At time of writing (2025-09-27, plus or minus a timezone), there does not appear to be any serious attempt to secure application-layer message contents. (At least, not yet)
My hope is that this cool new radio link option will still gain traction and grow and develop without painting itself into a corner, security-wise.
It seems like there are some people in the Meshtastic and MeshCore community who have it out for each other, for reasons beyond me.
I've only personally tested Meshtastic, and from a technical perspective, it still feels very beta, and I wouldn't put critical communications on it. However, it's a fun introduction to LoRa and long range low power RF, and can be a fun way to communicate much like I think amateur radio was to its early adopters.
I think one thing that causes a lot of community strangeness is the strong push by some to make it what it's not, like some doomsday-proof communication system that will outlive cellular networks and atomic bombs. It could be useful but requires skilled operators and coordination to work well (like using different frequencies and coding at events for much more bandwidth).
In case you didn't know what Meshtastic [0] is: Meshtastic® is a project that enables you to use inexpensive LoRa radios as a long range off-grid communication platform in areas without existing or reliable communications infrastructure.
Oh man, I have all my retro consoles, but the C64 and 128 were the only gear my parents sold out from under me. I should be happy it’s not taking up space in a closet but stuff like this makes me miss it dearly.
Pretty cool. I wish Meshtastic had more focus on routing and a way to safely do store & fwd. It’s difficult to actually mesh well with it. I run a few solar powered higher altitude nodes and provide reasonable coverage but I’ve observed many messages never reach their destination.
Looking at their GitHub there are some things upcomming
- They want to make device telemetry opt-in. This will cause the network to be more quiet
- A few patches ended up in master for handling corner cases of their flooding and next-hop routing algorithm
- There's also a merge request ("Add packet replay feature") which maybe can solve the reliability problem
Currently bigger Meshtastic networks are very very unreliable. I almost cannot traceroute a device that is one or two hops away. And our channels are not very saturated (10-20% ChUtil).
It would not. We would need to make a case to add Meshtastic. Amateur radio has had a much better chance since the days of the Space Shuttle. Astronauts routinely make ISS to Earth contacts with amateur radio operators. There is also ARISS.
Correct. Developed by the late Bob Bruninga. I had many email exchanges with Bob and we were able to send SSTV images through his NO-* series of amateur radio satellites with some technical advice a few years ago.
APRS is much more extensive and even available via commercial ham radio
This is my project. I’ve only built 915MHz ones since I’m in the USA but I could provide 868 too. Thanks, I should note this! BASIC works well for parsing strings, printing to the screen, and using the Kernal serial routines. I do have some ideas of helper code using assembly that may get added, but plan to keep the main code BASIC.
Finally got to meet Adrian at VCF Midwest, as I've gone down the retro rabbit hole his videos are a great reference. And he and others have built up some invaluable tools to diagnose and fix quirks on these old systems.
Would like to figure out Meshtastic on the Apple II as well!
I built a Meshtastic and found a few nodes but made 0 contacts. Gave up after a few weeks. The community seems to be more interested in talking about it and showing pictures of their gear as opposed to actually doing anything with it.
It pains me to mention this but I don't think it's responsible not to: https://github.com/meshtastic/firmware/issues/4030
At time of writing (2025-09-27, plus or minus a timezone), there does not appear to be any serious attempt to secure application-layer message contents. (At least, not yet)
My hope is that this cool new radio link option will still gain traction and grow and develop without painting itself into a corner, security-wise.
To wit- security hints on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSI_model have improved substantially since my last readthrough.
I appreciate you pointing that out. I've been curious about meshastatic and wondered how well the encryption was being handled.
Check out the alternative https://github.com/meshcore-dev/MeshCore Seattle has the largest functioning mesh core installation in the world
MeshCore seems to enforce a strict separation between client devices and repeater devices, which is a significant downside for many use cases.
As if the Meshtastic devs care about anything but pretending to be a business masquerading as an open source project.
They are quite possibly one of the most toxic projects right now.
I keep seeing folks in my circles playing with it but this is the first I have heard this opinion.
Could you elaborate?
It seems like there are some people in the Meshtastic and MeshCore community who have it out for each other, for reasons beyond me.
I've only personally tested Meshtastic, and from a technical perspective, it still feels very beta, and I wouldn't put critical communications on it. However, it's a fun introduction to LoRa and long range low power RF, and can be a fun way to communicate much like I think amateur radio was to its early adopters.
I think one thing that causes a lot of community strangeness is the strong push by some to make it what it's not, like some doomsday-proof communication system that will outlive cellular networks and atomic bombs. It could be useful but requires skilled operators and coordination to work well (like using different frequencies and coding at events for much more bandwidth).
At least in the linked issue, the project member who, on request of an outside contributor, reopened the issue seemed pretty open towards a fix?
In case you didn't know what Meshtastic [0] is: Meshtastic® is a project that enables you to use inexpensive LoRa radios as a long range off-grid communication platform in areas without existing or reliable communications infrastructure.
[0]: https://meshtastic.org/
Jeri Ellsworth posted that she has her Minitel on Meshtastic: https://bsky.app/profile/jeriellsworth.bsky.social/post/3lzj...
Cool! We made https://www.robots-everywhere.com/cellsol/ in 2020 but I think Meshtastic is further along. However, ours can run on an atmel328.
We also respect and forward Meshtastic and DisasterRadio packets, but there is currently no reciprocity. What can be done about it?
how about reticulum?
Oh man, I have all my retro consoles, but the C64 and 128 were the only gear my parents sold out from under me. I should be happy it’s not taking up space in a closet but stuff like this makes me miss it dearly.
Pretty cool. I wish Meshtastic had more focus on routing and a way to safely do store & fwd. It’s difficult to actually mesh well with it. I run a few solar powered higher altitude nodes and provide reasonable coverage but I’ve observed many messages never reach their destination.
Checkout MeshCore, it has the concept of a room server which is a private store and forward server. Also see this https://github.com/mikecarper/meshfirmware/blob/main/MeshCor...
Looking at their GitHub there are some things upcomming
- They want to make device telemetry opt-in. This will cause the network to be more quiet
- A few patches ended up in master for handling corner cases of their flooding and next-hop routing algorithm
- There's also a merge request ("Add packet replay feature") which maybe can solve the reliability problem
Currently bigger Meshtastic networks are very very unreliable. I almost cannot traceroute a device that is one or two hops away. And our channels are not very saturated (10-20% ChUtil).
This. I like the idea of Meshtastic however APRS is much more extensive and even has satellite coverage like the ISS.
It would work a Meshtastic repeater from the ISS?
It would not. We would need to make a case to add Meshtastic. Amateur radio has had a much better chance since the days of the Space Shuttle. Astronauts routinely make ISS to Earth contacts with amateur radio operators. There is also ARISS.
5w ISS contacts are hard enough as it is
LoRa is extremely robust and can work with super weak signals. At the price of being very very slow in the most reliable configuration .
That combination is toxic for a high amount of parallel users.
I think it would need big modifications: fast uplink and robust slow downlink.
APRS requires a license right?
Correct. Developed by the late Bob Bruninga. I had many email exchanges with Bob and we were able to send SSTV images through his NO-* series of amateur radio satellites with some technical advice a few years ago.
APRS is much more extensive and even available via commercial ham radio
That's kind of the benefit of LoRa though. Cheap unlicensed radio that works surprisingly well for what it is.
Thanks! This is my project. Happy to answer any questions.
Thanks for showing it at VCF! I'm glad to have met you and gotten to talk about the setup, even better to see more of the story on your blog.
What frequency is the one that you can buy?
Is there an assembly application planned or will it be basic for now?
This is my project. I’ve only built 915MHz ones since I’m in the USA but I could provide 868 too. Thanks, I should note this! BASIC works well for parsing strings, printing to the screen, and using the Kernal serial routines. I do have some ideas of helper code using assembly that may get added, but plan to keep the main code BASIC.
I think 433 would be even better?
Or 169MHz if meshtastic supports it? Edit: Seems no, sadge.
If you add EU freq. I will buy!
I spy Trader Joe's balsamic vinegar?
Nice, Jeff Geerling / Adrian Black mashup needed
Finally got to meet Adrian at VCF Midwest, as I've gone down the retro rabbit hole his videos are a great reference. And he and others have built up some invaluable tools to diagnose and fix quirks on these old systems.
Would like to figure out Meshtastic on the Apple II as well!
I built a Meshtastic and found a few nodes but made 0 contacts. Gave up after a few weeks. The community seems to be more interested in talking about it and showing pictures of their gear as opposed to actually doing anything with it.
It’s like a way less fun ham radio.