRS, as it provides easy access to the entire family for $10 over ten years and requires no test. But as does most UHF/VHF or line-of-sight comms, it relies heavily on repeaters.
My handle on meshtastic, LoRa, etc, is still first impression, but I know a lot is going on here, with compelling twists and alternatives in development, eg js8call?. I'm very interested, though haven't had time to learn anything yet.
Being in Florida, which is 1) a power island 2) a hurricane magnet and burgeoning tornado scape among other vulnerabilities, resilient backup comms seems more than prudent.
I've been procrastinating and distracted, but have had the idea of learning markdown and hugo, then making a Florida ham/mesh/LoRa/gmrs/etc website designed to be highly inclusive rather than exclusive, with the hopes of getting many involved.
I don't know much yet, but the whole mesh subject is objectively fascinating and promising. I went from not knowing AM/FM to ham in two weeks of study. I'm still patching and catching up, but seriously interested.
KR4KZI 73
by eth0up - Hats off to you on the ham license! My friend just got hers too!
Re: markdown and hugo, that's an excellent combo. You could easily setup a raspberry pi or $5/mo vps to serve it behind caddy/traefik/nginx and have a working multipage app (mpa) in a weekend.
Or a few minutes with AI haha
- I took a plunge into learning about mesh networks, specifically because I love the idea of p2p/decentralized systems of communication. To be honest, I was surprised to find that my expectations for “where we are at” with this type of technology was pretty off-base. For some reason I thought by now it would be straightforward to do a little more than text messaging over a truly public and decentralized off-internet mesh. Maybe I’ve missed some things in my search (still learning!) and someone can correct my understanding.by moffers
- The thing you missed to search for Nyquist limit as applies to the triad of battery power use vs data speed vs range. There's also error rate in the equation...
You can more or less only communicate with people agreeing with one specific tradeoff and the majority have spoken and they want slow long range texting, so you'll only be compatible with their mesh if you're compatible with that use case.
The software works fine if you set up super high bit rate, although you will not like the short range. There is no such thing as a free lunch and something like Y2K wifi speeds will have Y2K wifi ranges and battery use LOL. Also you will not mesh with other people's infrastructure if you intentionally use a modulation scheme they don't use. Its quite capable, really. But if most people want to max out their possible range and secondarily max out their battery life, it isn't going to be very fast...
by VLM - You can create a network tunnel over meshtastic with the CLI. I haven't had the time to try it but I assume it's quite slow.
- The Reticulum Network Stack is a more generic lora capable protocol. It is intended to run over almost any two way link so it's less bandwidth efficient per packet than Meshtastic but in return it gives you packet routing rather than flooding. It can be run over TCP, LoRa, WiFi, etc.
https://reticulum.network/start.html has an overview and how to connect.
There is a manual with a lot more information on how it works and the ideas behind it at https://reticulum.network/manual/ however it's quite large and not really a user friendly guide
If you just want to play with it https://reticulum.network/manual/software.html has a list of clients and software using it.
by Panda_ - We are in the South Pacific with our sailboat, and are using Meshtastic every day to talk between ourselves and with various buddy boats. The boat has a solar-powered repeater (CLIENT_BASE) on the mast that increases communications range significantly.
This all works great with no local SIM cards or other subscriptions or infrastructure needed.
We plan to run experiments with Reticulum when we stop for the cyclone season. Reticulum would open a lot more possibilities with both LoRa and internet-based comms. The Columba app seems to do a lot to bridge the usability gap, but work will need to be done to integrate Reticulum with our boat systems the way we have with Meshtastic (alerting, telemetry, digital switching control).
by bergie - I've always thought that meshtastic (or something similar) would be great for cruisers. Have you encountered anyone else using it?
- I just bought three SenseCap T1000-E's for the exact same purpose.
Sadly I sail on the other side of the world so we likely won't be connecting.
by Levitating