Hi, I've been working in the RF engineering space for over 15 years, some insights. There will be a limit to range due to the transmit power of the devices, this is something that is usually limited by region, hence the reason why you need to pick a region on the inital set up, this is usally called reglatory domain, and controlled by the FCC in the US, OfCom in the UK and ETSI in the EU. A larger antenna does not mean that you will be able to transmit further, however it does mean that the device can 'hear' more, as it has a larger capture surface. The antenna used in the video, both 'stubby' and 'whip' are known as omni-directional antenna, this is because they transmit their power in usually a 360 degree radius from the antenna, range is also liimited with this type of antenna as it is transmitting in all directions, think of the power being divided equally in a 360 degree circle around you, the target node is in one of those directions so would, for example, only be receiving 5% of the transmit power of the originating device. Range could be dramatically increased by using a directional antenna, for example a 20 degree one, as the transmit power would be divided over a much tighter space. This is quite simplified, mulitple other factors such as polarisation and attenuation come in to play as well, and this is a comment, not a white paper :) LoRa is not a 'illegal' technology, it was developed to fulfill a need in both urban and rural remote areas to transmit data, usually from autonamous nodes such as traffic lights, weather stations etc, where the data payload is low, its also used quite heavily in the farming industry to track wildlife, report on the health of crops and machinary. It also uses a lower frequency than traditional WiFi, which means the wave length is longer, and is able penetrate more dense materials, there for increasing its potential range. The one concerning thing highlighted in the video for myself, was the ability to track nodes, it seemed like you were able to determine the location natively on the device of a node without any kind of authentication. Another note to add would be SIGINT (Signal Intelligence), if someone is planning on using these devices in a situation such as a warzone or potential conflict zone (I'm thinking of civilian communications in Israel or Ukraine), as this creates a mesh network, meaning there will always be some level of RX/TX from these devices, by either relaying of messages, or attempting to discover new nodes in the mesh network, these devices would be quite easy to track down for an equipped force, potentially aiding in the capture or attack of the user. The equipment needed by people/govenments/militaries to track these types of signals is fairly ubiqutious now and rather cheap, something to keep in mind. SIGINT operators utilise 'listening posts' or devices (drones, AWACS etc) to 'listen' for RF, trianglate the signal and direct forces to that location (or order strikes), this has been used to great effect by the Ukraine military against the Russian Federation in the early part of the conflict for example.
I appreciate you sharing your knowledge, I’m new to Lora but have been messing with FPV drones for years now on 2.4 and 5.8 after reading I upgrade my DJI transmitter antenna that were basic folding bipolar to a square “patch” antenna I believe it was called and it was a huge ungraded for range and video quality but also very sensitive to facing the right direction. Is there similar “patch” antenas that will give similar results for these Lora devices. Line of sight is very important on our FPV stuff. Forgive my ignorance on the subject if I’m not comparing apples too apples.
@@DimMakTen I imagine there is, although I imagine quite rare given the nature of LoRa - directional antenna's are somewhat counter to what the technology is trying to achieve. Try searching for the LoRa frequencey used in your region and antenna suppliers, you may get lucky. Its important to get the antenna that is for the correct frequency, else this can actually impact range and performance, and may even damage radio equipment through back reflections into the transmitter - as explained in the video. We often discribe 'listening' or 'hearing' signals, but its actually more accurate to say 'seeing' signals, the best way to think about the signals and their radiation/propagation, is to think of a lantern and a flashlight with the same luman output - the lantern lights up the area in all directions with itself in the centre, and the flashlight only lights up one specific area, what you will see is that the flashlight can light up the one direction brighter and further despite the output power being the same as the lantern.
the low cost of these devices allows to deploy a ton of nodes though so yeah they can be tracked but it can become a pretty time-consuming job to root out hundreds of those hidden around or literally thrown off a plane/drone at regular intervals to maintain the network
this may have been meant as a joke, but you can do a lot more than just send text and if the power grid dropped out this would still work , also it's uncontrolled by any government or company and encrypted so if that matters to you then there is that too
As a former Marine who did some pretty high tech training exercises that simulated Peer-on-Peer warfare, I will tell you that there is no way of radio or cellular communication that cannot be tracked. It can be encrypted, but there is no way to keep it from being tracked. That's why we practiced radio silence, and only turned them on as a last resort. If we used radios to communicate, we immediately abandoned our position, because within an hour there would be helos and jets circling where the transmission was detected.
@sOdEeP406mUsIc There are no electronic communications that cannot be detected and located. That's why the other Marine said it's best to practice radio silence while in a position until your packed up and about to move to another position. I'm also a prior enlisted US Marine and a former US Navy Communications Officer.
@@RealCptHammonds Okay thank you. What would anyone use for this type of communication? Just old fashioned meet me in the park and I'll put a magazine on the park bench with a note in it? :D I'm not a bad guy, I am just wondering how it would at all be possible these days. It seems like there is no privacy anymore and nor will there ever be? And thank you for your service too.
@@notsecure GPRS/GMRS/FRS + HAM all work quite well for over a mile in my experience :) I like that these little things are small and light (compared to full size radios) for off-grid. I can hide one in a tree and retrieve it later to setup my own relay service. A bigger "base station" that can tx at max legal power would be truly awesome. These little things are just the access gateways to the network you could create and they can mesh! I think a lot of the commenters here are missing the point and applications.
As long as they're Part 15 and stay within 902-928 MHz, use spread spectrum or frequency hopping, and are 1 W or under ERP (which is all true), FCC is totally okay with it.
Believe it or not, the FCC lately doesn’t take sides. They don’t really make friends with anyone. They’ve given the bird to other US government agencies many times in the past.
@charlie_nolan True....UNTILL they change the regulations so they can cover this. Thatis how totalitarians work. They don't want you free of their tentacles.
They will have LoRa built-in to more phones in the future. Now it's just getting started. The original iPhone came with seven transceivers installed. How many more can't they fit in there.
There should be a global effort by everyone to build a self-sustainable network of these devices powered with solar or other sources to create a massive network. Would be different from the internet or other networks, but could be used as a backup communication network incase things ever got bad.
I dont know much about this but this only works because bot a lot of people use it right? Like if everyone started using it there would be saturation problems right or do they have a work around for that?
I’d rather see these be able to use cellular networks for free to use as WiFi on your phone. That’s the only practical use I can see. Without that what’s the point?
Funny u shud say that. 6-7 years ago I presented such an effort to a cloud comm telco I was at. The idea was to incorp current cloud tech an build out a lost ptt usage with this type tech which cud kick in when cell grid is down. It's fairly easy to build as u can see here, or partner with a small co. that has some funding; well.. why the big wigs were thinking it over and benched it (hard to package n sell near free tech; I was thinking users n brand) A year passed. The company I presented as a buy or partnership with gained a gov. Contract and took it all next level an hush. Some dont see the forest for the trees.
I foresee groups forming and dissolving. Really touches on the things amateur radio folks fiddle with already. A criminal element will probably exist for more secure communication (sigh).
This video just won the click-bait award. lol Sure these are cool, but definitely not a cellphone replacement by any stretch of the imagination. There's a reason why cellphones are called "cell"-phones, due to the thousands of advanced cell base stations.
@@s.i.m.c.a Power helps, but LORA devices only put out 21dBm gain. An amplifier would help, but may not be legal. Having a good antenna will make the biggest difference. I use the digital mode FT-8 often on 20 and 30 meters and can communicate worldwide on 60 watts. Granted, 60 watts is more like 48dBm, but it's radiated from a 27 foot high gain vertical. The conditions on HF are a little different than UHF also.
As someone who has one of these…even in one of the most populated areas of the U.S., there are very very few nodes. It works…but the network isn’t there for it to actually “work”. I’ve heard it’s much better over in Europe
You jest, but a pair (or single) copper wire from your house back to the exchange typically survived DECADES and just carried on working. Might get a bit crackly from time to time and so on, but ultra simple and ULTRA durable. Power cut? HomePhone still working just fine. Local mast damaged / maxed out - HomePhone still works. Dropped your handset - Homephone don't care. Drop it, stand on it, drive over it - probably still giving you a dialling tone. Good for about 60 years before you might want to replace it (for a nice new colour). The old stuff just worked - basically forever. Modern Phones with their "designed to fail", glass screens and microlife batteries are great while they work - but if you NEED to have a phone that is guaranteed to work - the old housephone probably won't let you down from one decade to the other. Can you say that about the latest plastic delight people pay over £1000 for ? Sometimes you just want reliability and not "Oooh look I can take a super photo on a telephone while liking a picture of a plate of food".
I was an IT in the navy dealt with a lot of encryption and secured comms i would say just by the transfer to the device to the phone you lose a lot of security to the comms i will also add just because your communicating on what you think is in encrypted it can still be detected if they are looking for emissions
100% agree with you, Its not as secure as people claim to be or at all, It can be a good way to communicate in emergency situations for off grid uses or when networks are congested , but can easily be tracked because the Lora pings your GPS location when you communicate which you would know that can be traced through RF as well. Its amazing that people swear that its encrypted and is " Safe" , although still good to have for emergency uses.
@@killerdeamonking Ok so not all long range (lora) are tied to GPS modules they are the same as any other transceiver technology. They use a bandwidth that used to be used for analog television signals. As for encryption that happens before anything is transmitted it's not a VPN tunnel it's not being encrypted by the antenna. And sure you can triangulate any rf signal and you can capture or intercept it but if encrypted it's still just going to be a garbled mess without the proper encryption key.
Came to say similar. You are still beaming out a radio signal. I don't see how that makes you any less susceptible to be man in the middled than anything else.
@@matthewmucci9107 man in the middle , you are the man in the middle at that point because in order for a mesh system to work you have to setup a hub yourself for your area. As far as big brother goes , they can snoop the signal like any other and get a device location as that's how lora mesh works , the radio devices grab that location then tells your hub how far out you are then relays that message to your recipient. The whole point of this system is to remain operational should that cell towers and all other communications towers go down other than your own.
he didn't say anything about not being trackable, ever, only that the message would be encrypted, and even then only on the encrypted "channel" ... I agree that it is important to point out specifically that it is trackable though. especially, as somebody else pointed out, if the entity buying it is intending to use it to aid some sort of political resistance effort.
@@Eduardo1007 It can be operated completely in airplane mode. Hardening your device beyond that is your own responsibility. (yes its debatable if airplane mode is even safe as well, evidence suggests otherwise)
Also, i dont know if anyone pointed this out, but the major issue with radio signals, especially simple ones like this, is you're still at the mercy of atmospheric effects and uh sorry to be that guy but being in motion or not in motion is a BIG factor, so thats why despite having direct LOS youre still losing messages Source: Currently a NavET on Submarines
I kind of feel the same way I can really see the use for it I never go to the desert and I think it’s easier just to use my phone like normal then I can reach everybody no matter how long away from me they are😂
Basically, very low power wireless communications are awesome, and can incorporate very high quality encryption, and range of up to roughly 20 km. These devices are currently limited to smaller text messages ands simplified images (think 8 bit).
@@burchifiedI can transmit at 50 watts GMRS mobile, you only need HAM if you want friends to talk too. 😂 GMRS operators transmit information, HAM's chit chat.
Old Radio guy for the military. Radio waves can penetrate nonconducting materials, such as wood, bricks, and concrete, fairly well. They cannot pass through electrical conductors, such as water or metals. Above ν = 40 MHz. Ya I took this from Britannica because I didn't want to type it out, long story short that's why you can get though multitudes of buildings and dense woods but struggle on a lake or beach. Ground radio waves also project in a curve (this is why they bounce off the water so quickly) so no joke you grab a 6-20ft antenna to any of these or even build a permeant housing and this could be broadcasting for miles.
@@thomgizziz you feel better about yourself now? Do you feel superior to him? lol for the life of me, I will never understand people who are rude to other people for no reason on the Internet. You must hate yourself.
@@gregjensen8267 Yes @thomgizziz appears to be a professional disrupter. There are 100s of 1000s of them assigned to disparage technology that provides some escape from the Matrix. The official troll handbook instructs: disparage, disrupt, degrade. dispute (note words begin with the same letter ... that's because people employed thusly are not very bright, and have leaky memoires.).
13:44 - i love how our phones have like 20 kinds of antenna in them and nerds want another antenna that uses two of the antennas inside their phone, to send secret texts the way we would back in elementary with those personal organizers that had IR blasters on them.
Not to ruin the vibe, but LoRa over water is great, in normal urban settings they perform quite badly. Hopefully one day they can be used reliably in urban settings. I had very sad results with the Heltec v2 and proper antennas I got 700 meters in a line-of-sight urban scenario, which is practically nothing. I hope these will be usable in urban areas in the future, reliably for up to 3-4 km in range, because in open fields they are truly amazing.
wowthanks u probably saved me wasted money. I have NEVER heard this before and found it surprising. i have been seeing more and more stuff about LoRa stuff and thought it was a good route
That all depends on if you have a main node high enough... I have 2 heltec v3 talking to each other 27 miles away right now..... And anything in between works cuz it fits through them
@@needausernameJesus just look on every apps permissions and if you got time to read all those terms and agreement, most often you got forced to agree to use their products.
The most important factor is tuning the antenna's SWR (Standing Wave Ratio) as close to "1" as possible in order to minimize transmission loss. I bet Andy Kirby would be excited about these tests. :D :D
That was bothering me throughout the video. Range test results don't mean squat if there is no consistency in antenna orientation. As for the drone. . Mounting it horizontally on top of the drone seems like 2 bad ideas rolled into 1 to me. I'd love to see some real range tests with vertical orientation and also SWR tuning. And some amplification if you're feeling frisky. I will bet they have a lot more range to give than 3 miles.
1. You dont need a cell phone. A basic tablet will work. 2. It only needs wifi for the setup and updates. 3. The tablet is where the communication APPs are. Yes, you can use this with ATAK. 4. The device sends the encrypted signal. The more people using them, the wider the range and coverage. Yes, there are ways to increase range to 200 miles.
this won't change phone providers... it's bandwidth is too low and short range. There are boards that do Meshtastic and suppoert GPS if you want to add a tracker for objects. Put one in your car and you'll always know where your car is, as long as there is a Meshtastic access point somewhere nearby.
Line of site over land with good antenna about 100feet up: 40 miles is about the limit we found. 300ft with parabolic we stopped trying at 60 miles because we couldn't get line of sight further than that. Now, find an area with large numbers of devices set as a mesh and you will really get some speed and distance.
"Radio Frequency Propagation" is what many people need to study. It seems new to many people here, but these properties of radio propagation have been researched and known about for well over 100 years. Why does 934 Mhz work? Why doesn't it work? Learning about radio signal transmission (or Radio Frequency Propagation) will help if you're in this for the long haul. The software, the mesh etc are different topics. There are several layers to get thru with those higher frequencies .
At an incredibly and ever increasing cost in bandwith and decryption efforts. This will thwart many centralized efforts. So if you mean they'll still track like bring down all they can do to about 2 or 3% of what spy programs like PRISM can do, then yes. They can likely still break this. But what are you saying at that point.
This is perfect, using some homemade battery pack and old cellphone I can create a tracker for my pup. When in the woods she likes to explore, although she stays in eye sight, this would be my peace of mind.
Or just get a board with GPS. Most of them do have it. Not sure why one without GPS was recommended. Then you don't have to strap a cell phone to your dog.... which defeats the purpose, because you could just strap the phone by itself.
@@overdriver99 Indeed. The company I use is called fi and I think there is another called Tracktive. fi uses GPS and sends the location back to your app. Works quite well, but only updates every minute at best and the GPS signal can be lost. May indeed be able to build a more robust system.
@@charlesatanasio I'm not sure I follow. GPS being available on the device doesn't in any way give the gov more info. Totally depends on your usage, but I'd assume you would encrypt the dog tracker details. The gov could track the radio regardless, with pretty wild accuracy.
The orientation of the antennas is also a key factor often times overlooked in RF transmission from these sorts of projects. Radio Waves in a whip/stub antenna are polarized either horizontally or vertically depending on the direction the antenna is oriented in relation to the surface of the Earth. If the antenna is held upright and pointed skyward the direction of propagation of the radio waves with respect to the Earth's surface would be horizontal. If the orientation of the other antenna is laying flat as opposed to standing upright, there will be a signal loss of 20dB due to polarization mismatch. This is an almost total loss of signal strength. Maximum signal strength occurs when the transmitting antenna’s polarization matches the receiving antenna’s polarization. When a polarization mismatch occurs in a linearly polarized antenna the entire signal will be lost due to the misalignment. This is probably best demonstrated using the picket fence analogy. A signal passing through a linear polarizer is much like a rope passing through a picket fence. As long as the oscillations of the rope are in line with the fence pickets, the oscillations can pass through the fence to the other side. If however, the fence was rotated 90 degrees, the oscillations of the rope would impact against the pickets and the energy and motion of those oscillations could not pass through to the other side of the fence. Effectively the “signal” has been cut off. -20dB is a notional value. In theory, all power should be lost during this conversion. But we are not living in a perfect world and some power will always go through.
Thanks, one would hope that an enthusiast that gets into radio communication of any kind will do the legwork - which most certainly needs to include a layman's understanding of how the physical size/length/orientation of antennas is absolutely critical to the process.
Esp32 just doesn't handle that much processing required for large data transfer. So you can have plenty of signal strength but the bandwidth is still rather limited by the hardware. I know because I did this exact thing by modifying vanilla ad hoc mesh network libraries about four years ago. I was able to get live video across five nodes at around 60 to 70fps reliably over about 600 meters open area. But I had to modify and shorten the data protocol and switch to hex basically shorthand UDP it otherwise it just wouldn't handle it. And it only works to increase bandwidth by making a master and a slave endpoint who's sole purpose is to break up shorthand address and reassemble data packets. And only then you get more bandwidth according to the amount of nodes used and data packets sent at once. But as you scale up you get to store those pipe addresses on each device. And it quickly becomes an issue of node redundancy from the master's max data packets released at once. Or if you prefer a matter of each devices routing processing time effectively it becomes not worth it to add anymore nodes. At that point it makes more sense to just go with a single industrial solution. Now if your expectations are to send or stream single videos text messages or an array of integer data from sensors sure this will be fine. But if you're expecting to send several large files and simultaneously receive another file with any haste then no it simply isn't worth the hassle.
I remember I have checked LoraWAN maybe 5 years ago, similar stuff and its range go up to 10-20km. It's for IoT sensor to collect data in different locations and send back to the center for kind of scientific research. Now the range maybe even longer.
it's been going on for ages....... there are other commercial and industrial systems out there that are more expensive and superior. The LORAN stuff is on free to air channels for brilliant people with no money. In reality it is for non-commercial / industrial use.... Hobbyists and experimenters. Don't confuse this with real equipment. Real equipment already exists, and has for many decades. In Industry, everything is there... it costs. It is awesome and works. With Loran everything is largely experimental equipment, may or may not be accurate, what do you connect it to... are the results verified. If in a two way control system.... is it going to work. Shall we install this for comm's on the next lunar mission? Will the president use this to connect to the big red button on his desk........ "awwww, well it works for 3 miles, and Jed used it over 5 miles.... once." Use it to experiment, don't use it in real life, due to propagation (RF) issues
Yeah I didn't want to be a wet blanket, but this is basically a neat little toy with enormous limitations. A pair of Baofeng uv-5Rs are the same price, better range, better battery life, and they don't rely on mobile apps or webAssembly craziness, although they don't send text messages... but if the internet went down and Baofeng went out of business, my radios would still work, without being tethered to a mobile phone. I would've been so much more excited about this if it wasn't touted as a "phone killer" despite requiring a phone and a proprietary app that you need to get from the app store 🤦♂️
@@Alkimiyeah any analog or digital radio is leaps and bounds better than this. You can modify your radio to send encrypted texts or even do audio encryption. And it would still be cheaper than this.
@@syntaxerrorsix3137 you won't get any encryption out of the box on any radio unless it's more recent military surplus but you can set it up yourself pretty easily.
@@Alkimi It's complimentary data services to unencrypted voice. I don't solely have DOCSIS, I also have LTE, DSL, ATM, ethernet, wifi, FM, UHF/VHF, SONET, etc....
Years ago at work my group did something similar. We miniaturized a VHF/UHF relay platform and slung it under a huge balloon. I launched it from Norman, OK and it came down in Kentucky. It spent hours at around 105,000’ and provided a relay footprint of almost 400 miles. 3 channels of VHF and 4 channels of UHF. While I put our contact info on the payload it’s never been returned so there’s some cool tech probably hung up in a tree in Eastern Kentucky.
The more I think about it, the more that I realize that even though this is a cool technology, there will never be that many people that will want to use it if they can't access their social media accounts on it.
whats wrong with you..... this is the perfect solution to a problem that we never had... it is so efficient. I don't know what to do with it though....
look, it's a nice system....... it's been around for years. It's a solution for a problem that hasn't existed yet. Maybe in the future. There are other systems out there now, and have been around for some time. And been used successfully for industry. Think of PLC,s or industrial computers (non-windows usually) and their communication systems. They started up in the late '70's and have just boomed over the years in terms of advances.
Sure they might be able to see transmissions but they can't read/listen if it's encrypted. Do you really think the police & military who communicate via encrypted communications can have everything listened to or read?
You can detect things well enough if they are transmitting, but if you send a short encoded message and it is not long enough to brute-force attack it, then unless you just get crazily lucky, you can only DF where the signal is coming from, not actually decode it. One of the most amazing bugs was the one on the United States Seal - just a stunningly beautiful piece of presicion engineering which (I think) worked on a GDO basis where the audio in the room would alter the resonance of a little chamber - which then interferred with an RF beam squirted in from the building over the road. Depending on how the resultant signal was being affected (basically modulated), they could re-build it to get audio. Yet the device never really transmitted, it just "interferred" with an external signal. Clever little thing :)
@@TOMinPDX Encryption is a myth. Any code can be cracked if you have time and patience, or computing power. The entire concept of 'information security' is a joke. The only way to keep your information safe is to be so boring and unimportant that it's not worth the trouble to crack the code. If you have anything worth knowing, someone will find it.
@@larryjanson4011 That's why banks are unable to keep money in their accounts because encryption gets hacked I guess. It's the reason that one million bitcoin sitting in a single account since 2011 is still there because the encryption can be hacked too, right?
@@jasper5902doesn’t matter who it is, he who controls supply controls boom. Also every agency checks to ensure boom doesn’t happen, the 80’s movies loved flexing remote boom to emphasize it. Hezbollah was an unserious organization, which is why they never had defensive capabilities to protect all their missiles and installations from a clearly advanced foe. Very bizzare.
@@AutieTortie The absolute data speeds will be lower due to lower frequency's slower cycling rate however since that isn't going to be your bottleneck. LoRa standard is an order of magnitude faster (shorter wavelengths) than AM radio here in America. So you can see, as far as audio or text, it is more than fast enough. Video transmission would be a different issue.
For solar nodes, use a wisblock starter kit that has the 4631 on it. Has ports for solar and a battery and will have a significantly lower current draw. Can also adapt a gps or other sensors of your choosing if you so desire.
with a 500Khz channel bandwidth and a Spreading factor of 7 that thing can transmit at ~8kbps... this allows to transmit voice using a codec like G.729 even if only allowing 1 side at a time communication (walkie-talkie mode) voice transmission would be a nice feature...
depending on your system LoRa mases out at about 20-21kbps so you cna do quite a lot with that, I am currently looking at transmitting small images/video with it
it's almost exactly like a walky talky, except he had to connect his phone to it....... but the basic transmitter.... yep, similar frequency and power as a UHF CB or PRS (both are public radio frequencies) walky talky That's why the video took 26+ minutes..... believe me, there is nothing new there. And the other little hacking gadget ..... yes the little white and orange thing has absofu^*nlutely nothing to do with any of this video.
Thanks for sharing this information. Very well done and helpful. A couple things to consider. Refactor 3d printed mobile computing device plus mesh node housing in the form of various "sleeve" concepts to introduce the idea of more efficient integration and use of space. The current configurations are excellent demonstrations for introducing the use of a separate mesh node network through the integration and use of two standalone handheld devices. The appropriate next step from a hardware and software and utility perspective would be tighter integration. I also believe that one of the key value propositions is that the hardware is not fully integrated with existing mobile communications systems. A sleeve concept maintains the benefit of keeping hardware separate while improving handheld efficiencies.
... which is why those ultra cool Fallout inspired devices with built in keyboards give any man an erection to see picture of. The problem is that as soon as you add that much complexity you start to require parts that will stay reliable, and the next thing you know a working marketable prototype is already outside of the hobbyist sphere - which is why we can't buy clones of the awesome goodies I have seen as one off ultra gizmos.
This is pretty neat yes buildings and trees effect range. Basically anything that exists will drop performance. I have had my amateur radio license for a couple of years. We are not allowed to use anything encrypted. There’s networks similar to this using ham radio and a lot more power. But when running a computer network through it everything must go unencrypted. I am going to get some of these and play around with them. Using the ham equipment and power 45 miles is my record with a network. I can go much farther with voice or CW. The data speed is pretty slow. Plus all the FCC. Hoops you have to jump through. No hoops with LORA.
you can still get in the s^*t with LORAN if you go "over powered" or "off frequency", or mode of transmission is not permitted. Those frequencies are in the citizen band / PRS radio band... even in those bands you have to watch what you are doing. That circuit board is software controlled, and you do a country or region select.... that fixes the problems above.... and limits you to hobbyist or experimental stuff.
@@andygluehere8266they are radios because they use a radio frequency, the data type doesn't matter. However, it seems seems the device is already set up so it stays in line with regulations and in any case its so low power is basically a toy. You most likely don't _need_ to get a license, but if you want to do anything more interesting than simply carrying these nuggets around, I'm sure learning the law proper, how things work and your limits will come in handy.
@@gotoastal the 433+/- and * or 94x+/- Mhz frequencies (and similar) are citizens band frequencies in many parts of the world, they are also known as PRS radios in some areas. That why his device has the "select region" setting... you set it to USA, Australia or Madagasgar or whatever is legal for that area. The software then controls the output power and frequency and mode of transmission for your area, in each little transceiver. Then you figure out what to do with it.... in this case this unit can connect with wifi. SO this is a wifi extender for txt, as it connects to a phone.... in a nice little unit, and a nice party trick. Nothing to complain about and maybe useful. But it is citizen radio for tinkerers and mad inventors.... I can't think of a case where anything using RF (radio waves) are not being better used in heavy industry or whatever, by existing industrial computer, PLC, and radio equipment, and for 55 years at least. Anything using PRS / Citizen radio will always be short range for a physical reason (Search propagation of radio frequencies). And easily receivable by the authorities, if they are interested. God it must be boring monitoring other peoples comm's..... that's why they don't bother normally. (Mabel, canya turn the sausages on the bbq? Don't tell me to F*^k off ya dipshit.... etc) Don't get me onto the possibilities and range problems.... either of those topics is endless.
this is awesome I was just looking at some lora stuff for a mailbox alarm .. 1/2 mile from the house to the mailbox I kinda like knowing when the door is opened :) ..
Cool, my Simplisafe alarm system tells me when the mail arrives, rigged a door sensor to my box and programmed for door chime only notification, non alarm.👍🏻
If you ever wanted to do a drone to drone range test, we could get together on I-95. I can design and print some custom cases for the drones. The drone tests I have done have been with a meshtastic next to my phone and the drone running as a repeater.
I can't imagine how useful these devices would be for researchers, park rangers and others working in areas with no cellar service but needing to connect their equipment.
Have you ever heard of heavy rain, floods, power outages, Tornados, hurricanes, exploding transformers, old wires, earth quakes.... More people need this than you think.
@@gunfun7772 Yeah, except for that one part, where you need a cell phone to use the thing.... if you have no power, how you logging onto an app? this is a poor mans Nextel Pager.
Is there a way for your unit to show the direction of the other unit? Good for tracking each other? Also we don’t know how bad the range is in the woods
Worth noting that if you can't connect to the pc when flashing, the cable may be ok but the system does not have the right serial port driver. Regarding range, yes, the stub antenna isn't very good, but local LoRa traffic and radio noise can also be a factor.
Yeah, USB ports especially can be all kinds of problematic for these kinds of drivers. Anyone who has problems, make sure to try the ports on the back of your machine including 2.0 vs. 3.x.
yes used old packet radio 1200 baud still in use today Aprs, bbs, nodes etc... meshtastic is short short range pretty useless for everything... where as something like Vara AC can do so much more.. messaging to 24,000 miles with the right frequency...
I wish this had also tested the mesh aspect of these devices. Does it connect promiscuously to any similar device so your range could potentially be infinite when enough of these are on in the wild? If so, you could build modules that have solar panels and batteries and leave them in various locations to provide an actual mesh over a large area.
its made for really low power use. at this moment people are building those konda units hidden as a birds nest for example in trees or on top of buildings.
With some tweaking this is a very interesting bit of tech. I imagine it would be put to better use in a larger form factor that has more signal power output and some kind of ATAK phone board depending on use case. As is it looks great for shorter distance comms where you don’t want to yell and FRS handhelds aren’t reliable. Nodes could also be discreetly placed ahead of time to build a temporary local network.
ahhhhh what does this have to do with a flipper zero and how is a crude p2p network going to replace a cell network with infinitely more bandwidth? It supplements it sure .
I'm designing my own case for swappable dual 18650s so you can change one while remaining powered. Hot Swap > recharge. also a UVA+B panel on the back would be good like on those battery banks. Better than nothing. Probably use x3 1.5v 0.3w panels from outdoor path lights. Then use a 3.7v linear rectifier or some diodes & a high volt cutoff from a 18650 single battery charger.
WTF are you on about? You mean a solar panel? What you typed was nonsense that you thought made you look intelligent. Also taking solar panels from outdoor path lights is complete nonsense... "& a high volt cutoff from a" also nonsense. Please stop.
although the problem is unknown, it makes it more efficient to solve that unknown problem. I do not know of a comm's problem that hasn't been solved using RF or industrial comm's technology........ PLC's/computers communicating thru spread spectrum transceivers, 'shortwave' for long distance comm's. I note that this is for a personal radio system in the 94x Mhz area.... they are inherently a short distance product anyway. But it is interesting to experiment with them and see what is possible. The aerial makes a lot of difference with that frequency. But it depends on the application if you can take advantage of directional aerials. If you are on the move... well you can't. Any application requiring mobile comm's is inefficient as normally an omnidirectional aerial is used, unless you go to Satellite repeaters (Starlink etc) , but then you still need a fixed dish somewhere close to do that....
He gave some examples such as two people hiking and separating where there is no cell service. I went to a festival last year and couldn't use my phone because so many people were there, and it made it difficult to find the person I went with when we split up. Thinking about building some of these for next time I go.
@@11tmaste Which problem cheap walkie-talkies have had solved for decades. Much more simply, without requiring anything but themselves & batteries to use.
@@beardyface8492 For voice communication walkie talkies are better. This allows text and you can use it to find the other device's location. There are definitely use cases for it.
I played around with a couple of TTGo T-Beams and yes, it's a nerdy cool stuff. But in practice it's too buggy especialy when a node goes to sleep. It's only sometimes a stable receiver if the screen of the node is alive. We tried to establish an independent communication in our village, but the frustration of the members were too high due to laggy and sporadic message income.
@@melissasmess2773 I had 6 T-Beams with 868 Mhz. The message Income was sporadic and the App very rudimental. Not a good base for crowd messaging. Had sell 3 if them soon.
This is awesome. Great testing and explanation of the functions and features. Having a private LoRa Meshtastic channel reminds me of having a smartphone version of Get Smart's "cone of silence". Gotta love it.
*In the 80's, 90's and into the 2000's, there were radio-phones that had many miles worth of range and plugged the base unit into your home's landline which is how you were able to make and receive calls.* You can still find them if you search online and some had outrageous distance like 50 and 60 miles! *Anyway, that ultimately outdated technology still shows us the potential to escape the clutches of widespread intrusion and monopolization can still be at least, loosened.* I actually went to college for the science of electrical/electronics engineering and am now seeing my predictions from about 10 years ago finally coming into light. *Mobile style personal devices that are more customized in features, functions and user interfaces will ultimately be the next huge wave of consumer technologies, especially as nanomaterials are reduced in cost to advance the capabilities of semiconductor based technologies and for a price the average consumer can afford.* This one is ground level and what I predicted which is aftermarket hardware using our phones and tablets for a lot of the processing but eventually we're going to see a lot of stand alone personal device technologies that cut the apron strings from these devices.
I remember Sony promoted a cordless phone that could go about 5Km from the base, back in the 90s. I had a neighbor buddy that used to go out and hang around with us all over the neighborhood, with his house phone in the pocket just in case anybody would call home he could take the message LOL
@@gadget00 there's a few websites dedicated to those old systems and in some cases the owners still use them tied into landline service. There are scrambling systems for them that I imagine nobody ever bothered to crack outside the government.
@Data Slayer If you can get your node outside of your apts tinted windows you will probably pick up more range. Its pretty common for commercial tinted windows to have a metalucized coating in the tint to reduce infrared & uv penetration into buildings. It does a pretty good job of attenuating radio signals, Also nano vna are pretty cheap check your antennas to make sure they are as advertised. AFAIK those stubby antennas ship for every country but I think they are better for 400 mhz which means you are wasting precious power heating up your heltec with a mismatched antenna. These radios use low power so having a matched dipole or yagi is going to give the best results. Whips are compact but best results with a balanced antenna and same polarization for both antennas.
how about this? use a Distributed Hashtable to keep track of network participants, then if the participant is on the network then estimate the fastest pathway of nodes and yeet the packets that way. if the participant is not on the network then yeet through a LORA/Internet Gateway bridge. architect the p2p connections similar to how a IPFS system is set up but with encrypted communication rather than data transfer. might provide better flexibility.
Not sure there would be much benefit, most DHT implementations would max out the throughput in Meshtastic most configurations. A big part of these devices as they are currently used is ephemerality.
That's not going to work very well you can't just ospf it like regular router protocol. Because to essentially ping nodes of these devices constantly for availability eats up more time and resources. And keeping track of available nodes in real time is more difficult because you're essentially using the same single resources to do so. It's much easier to just use the exact same pipe address for nodes within a distance range and transmit to all and any available nodes. Then you repeat in whatever direction you are going. You program the endpoint to reassemble packets based off however many packets you programmed to be distributed by the master. And numbered in a rolling integer based on your estimated network size, data transfer size, and average hop between distance segments. When it's broken up by the master it's assigned a rolling number as a bit, a direction bit, a segment bit, and a max segment bit. You can reprogram the transfer protocol to use hex to tokenize or compress those values into half as many. Creating essentially the address header and reassembly instructions in one. At each distance segment only the direction bit is overwritten according to it's opposite. If you were going to incorporate an omnidirectional mesh network then you might want to assign each node an integer index as a replacement to direction bit with some incrementing or cartesian organization. At the endpoint it discards the direction bit reads the rolling number the segment and max segment bits. The rolling number assigns the overall data being sent the segment assigns the data packet number and max segments assigns the total packets. It's then programmed to assign that data to a stored variable (if then) to organize and also drop any redundant incoming packets from the same rolling number. Ie. read max segment read segment assign 1 to variable segment 1, 2 to segment 2 ect. If equals to packet number received then increment to a received variable or sent variable depending on which is happening. If sent or received variable does not match close pipe drop packets. Print or store segment variables.
Or you could just, I don't know, push the transmit button on a walkie talkie or CB radio and be done with the whole thing. RF signals are pretty easy to encrypt as well if you really need it. You're just trying to re-invent the wheel and over complicating it. If it's not broken, don't fix it.
Gotta love the 21th century rediscovery of amateur radio. The modernised idea is cute, and the encryption is a solid upgrade, but the rest is like WW1-era technology at best.
@@JohnMcAfee-se9ms More like a modern day text pager that you don't pay to use but instead have to pay for a bunch of devices to have a network setup that you can access and so can your family and friends...after you teach them how to make their own devices and setup their own networks and make sure their network and your network mesh together and service each device when components need replacing and repair devices that get damaged from weather and normal people walking by it and teach them how to connect it to their phones and then remind and re-teach them all of that again because they forget everything you taught them before a week after you taught them. Or you can pay a company to use their massive network which makes anything you could ever dream of engineering look like a child's toy in comparison and you don't even have to fix it or teach anyone how to use it! It's almost like paying for a service provides you with a easy to use simple service that anyone can figure out and use. Worried about big brother listening? Too bad, they've been listening for decades and know all about you already and if you think this is the only attack surface they are using to spy with then you are even more foolish than I initially thought.
Cool video! I use ELRS RC Link, which uses LoRa plus its Low Latency. Its an ESP32TX and SP1280 chip i believe, for 2.4GHz. There's a 915MHz setup also which has more Range/Penetration Where did you get that UFL to SMA Adapter with the thinner flexible cable for the U.FL lead like yours? Its shown at @4:16. I can only find thicker ones on Amazon which wont work for my project Thanks!!
Skip to 12:42 to see how these actually work. If you want to buy/build one after that, watch the beginning. You need a phone but not a carrier (service provider) as the devices serve as the transport layer instead of TMobile/ATT/Verizon/ETC. Pretty cool for the backwoods (no service available) when the group may break up and rendezvous later instead of carrying a full sized radio.
First of all, clickbait title... Fix it. 3 ½ miles... meh. Like what many already pointed out, very limited use case due to the limited range. Seems like a lot of hassle and bit costly for what it actually does, and then still needing your phone to transmit, so you'll still needa power source at some point. "Phone killer"... Pffff
Brilliant presentation on how to start with LoRa. Brilliant video quality, editing and close up shots (these things are tiny). A masterclass of how YT videos should be done.👏🏻
Hi, I've been working in the RF engineering space for over 15 years, some insights. There will be a limit to range due to the transmit power of the devices, this is something that is usually limited by region, hence the reason why you need to pick a region on the inital set up, this is usally called reglatory domain, and controlled by the FCC in the US, OfCom in the UK and ETSI in the EU. A larger antenna does not mean that you will be able to transmit further, however it does mean that the device can 'hear' more, as it has a larger capture surface. The antenna used in the video, both 'stubby' and 'whip' are known as omni-directional antenna, this is because they transmit their power in usually a 360 degree radius from the antenna, range is also liimited with this type of antenna as it is transmitting in all directions, think of the power being divided equally in a 360 degree circle around you, the target node is in one of those directions so would, for example, only be receiving 5% of the transmit power of the originating device. Range could be dramatically increased by using a directional antenna, for example a 20 degree one, as the transmit power would be divided over a much tighter space. This is quite simplified, mulitple other factors such as polarisation and attenuation come in to play as well, and this is a comment, not a white paper :)
LoRa is not a 'illegal' technology, it was developed to fulfill a need in both urban and rural remote areas to transmit data, usually from autonamous nodes such as traffic lights, weather stations etc, where the data payload is low, its also used quite heavily in the farming industry to track wildlife, report on the health of crops and machinary. It also uses a lower frequency than traditional WiFi, which means the wave length is longer, and is able penetrate more dense materials, there for increasing its potential range.
The one concerning thing highlighted in the video for myself, was the ability to track nodes, it seemed like you were able to determine the location natively on the device of a node without any kind of authentication.
Another note to add would be SIGINT (Signal Intelligence), if someone is planning on using these devices in a situation such as a warzone or potential conflict zone (I'm thinking of civilian communications in Israel or Ukraine), as this creates a mesh network, meaning there will always be some level of RX/TX from these devices, by either relaying of messages, or attempting to discover new nodes in the mesh network, these devices would be quite easy to track down for an equipped force, potentially aiding in the capture or attack of the user. The equipment needed by people/govenments/militaries to track these types of signals is fairly ubiqutious now and rather cheap, something to keep in mind. SIGINT operators utilise 'listening posts' or devices (drones, AWACS etc) to 'listen' for RF, trianglate the signal and direct forces to that location (or order strikes), this has been used to great effect by the Ukraine military against the Russian Federation in the early part of the conflict for example.
I appreciate you sharing your knowledge, I’m new to Lora but have been messing with FPV drones for years now on 2.4 and 5.8 after reading I upgrade my DJI transmitter antenna that were basic folding bipolar to a square “patch” antenna I believe it was called and it was a huge ungraded for range and video quality but also very sensitive to facing the right direction. Is there similar “patch” antenas that will give similar results for these Lora devices. Line of sight is very important on our FPV stuff. Forgive my ignorance on the subject if I’m not comparing apples too apples.
Noice
great explanation, thank you for taking the time to write it up.
@@DimMakTen I imagine there is, although I imagine quite rare given the nature of LoRa - directional antenna's are somewhat counter to what the technology is trying to achieve. Try searching for the LoRa frequencey used in your region and antenna suppliers, you may get lucky. Its important to get the antenna that is for the correct frequency, else this can actually impact range and performance, and may even damage radio equipment through back reflections into the transmitter - as explained in the video.
We often discribe 'listening' or 'hearing' signals, but its actually more accurate to say 'seeing' signals, the best way to think about the signals and their radiation/propagation, is to think of a lantern and a flashlight with the same luman output - the lantern lights up the area in all directions with itself in the centre, and the flashlight only lights up one specific area, what you will see is that the flashlight can light up the one direction brighter and further despite the output power being the same as the lantern.
the low cost of these devices allows to deploy a ton of nodes though so yeah they can be tracked but it can become a pretty time-consuming job to root out hundreds of those hidden around or literally thrown off a plane/drone at regular intervals to maintain the network
Congratulations. You re-invented the pager.
this may have been meant as a joke, but you can do a lot more than just send text and if the power grid dropped out this would still work , also it's uncontrolled by any government or company and encrypted so if that matters to you then there is that too
Rumor has it they are working on something called the wheel too!!
You either didn't watch the video and just looked at the picture or trolling by appearing as a complete numbskull.
But worse bacause it has a very limited range. The only use cases I can see is for backpackers and criminals.
@@edism Imagine getting offended over a joke. Oh, wait, you don't have to imagine that.
I dont think im out of line when I say you did not clearly state WHY this is a phone provider killer. Clickbait title
If you'd watched the video you'd know. You must have only watched the first 30 seconds
It's a free, open source, off grid capable messaging system
@@drsatan3231 it’s a pager please stop kidding yourself
...it's literally in the first 30 seconds. This guy's just an idiot.
@sixteenjets Whatever you want to call it Mr. Hater...... is off the grid of big brother..... which sounds like your Dad!
@@sunxnesincorrect on every level 🤦♂️
Pagers aren't free, open source, off grid capable messaging systems
You can't encrypt a pager either
As a former Marine who did some pretty high tech training exercises that simulated Peer-on-Peer warfare, I will tell you that there is no way of radio or cellular communication that cannot be tracked. It can be encrypted, but there is no way to keep it from being tracked. That's why we practiced radio silence, and only turned them on as a last resort. If we used radios to communicate, we immediately abandoned our position, because within an hour there would be helos and jets circling where the transmission was detected.
Are there any communication devices that can't be tracked that you know of? And, thank you for your service.
@sOdEeP406mUsIc There are no electronic communications that cannot be detected and located.
That's why the other Marine said it's best to practice radio silence while in a position until your packed up and about to move to another position.
I'm also a prior enlisted US Marine and a former US Navy Communications Officer.
@@RealCptHammonds Okay thank you. What would anyone use for this type of communication? Just old fashioned meet me in the park and I'll put a magazine on the park bench with a note in it? :D I'm not a bad guy, I am just wondering how it would at all be possible these days. It seems like there is no privacy anymore and nor will there ever be? And thank you for your service too.
@@RealCptHammondsThank you for your service as well.
@@swillm3ister You're welcome. 🙂👍
yes goodbye phone providers , all my friends in a 3 mile radius bought walkie talkies
You must be living in place with no buildings or trees, my walkie talkies range is 1 mile.
@@notsecure GPRS/GMRS/FRS + HAM all work quite well for over a mile in my experience :) I like that these little things are small and light (compared to full size radios) for off-grid. I can hide one in a tree and retrieve it later to setup my own relay service. A bigger "base station" that can tx at max legal power would be truly awesome. These little things are just the access gateways to the network you could create and they can mesh!
I think a lot of the commenters here are missing the point and applications.
@@scottleggejr Give it a few years and every city will have a mesh network
@@DonnyThaDealer no it will not
@@DonnyThaDealerevery city already had a mesh network.its called every single apple, Samsung, and Google phone
"outside the control of big-brother" FCC says hi.
As long as they're Part 15 and stay within 902-928 MHz, use spread spectrum or frequency hopping, and are 1 W or under ERP (which is all true), FCC is totally okay with it.
@@charlie_nolan Yeah, this is totally fine under FCC. I need to see if it has European compatibility (different freq)
@@charlie_nolan Sure, until they aren't....
Believe it or not, the FCC lately doesn’t take sides. They don’t really make friends with anyone. They’ve given the bird to other US government agencies many times in the past.
@charlie_nolan True....UNTILL they change the regulations so they can cover this. Thatis how totalitarians work. They don't want you free of their tentacles.
I can assure everyone, that no cell phone providers were harmed by the production of this product.
I gave a dislike just because of the title, is interesting but some titles are dumb af
Click bait nonsense!
One per 10 households or one in every 10 cars, and texting for cell providers becomes optional.
That's a shame, can we go again and try for a higher score?
It could be harmful to women, however.
Title: It's been a good run, phone providers.
Conclusion of video: "these things are probably not going to replace my phone provider"
Clickbait
It's only a matter of time.
Linux started as a university project and now it's Big Business.
They will have LoRa built-in to more phones in the future. Now it's just getting started. The original iPhone came with seven transceivers installed. How many more can't they fit in there.
But it's been a good run 😂😂
It is clickbait garbage. I only checked it out for 30 seconds to see if he was using LoRa and also claim it is untrackable. Total Fail video.
There should be a global effort by everyone to build a self-sustainable network of these devices powered with solar or other sources to create a massive network. Would be different from the internet or other networks, but could be used as a backup communication network incase things ever got bad.
Democrats will make it illegal
I dont know much about this but this only works because bot a lot of people use it right? Like if everyone started using it there would be saturation problems right or do they have a work around for that?
I’d rather see these be able to use cellular networks for free to use as WiFi on your phone. That’s the only practical use I can see. Without that what’s the point?
Funny u shud say that. 6-7 years ago I presented such an effort to a cloud comm telco I was at. The idea was to incorp current cloud tech an build out a lost ptt usage with this type tech which cud kick in when cell grid is down. It's fairly easy to build as u can see here, or partner with a small co. that has some funding; well.. why the big wigs were thinking it over and benched it (hard to package n sell near free tech; I was thinking users n brand) A year passed. The company I presented as a buy or partnership with gained a gov. Contract and took it all next level an hush. Some dont see the forest for the trees.
I foresee groups forming and dissolving. Really touches on the things amateur radio folks fiddle with already. A criminal element will probably exist for more secure communication (sigh).
Goodbye phones.
*Requires Phone.*
This video just won the click-bait award. lol Sure these are cool, but definitely not a cellphone replacement by any stretch of the imagination. There's a reason why cellphones are called "cell"-phones, due to the thousands of advanced cell base stations.
tfw you don't know what a phone provider is
I mean, you can technically make a pocket raspberry pi setup and connect it to it and it will work...
Funny, but you conflated “phone” with “phone provider”.
yes, but dosnt require the phone to be connected to the phone network, ie it still works with the phone in flight mode
The antenna makes all the difference. Currently building a small mesh network in my area.
Any specific you recommend that are good for the price?
@@blasandresayalagarcia3472maybe WisBlock
Yep, SWR the closer to "1" makes a big difference.
not only antenna, but tx power
@@s.i.m.c.a Power helps, but LORA devices only put out 21dBm gain. An amplifier would help, but may not be legal. Having a good antenna will make the biggest difference. I use the digital mode FT-8 often on 20 and 30 meters and can communicate worldwide on 60 watts. Granted, 60 watts is more like 48dBm, but it's radiated from a 27 foot high gain vertical. The conditions on HF are a little different than UHF also.
As someone who has one of these…even in one of the most populated areas of the U.S., there are very very few nodes. It works…but the network isn’t there for it to actually “work”.
I’ve heard it’s much better over in Europe
Awesome! I invented a phone for the house that stays there all the time and is attached to the wall with a cord so you don’t ever lose it.
Amazing, I am using two tin cans and a string but the cost is low and the system never goes down.😅
>D the coil cord that you can stretch from the kitchen around multiple walls, down the hall to about 3 inches inside your bedroom door though right?
You jest, but a pair (or single) copper wire from your house back to the exchange typically survived DECADES and just carried on working. Might get a bit crackly from time to time and so on, but ultra simple and ULTRA durable. Power cut? HomePhone still working just fine. Local mast damaged / maxed out - HomePhone still works. Dropped your handset - Homephone don't care. Drop it, stand on it, drive over it - probably still giving you a dialling tone. Good for about 60 years before you might want to replace it (for a nice new colour).
The old stuff just worked - basically forever. Modern Phones with their "designed to fail", glass screens and microlife batteries are great while they work - but if you NEED to have a phone that is guaranteed to work - the old housephone probably won't let you down from one decade to the other.
Can you say that about the latest plastic delight people pay over £1000 for ?
Sometimes you just want reliability and not "Oooh look I can take a super photo on a telephone while liking a picture of a plate of food".
FACTS
@@melissasmess2773 and unlimited minutes
I was an IT in the navy dealt with a lot of encryption and secured comms i would say just by the transfer to the device to the phone you lose a lot of security to the comms i will also add just because your communicating on what you think is in encrypted it can still be detected if they are looking for emissions
100% agree with you, Its not as secure as people claim to be or at all, It can be a good way to communicate in emergency situations for off grid uses or when networks are congested , but can easily be tracked because the Lora pings your GPS location when you communicate which you would know that can be traced through RF as well. Its amazing that people swear that its encrypted and is " Safe" , although still good to have for emergency uses.
@@killerdeamonking
Ok so not all long range (lora) are tied to GPS modules they are the same as any other transceiver technology. They use a bandwidth that used to be used for analog television signals. As for encryption that happens before anything is transmitted it's not a VPN tunnel it's not being encrypted by the antenna. And sure you can triangulate any rf signal and you can capture or intercept it but if encrypted it's still just going to be a garbled mess without the proper encryption key.
Came to say similar. You are still beaming out a radio signal. I don't see how that makes you any less susceptible to be man in the middled than anything else.
@@matthewmucci9107 man in the middle , you are the man in the middle at that point because in order for a mesh system to work you have to setup a hub yourself for your area. As far as big brother goes , they can snoop the signal like any other and get a device location as that's how lora mesh works , the radio devices grab that location then tells your hub how far out you are then relays that message to your recipient. The whole point of this system is to remain operational should that cell towers and all other communications towers go down other than your own.
he didn't say anything about not being trackable, ever, only that the message would be encrypted, and even then only on the encrypted "channel" ... I agree that it is important to point out specifically that it is trackable though. especially, as somebody else pointed out, if the entity buying it is intending to use it to aid some sort of political resistance effort.
"outside the control of big brother"
Uses proprietary communication protocol.
Accessing a smartphone or chrome browser, to make it worse 😂
"Outside or control of big brother"
"Is electronic"
What's proprietary? Meshtastic is open source. The Lora libraries are open source.
@@quarteratom
_"What's proprietary?"_
LoRa is, it's licensed & owned by Semtech.
@@Eduardo1007 It can be operated completely in airplane mode. Hardening your device beyond that is your own responsibility. (yes its debatable if airplane mode is even safe as well, evidence suggests otherwise)
Also, i dont know if anyone pointed this out, but the major issue with radio signals, especially simple ones like this, is you're still at the mercy of atmospheric effects and uh sorry to be that guy but being in motion or not in motion is a BIG factor, so thats why despite having direct LOS youre still losing messages
Source: Currently a NavET on Submarines
Your source should be an actual source, not a title. Being a navigation tech on a sub, is not a source.
Why not cite NAVPERS?
it is true that how far you can transmit depends on the atmospheric effects
I dont understand anything here, yet i feel so excited to watch this.
Amen lol!
@@jamesmccaul2945 😂
I kind of feel the same way I can really see the use for it I never go to the desert and I think it’s easier just to use my phone like normal then I can reach everybody no matter how long away from me they are😂
Roger that! :)
Basically, very low power wireless communications are awesome, and can incorporate very high quality encryption, and range of up to roughly 20 km. These devices are currently limited to smaller text messages ands simplified images (think 8 bit).
You lost me at 500 feet, that’s 152 meters. I can shout to my friend at that distance.
but can you shout encrypted data to your friend? :D
@@cmelgarejo if you have a speech code like Pig Latin. ;)
@@cmelgarejo or maybe even Horse Russian!
if you have a ham radio license you can transmit at 10w
@@burchifiedI can transmit at 50 watts GMRS mobile, you only need HAM if you want friends to talk too. 😂 GMRS operators transmit information, HAM's chit chat.
Old Radio guy for the military.
Radio waves can penetrate nonconducting materials, such as wood, bricks, and concrete, fairly well. They cannot pass through electrical conductors, such as water or metals. Above ν = 40 MHz. Ya I took this from Britannica because I didn't want to type it out, long story short that's why you can get though multitudes of buildings and dense woods but struggle on a lake or beach. Ground radio waves also project in a curve (this is why they bounce off the water so quickly) so no joke you grab a 6-20ft antenna to any of these or even build a permeant housing and this could be broadcasting for miles.
You didn't want to type one sentence... aka you don't know what you are talking about.
@@thomgizziz you feel better about yourself now? Do you feel superior to him? lol for the life of me, I will never understand people who are rude to other people for no reason on the Internet. You must hate yourself.
@@gregjensen8267 Yes @thomgizziz appears to be a professional disrupter. There are 100s of 1000s of them assigned to disparage technology that provides some escape from the Matrix. The official troll handbook instructs: disparage, disrupt, degrade. dispute (note words begin with the same letter ... that's because people employed thusly are not very bright, and have leaky memoires.).
@@thomgizziz was there any need to randomly be a dick to people?
@@thomgizziztf is your problem?
13:44 - i love how our phones have like 20 kinds of antenna in them and nerds want another antenna that uses two of the antennas inside their phone, to send secret texts the way we would back in elementary with those personal organizers that had IR blasters on them.
Not to ruin the vibe, but LoRa over water is great, in normal urban settings they perform quite badly. Hopefully one day they can be used reliably in urban settings.
I had very sad results with the Heltec v2 and proper antennas I got 700 meters in a line-of-sight urban scenario, which is practically nothing. I hope these will be usable in urban areas in the future, reliably for up to 3-4 km in range, because in open fields they are truly amazing.
The more people using the mesh the stronger it gets
@@squigglesmcjr199 Good luck having a node every 500 meters. Let me know when it’s up globally and I’ll join.
wowthanks u probably saved me wasted money. I have NEVER heard this before and found it surprising. i have been seeing more and more stuff about LoRa stuff and thought it was a good route
@@squigglesmcjr199 Yeah, it's an adoption rate problem, really.
That all depends on if you have a main node high enough... I have 2 heltec v3 talking to each other 27 miles away right now..... And anything in between works cuz it fits through them
If you are concerned with privacy, why on Earth would you use ANY Google product, especially Chrome?
This
You can do it it on brave, no? Or did I just buy the wrong Lora?
On mobile, I use different browsers for different purposes and it includes chrome, on pc I sometimes use a modified fork of chromium
@@needausernameJesus just look on every apps permissions and if you got time to read all those terms and agreement, most often you got forced to agree to use their products.
specially chrome...... iubtub might B..... 4 reaching people....but...... that´s quiete right !
Don't forget about antenna polarisation - keep them vertical. For those antennas RF radiation emits as a donut.
The most important factor is tuning the antenna's SWR (Standing Wave Ratio) as close to "1" as possible in order to minimize transmission loss. I bet Andy Kirby would be excited about these tests. :D :D
That was bothering me throughout the video. Range test results don't mean squat if there is no consistency in antenna orientation. As for the drone. . Mounting it horizontally on top of the drone seems like 2 bad ideas rolled into 1 to me. I'd love to see some real range tests with vertical orientation and also SWR tuning. And some amplification if you're feeling frisky. I will bet they have a lot more range to give than 3 miles.
Hmm.. someone should make a self correcting antenna mount which will use accelerometer data to always be pointing upwards.
@@simp-slayer That is a terrible idea... making things overly complex when you can just point it up isn't smart.
@@thomgizziz Yeah, I guess. Perhaps I just needed a weekend project 😅
1. You dont need a cell phone. A basic tablet will work.
2. It only needs wifi for the setup and updates.
3. The tablet is where the communication APPs are. Yes, you can use this with ATAK.
4. The device sends the encrypted signal. The more people using them, the wider the range and coverage. Yes, there are ways to increase range to 200 miles.
this won't change phone providers... it's bandwidth is too low and short range.
There are boards that do Meshtastic and suppoert GPS if you want to add a tracker for objects.
Put one in your car and you'll always know where your car is, as long as there is a Meshtastic access point somewhere nearby.
how much bandwidth would i need for like 500 miles
@@andyscott4949 Bandwidth is the amount of data over a specified time. Not range.
They have something similar that can that works at 1000 miles
It won't because people just prefer to keep it easy. Who really needs private messages..
@@CMB21497 He probably said that because the video mentioned a trade off between the amount of data sent and the range over which that data is sent.
Line of site over land with good antenna about 100feet up: 40 miles is about the limit we found.
300ft with parabolic we stopped trying at 60 miles because we couldn't get line of sight further than that.
Now, find an area with large numbers of devices set as a mesh and you will really get some speed and distance.
"Radio Frequency Propagation" is what many people need to study.
It seems new to many people here, but these properties of radio propagation have been researched and known about for well over 100 years.
Why does 934 Mhz work? Why doesn't it work? Learning about radio signal transmission (or Radio Frequency Propagation) will help if you're in this for the long haul. The software, the mesh etc are different topics. There are several layers to get thru with those higher frequencies .
Wow that's complicated. I don't think providers have anything to worry about 😂
not just complicated, but lack of features.
this guy makes it look way more complicated than it actually is
Exactly. Long boring video for a useless thing no one will use
More importantly, it doesn't do what a phone does. This is only useful as an emergency device, like a satphone (or for drug dealers).
What kind of scooter is in your icon? I just upgraded to the wolf king gt pro!
0:16 impossible… if they want to hear you or see you, they can. Unless you move into a cave and eat berries the rest of your life, you’re on the grid…
At an incredibly and ever increasing cost in bandwith and decryption efforts. This will thwart many centralized efforts. So if you mean they'll still track like bring down all they can do to about 2 or 3% of what spy programs like PRISM can do, then yes. They can likely still break this. But what are you saying at that point.
He said outside the CONTROL of big brother. Obviously they can hear you. Absolute regard
Exactly. With advanced cameras and AI on satellites they can see anything, anywhere that human eyes dont pick up.
This is perfect, using some homemade battery pack and old cellphone I can create a tracker for my pup. When in the woods she likes to explore, although she stays in eye sight, this would be my peace of mind.
Or just get a board with GPS. Most of them do have it. Not sure why one without GPS was recommended. Then you don't have to strap a cell phone to your dog.... which defeats the purpose, because you could just strap the phone by itself.
there is a dog tracker in the market... I think it has several miles radius.
@@overdriver99 Indeed. The company I use is called fi and I think there is another called Tracktive. fi uses GPS and sends the location back to your app. Works quite well, but only updates every minute at best and the GPS signal can be lost. May indeed be able to build a more robust system.
@@scrampkerWithout gps is reccomended because of big brother...
@@charlesatanasio I'm not sure I follow. GPS being available on the device doesn't in any way give the gov more info. Totally depends on your usage, but I'd assume you would encrypt the dog tracker details. The gov could track the radio regardless, with pretty wild accuracy.
The orientation of the antennas is also a key factor often times overlooked in RF transmission from these sorts of projects. Radio Waves in a whip/stub antenna are polarized either horizontally or vertically depending on the direction the antenna is oriented in relation to the surface of the Earth. If the antenna is held upright and pointed skyward the direction of propagation of the radio waves with respect to the Earth's surface would be horizontal. If the orientation of the other antenna is laying flat as opposed to standing upright, there will be a signal loss of 20dB due to polarization mismatch. This is an almost total loss of signal strength. Maximum signal strength occurs when the transmitting antenna’s polarization matches the receiving antenna’s polarization.
When a polarization mismatch occurs in a linearly polarized antenna the entire signal will be lost due to the misalignment.
This is probably best demonstrated using the picket fence analogy. A signal passing through a linear polarizer is much like a rope passing through a picket fence. As long as the oscillations of the rope are in line with the fence pickets, the oscillations can pass through the fence to the other side.
If however, the fence was rotated 90 degrees, the oscillations of the rope would impact against the pickets and the energy and motion of those oscillations could not pass through to the other side of the fence. Effectively the “signal” has been cut off.
-20dB is a notional value. In theory, all power should be lost during this conversion. But we are not living in a perfect world and some power will always go through.
Thanks, one would hope that an enthusiast that gets into radio communication of any kind will do the legwork - which most certainly needs to include a layman's understanding of how the physical size/length/orientation of antennas is absolutely critical to the process.
How to you figure out which way your antenna is polarized?
Esp32 just doesn't handle that much processing required for large data transfer. So you can have plenty of signal strength but the bandwidth is still rather limited by the hardware. I know because I did this exact thing by modifying vanilla ad hoc mesh network libraries about four years ago. I was able to get live video across five nodes at around 60 to 70fps reliably over about 600 meters open area. But I had to modify and shorten the data protocol and switch to hex basically shorthand UDP it otherwise it just wouldn't handle it. And it only works to increase bandwidth by making a master and a slave endpoint who's sole purpose is to break up shorthand address and reassemble data packets. And only then you get more bandwidth according to the amount of nodes used and data packets sent at once. But as you scale up you get to store those pipe addresses on each device. And it quickly becomes an issue of node redundancy from the master's max data packets released at once. Or if you prefer a matter of each devices routing processing time effectively it becomes not worth it to add anymore nodes. At that point it makes more sense to just go with a single industrial solution. Now if your expectations are to send or stream single videos text messages or an array of integer data from sensors sure this will be fine. But if you're expecting to send several large files and simultaneously receive another file with any haste then no it simply isn't worth the hassle.
@@fireteamomega2343I have very little understanding of what you just said, but it sounds like maybe you should contribute to the meshtastic project😂
In 2015, a me and my supervisor talked about this technology. This will be very helpful when disaster comes and no telecommunications are available.
disaster has already come.
HAM radios are the emergency comms worldwide. These Things are amateur pagers for local friends.
When disaster come but you still have a plug to charge your devices... like... a small disaster!
@@melissasmess2773 need a license for ham. dingbat.
How is this better than conventional radios?
How well do they fit c4 in em?
😂
@blindsey8234 someone finally got it lmao
I remember I have checked LoraWAN maybe 5 years ago, similar stuff and its range go up to 10-20km. It's for IoT sensor to collect data in different locations and send back to the center for kind of scientific research. Now the range maybe even longer.
The new record now stands for LoraWan at 1336 km / 830 miles
it's been going on for ages....... there are other commercial and industrial systems out there that are more expensive and superior. The LORAN stuff is on free to air channels for brilliant people with no money.
In reality it is for non-commercial / industrial use.... Hobbyists and experimenters. Don't confuse this with real equipment. Real equipment already exists, and has for many decades. In Industry, everything is there... it costs. It is awesome and works.
With Loran everything is largely experimental equipment, may or may not be accurate, what do you connect it to... are the results verified. If in a two way control system.... is it going to work. Shall we install this for comm's on the next lunar mission? Will the president use this to connect to the big red button on his desk........ "awwww, well it works for 3 miles, and Jed used it over 5 miles.... once." Use it to experiment, don't use it in real life, due to propagation (RF) issues
You can also use GRMS radios with rattlegram for longer range in some conditions.
Yeah I didn't want to be a wet blanket, but this is basically a neat little toy with enormous limitations. A pair of Baofeng uv-5Rs are the same price, better range, better battery life, and they don't rely on mobile apps or webAssembly craziness, although they don't send text messages... but if the internet went down and Baofeng went out of business, my radios would still work, without being tethered to a mobile phone.
I would've been so much more excited about this if it wasn't touted as a "phone killer" despite requiring a phone and a proprietary app that you need to get from the app store 🤦♂️
@@Alkimiyeah any analog or digital radio is leaps and bounds better than this. You can modify your radio to send encrypted texts or even do audio encryption. And it would still be cheaper than this.
@@xfy123 You aren't getting encryption.
@@syntaxerrorsix3137 you won't get any encryption out of the box on any radio unless it's more recent military surplus but you can set it up yourself pretty easily.
@@Alkimi It's complimentary data services to unencrypted voice. I don't solely have DOCSIS, I also have LTE, DSL, ATM, ethernet, wifi, FM, UHF/VHF, SONET, etc....
Definitely in its early stages, can’t wait for what lies ahead for Meshtastic
So would it be fair to say this is a backup mobile device in case of power outages?
Years ago at work my group did something similar. We miniaturized a VHF/UHF relay platform and slung it under a huge balloon. I launched it from Norman, OK and it came down in Kentucky. It spent hours at around 105,000’ and provided a relay footprint of almost 400 miles. 3 channels of VHF and 4 channels of UHF. While I put our contact info on the payload it’s never been returned so there’s some cool tech probably hung up in a tree in Eastern Kentucky.
No gps to get a fix on where it landed? E. KY here.
The more I think about it, the more that I realize that even though this is a cool technology, there will never be that many people that will want to use it if they can't access their social media accounts on it.
whats wrong with you..... this is the perfect solution to a problem that we never had... it is so efficient. I don't know what to do with it though....
this isnt even cool tech , this is for paranoid government end of the world get out baggers who dont understand it is worthless in that situation.
The old pagers are back and just as useful as before
Pagers never actually went anywhere. They're still used because they're more reliable then cell phones.
If you direct solder the antenna to the ufl you should get more range right?
They’re headed in the right direction, still much room for growth, looking forward to how much better they’ll make them
look, it's a nice system....... it's been around for years. It's a solution for a problem that hasn't existed yet.
Maybe in the future.
There are other systems out there now, and have been around for some time. And been used successfully for industry.
Think of PLC,s or industrial computers (non-windows usually) and their communication systems. They started up in the late '70's and have just boomed over the years in terms of advances.
I have lived in Miami so long that my mesh network was through a CB radio!
I know a dude in this industry. Trust me, anything with a frequency can be listened in on.
Sure they might be able to see transmissions but they can't read/listen if it's encrypted. Do you really think the police & military who communicate via encrypted communications can have everything listened to or read?
You can detect things well enough if they are transmitting, but if you send a short encoded message and it is not long enough to brute-force attack it, then unless you just get crazily lucky, you can only DF where the signal is coming from, not actually decode it.
One of the most amazing bugs was the one on the United States Seal - just a stunningly beautiful piece of presicion engineering which (I think) worked on a GDO basis where the audio in the room would alter the resonance of a little chamber - which then interferred with an RF beam squirted in from the building over the road. Depending on how the resultant signal was being affected (basically modulated), they could re-build it to get audio.
Yet the device never really transmitted, it just "interferred" with an external signal. Clever little thing :)
all encryption can be hacked.
and being open software do you really belife the gov is not involved?
@@TOMinPDX Encryption is a myth. Any code can be cracked if you have time and patience, or computing power.
The entire concept of 'information security' is a joke. The only way to keep your information safe is to be so boring and unimportant that it's not worth the trouble to crack the code. If you have anything worth knowing, someone will find it.
@@larryjanson4011 That's why banks are unable to keep money in their accounts because encryption gets hacked I guess. It's the reason that one million bitcoin sitting in a single account since 2011 is still there because the encryption can be hacked too, right?
Will they explode in my pocket?
As long as you dont mess with the Mossad, then i think ure safe
On on Thursdays
@@jasper5902doesn’t matter who it is, he who controls supply controls boom. Also every agency checks to ensure boom doesn’t happen, the 80’s movies loved flexing remote boom to emphasize it. Hezbollah was an unserious organization, which is why they never had defensive capabilities to protect all their missiles and installations from a clearly advanced foe. Very bizzare.
We at the cia thank you for notifying us and we will ensure to hardwire our "protective system mangament" on to all sold chips
he has chromium based browser, there are no mesages they dont read already ...
Sorry, Big Brother. Open source.
They'll see everything.
@@ThatGreenSpyyou can put tech on the chips themselves
clarify management please....
Yeh, well If its on a chip it can also be erased... we'll use an ch341a chip programmer and erase your code and write an alternative on there.
True! Lower frequency is increased range but yes less data can be transferred.
No, bandwidth is decreased. Not necessarily lower data speeds.
@@AutieTortie The absolute data speeds will be lower due to lower frequency's slower cycling rate however since that isn't going to be your bottleneck. LoRa standard is an order of magnitude faster (shorter wavelengths) than AM radio here in America. So you can see, as far as audio or text, it is more than fast enough. Video transmission would be a different issue.
For solar nodes, use a wisblock starter kit that has the 4631 on it. Has ports for solar and a battery and will have a significantly lower current draw. Can also adapt a gps or other sensors of your choosing if you so desire.
I wonder about setting up repeaters to gain further distances? if it could work how many could daisy chained?
with a 500Khz channel bandwidth and a Spreading factor of 7
that thing can transmit at ~8kbps... this allows to transmit voice using a codec
like G.729
even if only allowing 1 side at a time communication (walkie-talkie mode)
voice transmission would be a nice feature...
Yes but you don’t want to overload a network which may depend on a single relay.
The ts3s Lora board already supports audio. Lookup meshtastic audio module...
depending on your system LoRa mases out at about 20-21kbps so you cna do quite a lot with that, I am currently looking at transmitting small images/video with it
No, that's not a good idea. I guess it's not allowed to utilize the frequency more than 1%.
So it's useless@@papakamirneron2514
It’s Important to understand that this device operates on line of sight. just like a walkie talkie
it's almost exactly like a walky talky, except he had to connect his phone to it....... but the basic transmitter.... yep, similar frequency and power as a UHF CB or PRS (both are public radio frequencies) walky talky
That's why the video took 26+ minutes..... believe me, there is nothing new there.
And the other little hacking gadget ..... yes the little white and orange thing has absofu^*nlutely nothing to do with any of this video.
like WIFI?
Thanks for sharing this information. Very well done and helpful. A couple things to consider. Refactor 3d printed mobile computing device plus mesh node housing in the form of various "sleeve" concepts to introduce the idea of more efficient integration and use of space. The current configurations are excellent demonstrations for introducing the use of a separate mesh node network through the integration and use of two standalone handheld devices. The appropriate next step from a hardware and software and utility perspective would be tighter integration. I also believe that one of the key value propositions is that the hardware is not fully integrated with existing mobile communications systems. A sleeve concept maintains the benefit of keeping hardware separate while improving handheld efficiencies.
... which is why those ultra cool Fallout inspired devices with built in keyboards give any man an erection to see picture of. The problem is that as soon as you add that much complexity you start to require parts that will stay reliable, and the next thing you know a working marketable prototype is already outside of the hobbyist sphere - which is why we can't buy clones of the awesome goodies I have seen as one off ultra gizmos.
This is perfect for me and my wife we want to live off grid in the next 3 years and this would be great for us
This is pretty neat yes buildings and trees effect range. Basically anything that exists will drop performance. I have had my amateur radio license for a couple of years. We are not allowed to use anything encrypted. There’s networks similar to this using ham radio and a lot more power. But when running a computer network through it everything must go unencrypted. I am going to get some of these and play around with them. Using the ham equipment and power 45 miles is my record with a network. I can go much farther with voice or CW. The data speed is pretty slow. Plus all the FCC. Hoops you have to jump through. No hoops with LORA.
you can still get in the s^*t with LORAN if you go "over powered" or "off frequency", or mode of transmission is not permitted. Those frequencies are in the citizen band / PRS radio band... even in those bands you have to watch what you are doing. That circuit board is software controlled, and you do a country or region select.... that fixes the problems above.... and limits you to hobbyist or experimental stuff.
The open source makes this very interesting. It's a good start. And the chip can be amped.
All of their communications & code & social media happens over proprietary channel tho
@@gotoastal would you need a license if you used this on a radio frequency, since it's technically not a radio
@@andygluehere8266they are radios because they use a radio frequency, the data type doesn't matter. However, it seems seems the device is already set up so it stays in line with regulations and in any case its so low power is basically a toy. You most likely don't _need_ to get a license, but if you want to do anything more interesting than simply carrying these nuggets around, I'm sure learning the law proper, how things work and your limits will come in handy.
@@gotoastal the 433+/- and * or 94x+/- Mhz frequencies (and similar) are citizens band frequencies in many parts of the world, they are also known as PRS radios in some areas. That why his device has the "select region" setting... you set it to USA, Australia or Madagasgar or whatever is legal for that area. The software then controls the output power and frequency and mode of transmission for your area, in each little transceiver. Then you figure out what to do with it.... in this case this unit can connect with wifi. SO this is a wifi extender for txt, as it connects to a phone.... in a nice little unit, and a nice party trick. Nothing to complain about and maybe useful. But it is citizen radio for tinkerers and mad inventors.... I can't think of a case where anything using RF (radio waves) are not being better used in heavy industry or whatever, by existing industrial computer, PLC, and radio equipment, and for 55 years at least.
Anything using PRS / Citizen radio will always be short range for a physical reason (Search propagation of radio frequencies). And easily receivable by the authorities, if they are interested. God it must be boring monitoring other peoples comm's..... that's why they don't bother normally. (Mabel, canya turn the sausages on the bbq? Don't tell me to F*^k off ya dipshit.... etc)
Don't get me onto the possibilities and range problems.... either of those topics is endless.
this is awesome I was just looking at some lora stuff for a mailbox alarm .. 1/2 mile from the house to the mailbox I kinda like knowing when the door is opened :) ..
Cool, my Simplisafe alarm system tells me when the mail arrives, rigged a door sensor to my box and programmed for door chime only notification, non alarm.👍🏻
Do they blow up in your pocket?
If you ever wanted to do a drone to drone range test, we could get together on I-95. I can design and print some custom cases for the drones.
The drone tests I have done have been with a meshtastic next to my phone and the drone running as a repeater.
shot you an email
@@DataSlayerMedia I replied
US Army Signal Corp. had this in 1967 .I was there , learning repair & operation .
no you didnt ! all these other youtube commentors are right , THIS IS REVOLUTIONARY TECH??!!! The government is one step closer to collapse!
Thank you for your service.
This is indeed an over-engineered private paging network.
can u build on standalone device without any smartphone?
I am in Jupiter, have flown the Heltec V3 on my Drone and got over 5 miles with the stub antenna!
Cool experiment - you should get 10x that distance though.
How's the gravity over there?!😮
I thought it was really windy on Jupiter?
@@melissasmess2773 on the beach yes
A must for every bunker hiding citizen LMAO , nothing like going back in technology. Use to love my 2 way radios lol
I can't imagine how useful these devices would be for researchers, park rangers and others working in areas with no cellar service but needing to connect their equipment.
Have you ever heard of heavy rain, floods, power outages, Tornados, hurricanes, exploding transformers, old wires, earth quakes.... More people need this than you think.
@@Town101I think he meant for people that could use it daily.
@@gunfun7772 Yeah, except for that one part, where you need a cell phone to use the thing.... if you have no power, how you logging onto an app? this is a poor mans Nextel Pager.
Blud, walkie talkie exist
Or drug dealers
Is there a way for your unit to show the direction of the other unit? Good for tracking each other? Also we don’t know how bad the range is in the woods
Worth noting that if you can't connect to the pc when flashing, the cable may be ok but the system does not have the right serial port driver. Regarding range, yes, the stub antenna isn't very good, but local LoRa traffic and radio noise can also be a factor.
Yeah, USB ports especially can be all kinds of problematic for these kinds of drivers. Anyone who has problems, make sure to try the ports on the back of your machine including 2.0 vs. 3.x.
This reminds me of the old chat toys from the early 2000's like the CYBIKO and CHAT NOW.
That was my first thought too. Cybiko Xtreme was so ahead of its time.
I had one of those Cybikos I thought I was the only one who remembered those
yes used old packet radio 1200 baud still in use today Aprs, bbs, nodes etc...
meshtastic is short short range pretty useless for everything... where as something like Vara AC can do so much more.. messaging to 24,000 miles with the right frequency...
Came here looking to see if someone mentioned that.
I loved the cybiko!
Hello 1995. Happy to see the 1995 Motorola Tango is back. Nice new complicated way to send text messages to each other.
Thank you 😊 for the video
@@suzanneladue5828 SOrry Suzanne, I never made this video.
I wish this had also tested the mesh aspect of these devices. Does it connect promiscuously to any similar device so your range could potentially be infinite when enough of these are on in the wild? If so, you could build modules that have solar panels and batteries and leave them in various locations to provide an actual mesh over a large area.
its made for really low power use. at this moment people are building those konda units hidden as a birds nest for example in trees or on top of buildings.
My dealer is going to love this
I can tell you're a fake because in the streets, they're called a plug. Or were you talking blackjack?
Your... erm... radio and parts dealer, right?
At 7:56, SPECIFICALLY, why is the iPhone app better than the android app?
With some tweaking this is a very interesting bit of tech. I imagine it would be put to better use in a larger form factor that has more signal power output and some kind of ATAK phone board depending on use case. As is it looks great for shorter distance comms where you don’t want to yell and FRS handhelds aren’t reliable. Nodes could also be discreetly placed ahead of time to build a temporary local network.
Remember when infomercials only came on at 4 a.m.? Thanks for recommending this to me on my lunch break.
ahhhhh what does this have to do with a flipper zero and how is a crude p2p network going to replace a cell network with infinitely more bandwidth? It supplements it sure .
Just clickbait to get you to watch the full video
I agree with you. This hobbyist over sold his text based walkie talkie .
It’s electronics engineering my guy 😅
@@Shadowing_effect @Usernamegoesinthisfield still clickbait calling it a phone killer.
@@allgolfshoesareugly click bait? It’s not the OPs fault you are gullible
I'm designing my own case for swappable dual 18650s so you can change one while remaining powered.
Hot Swap > recharge. also a UVA+B panel on the back would be good like on those battery banks. Better than nothing. Probably use x3 1.5v 0.3w panels from outdoor path lights. Then use a 3.7v linear rectifier or some diodes & a high volt cutoff from a 18650 single battery charger.
WTF are you on about? You mean a solar panel? What you typed was nonsense that you thought made you look intelligent. Also taking solar panels from outdoor path lights is complete nonsense... "& a high volt cutoff from a" also nonsense. Please stop.
I really want to host a cheap relay for this in my place
what would the military backpack maximum effort version look like but cut down casual style.
oh the pager fuck should have read that guys comment fire lolz damn proof reading.
Neat little solution.
I'm having difficulty locating the problem it solves.
🤔🤣🤫
although the problem is unknown,
it makes it more efficient to solve that unknown problem.
I do not know of a comm's problem that hasn't been solved using RF or industrial comm's technology........ PLC's/computers communicating thru spread spectrum transceivers, 'shortwave' for long distance comm's. I note that this is for a personal radio system in the 94x Mhz area.... they are inherently a short distance product anyway. But it is interesting to experiment with them and see what is possible.
The aerial makes a lot of difference with that frequency. But it depends on the application if you can take advantage of directional aerials. If you are on the move... well you can't. Any application requiring mobile comm's is inefficient as normally an omnidirectional aerial is used, unless you go to Satellite repeaters (Starlink etc) , but then you still need a fixed dish somewhere close to do that....
He gave some examples such as two people hiking and separating where there is no cell service. I went to a festival last year and couldn't use my phone because so many people were there, and it made it difficult to find the person I went with when we split up. Thinking about building some of these for next time I go.
@@11tmaste Which problem cheap walkie-talkies have had solved for decades. Much more simply, without requiring anything but themselves & batteries to use.
@@beardyface8492 For voice communication walkie talkies are better. This allows text and you can use it to find the other device's location. There are definitely use cases for it.
I played around with a couple of TTGo T-Beams and yes, it's a nerdy cool stuff. But in practice it's too buggy especialy when a node goes to sleep. It's only sometimes a stable receiver if the screen of the node is alive. We tried to establish an independent communication in our village, but the frustration of the members were too high due to laggy and sporadic message income.
Interesting, how many nodes did you have? Why was the transmission laggy and sporadic? Thanks!
@@melissasmess2773 I had 6 T-Beams with 868 Mhz. The message Income was sporadic and the App very rudimental. Not a good base for crowd messaging. Had sell 3 if them soon.
This is awesome. Great testing and explanation of the functions and features. Having a private LoRa Meshtastic channel reminds me of having a smartphone version of Get Smart's "cone of silence". Gotta love it.
you are easily impressed i see
These were bought by Hezbola?
*In the 80's, 90's and into the 2000's, there were radio-phones that had many miles worth of range and plugged the base unit into your home's landline which is how you were able to make and receive calls.* You can still find them if you search online and some had outrageous distance like 50 and 60 miles!
*Anyway, that ultimately outdated technology still shows us the potential to escape the clutches of widespread intrusion and monopolization can still be at least, loosened.*
I actually went to college for the science of electrical/electronics engineering and am now seeing my predictions from about 10 years ago finally coming into light.
*Mobile style personal devices that are more customized in features, functions and user interfaces will ultimately be the next huge wave of consumer technologies, especially as nanomaterials are reduced in cost to advance the capabilities of semiconductor based technologies and for a price the average consumer can afford.*
This one is ground level and what I predicted which is aftermarket hardware using our phones and tablets for a lot of the processing but eventually we're going to see a lot of stand alone personal device technologies that cut the apron strings from these devices.
I remember Sony promoted a cordless phone that could go about 5Km from the base, back in the 90s. I had a neighbor buddy that used to go out and hang around with us all over the neighborhood, with his house phone in the pocket just in case anybody would call home he could take the message LOL
@@gadget00 there's a few websites dedicated to those old systems and in some cases the owners still use them tied into landline service. There are scrambling systems for them that I imagine nobody ever bothered to crack outside the government.
You also can use walkie talkie portofoon with rattlegram
Sweet! When these become popular then people can start advertising on them with spam and completely flooding entire mesh networks with garbage
How encrypted is it actually?
@Data Slayer If you can get your node outside of your apts tinted windows you will probably pick up more range. Its pretty common for commercial tinted windows to have a metalucized coating in the tint to reduce infrared & uv penetration into buildings. It does a pretty good job of attenuating radio signals, Also nano vna are pretty cheap check your antennas to make sure they are as advertised. AFAIK those stubby antennas ship for every country but I think they are better for 400 mhz which means you are wasting precious power heating up your heltec with a mismatched antenna. These radios use low power so having a matched dipole or yagi is going to give the best results. Whips are compact but best results with a balanced antenna and same polarization for both antennas.
Woah good job, my DS could do this 20 years ago. God that makes me feel old.
Starlink: hold my beer 🍺
I am trying to make sense of this. Would this benefit me when I am up in the mountains and do not have a cell signal?
how about this?
use a Distributed Hashtable to keep track of network participants, then if the participant is on the network then estimate the fastest pathway of nodes and yeet the packets that way.
if the participant is not on the network then yeet through a LORA/Internet Gateway bridge.
architect the p2p connections similar to how a IPFS system is set up but with encrypted communication rather than data transfer. might provide better flexibility.
Please expand on this
Not sure there would be much benefit, most DHT implementations would max out the throughput in Meshtastic most configurations. A big part of these devices as they are currently used is ephemerality.
That's not going to work very well you can't just ospf it like regular router protocol. Because to essentially ping nodes of these devices constantly for availability eats up more time and resources. And keeping track of available nodes in real time is more difficult because you're essentially using the same single resources to do so. It's much easier to just use the exact same pipe address for nodes within a distance range and transmit to all and any available nodes. Then you repeat in whatever direction you are going. You program the endpoint to reassemble packets based off however many packets you programmed to be distributed by the master. And numbered in a rolling integer based on your estimated network size, data transfer size, and average hop between distance segments. When it's broken up by the master it's assigned a rolling number as a bit, a direction bit, a segment bit, and a max segment bit. You can reprogram the transfer protocol to use hex to tokenize or compress those values into half as many. Creating essentially the address header and reassembly instructions in one. At each distance segment only the direction bit is overwritten according to it's opposite. If you were going to incorporate an omnidirectional mesh network then you might want to assign each node an integer index as a replacement to direction bit with some incrementing or cartesian organization. At the endpoint it discards the direction bit reads the rolling number the segment and max segment bits. The rolling number assigns the overall data being sent the segment assigns the data packet number and max segments assigns the total packets. It's then programmed to assign that data to a stored variable (if then) to organize and also drop any redundant incoming packets from the same rolling number. Ie. read max segment read segment assign 1 to variable segment 1, 2 to segment 2 ect. If equals to packet number received then increment to a received variable or sent variable depending on which is happening. If sent or received variable does not match close pipe drop packets. Print or store segment variables.
Or you could just, I don't know, push the transmit button on a walkie talkie or CB radio and be done with the whole thing. RF signals are pretty easy to encrypt as well if you really need it. You're just trying to re-invent the wheel and over complicating it. If it's not broken, don't fix it.
Gotta love the 21th century rediscovery of amateur radio.
The modernised idea is cute, and the encryption is a solid upgrade, but the rest is like WW1-era technology at best.
The WWI models used candles instead of LEDs and horse-drawn. Did you know horses could draw? No. See?
are you say all these youtube commenters claiming this is revolutionary tech are … WRONG?!? *faints*
So it's like, a modern day pager?
Without paying the telecom companies which always rate as one of the worst in customer support and satisfaction.
More like an SMS device than pager.
@@JohnMcAfee-se9ms More like a modern day text pager that you don't pay to use but instead have to pay for a bunch of devices to have a network setup that you can access and so can your family and friends...after you teach them how to make their own devices and setup their own networks and make sure their network and your network mesh together and service each device when components need replacing and repair devices that get damaged from weather and normal people walking by it and teach them how to connect it to their phones and then remind and re-teach them all of that again because they forget everything you taught them before a week after you taught them.
Or you can pay a company to use their massive network which makes anything you could ever dream of engineering look like a child's toy in comparison and you don't even have to fix it or teach anyone how to use it! It's almost like paying for a service provides you with a easy to use simple service that anyone can figure out and use. Worried about big brother listening? Too bad, they've been listening for decades and know all about you already and if you think this is the only attack surface they are using to spy with then you are even more foolish than I initially thought.
Cool video! I use ELRS RC Link, which uses LoRa plus its Low Latency. Its an ESP32TX and SP1280 chip i believe, for 2.4GHz. There's a 915MHz setup also which has more Range/Penetration
Where did you get that UFL to SMA Adapter with the thinner flexible cable for the U.FL lead like yours? Its shown at @4:16. I can only find thicker ones on Amazon which wont work for my project Thanks!!
Soooo, just a LoRA radio.
I'm actually beginning development in a personal project aiming to develop a solution for an ad-hoc mesh LoRa network
Skip to 12:42 to see how these actually work. If you want to buy/build one after that, watch the beginning.
You need a phone but not a carrier (service provider) as the devices serve as the transport layer instead of TMobile/ATT/Verizon/ETC.
Pretty cool for the backwoods (no service available) when the group may break up and rendezvous later instead of carrying a full sized radio.
Right, so it has valid usecases but the title is Massively overselling it. fair enough.
Is there an explosive device built in?
hahahahahahah
#
im sure it operates in the GHZ so how big do you think the antenna needs to be? lol.
That Mossad type device?
Meshtastic - The phone Killer!! Proceeds to use phone to enter message...... dude stop eating crayons. It's turning your brain to mush.
But the phone doesnt actually need to be connect to a cell provider!
Doesn't use telecom infra. We are annoyed and abused by the telecom companies, not the handheld computers we use
First of all, clickbait title... Fix it. 3 ½ miles... meh. Like what many already pointed out, very limited use case due to the limited range. Seems like a lot of hassle and bit costly for what it actually does, and then still needing your phone to transmit, so you'll still needa power source at some point. "Phone killer"... Pffff
Im laughing as i read through all these comments touting it as revolutionary tech… Too bad I'm all out of bridges to sell to these people.
Brilliant presentation on how to start with LoRa. Brilliant video quality, editing and close up shots (these things are tiny). A masterclass of how YT videos should be done.👏🏻