No internet required… In this video, I build a public Reticulum node and test whether it can bridge completely different networks into one encrypted communication path. I send messages from a normal phone over LTE, through the internet and Starlink, then off-grid over LoRa—eventually using a $20 drone-mounted relay to reach a phone with no internet connection at all.
This title is so bad it gave me cancer
Reticulum is a great project, but it’s not a replacement for the internet. LoRA (a potential piece in that chain) has very low data throughput; it’s fine for messages, but you’re not delivering web pages or streaming media with it.
Unless and until the throughput can be increased, Meshtastic/Meshcore is really only a replacement for text messaging, which might be perfectly fine for setting up encrypted comms or rapidly deploying communications in an emergency scenario.
Both are terrible for that. I hope that it’s a small number of people that get killed relying on LoRa for emergency communications that result in the project(s) being sued out of existence.
Hey guys, I’ve got a great idea: Let’s buy some $15 Arduino-like devices with milliwatts of transmitter power and trust them to life and limb! Even stupider than the people who buy Baofeng radios to put in a “bug out bag” and never use. Those at least mostly work.
