I've been working on trying to help fill out the MeshCore network in our area for off-grid communications. Some of us are setting up solar powered, battery backed MeshCore nodes, they have no connection to power or Internet. You can use a small device (like a credit card or a small walkie-talkie) with a phone, or a blackberry-like device, to send/receive encrypted messages, chat on channels, or communicate on BBS-like "room servers".
It's interesting for if there were some sort of disaster impacting the cell network, or for use in the back woods where you have no cell contact. But it's extremely unreliable. My coworker who is into it, he lives 2-3 miles away but we can rarely communicate because he lives in a bit of a bowl that we don't have reachability into. Meanwhile I'm regularly getting messages from 30-70 miles away no problem.
It reminds me a lot of HAM radio, where there are other better ways to communicate, but if those ways broke it would be nice to have an alternative.
Part of why I'm doing it is my office has a nice, unused tower on top of it. The office itself is ultimately not that high, but the 20ft tower on top of the 3 story building helps a lot. I can JUST reach the 8ft TV antenna mast at my house, depending on tree vegetation (we'll see how much worse it gets as the trees leaf out this spring). It operates in the 900 MHz ISM band, so it can "punch through" more than WiFi can.
I had watched the first half of it a couple weeks ago and it does indeed sound pretty interesting. WiFi HaLow is a long distance capable variant of WiFi and Reticulum is a mesh network protocol.
If I had more people buying into MeshCore, I might push it to doing something like this, but at the moment I think this sort of setup is beyond anything more than just some simple testing in my case.
They are very similar in function, as another reply said. MeshCore relies more on dedicated repeater infrastructure, and it's design seems to make it more reliable for longer range communications. Most people with solid mesh networks seem to be moving from Meshtastic to MeshCore and having improved experiences with it.
The ones I built I used the Austin Mesh guidelines, and they use a USB battery setup they've found that is reliable.
I wanted to set up some of the 1 watt radios for the repeaters (more powerful output plus better input stages) have a known problem where if the battery power drops down to 3.3v it goes into a "deep sleep" mode that it won't recover from once the battery pack comes back up to voltage, without physically resetting it. This USB pack is known to provide 5v power as long as it can, and then shut off until it's been charged to the point it can provide 5v again.
Then I plug a solar panel into it. There are also the "SenseCap Solar Nodes" that are a total solution (enclosure, solar panel, radio, batteries) ready to deploy.
I have one of mine on a 20ft tower on the roof at work, I'm not messing with that weekly. I will need to do firmware updates periodically, which can be done via bluetooth.
edit: Forgot to mention that other units can just use little LIon battery packs that plug right into the board and can be charged by a charge controller on the board to a less expensive solution, that's more what the SenseCap uses. Also I think my board has some firmware patches to fix the problem. I just wanted something that was known to not require much messing around with.
Came here to mention this. I've had a lot of fun putting up stealth repeaters in trees to build out the Meshcore network. One or two nodes in critical places can light up dozens of square miles for the mesh.
Find your local Discord and get rolling. In the Bay Area it's baymc.org.
I just started trying to get into this, and so far it's been kinda disappointing. I got a couple of heltec v3s, set them up with meshtastic and found zero other nodes in range. I did a range test by carrying 1 node around with me while I walked my dog, and the other one at home. It maxed out at about a block. I know there are other nodes in the area but I can't reach them unless I turn on MQTT, but at that point you're just using the Internet with extra layers. I'm looking into more powerful antennas, etc, but it looks like a big money sink.
It's interesting for if there were some sort of disaster impacting the cell network, or for use in the back woods where you have no cell contact. But it's extremely unreliable. My coworker who is into it, he lives 2-3 miles away but we can rarely communicate because he lives in a bit of a bowl that we don't have reachability into. Meanwhile I'm regularly getting messages from 30-70 miles away no problem.
It reminds me a lot of HAM radio, where there are other better ways to communicate, but if those ways broke it would be nice to have an alternative.
https://meshcore.co.uk/