Main Page
Summary
This site is to document, promote, and provide information about the deployment of Meshtastic in the Lake Tahoe Basin. What is Meshtastic? It is an open-source, community supported peer-to-peer digital messaging system. Think of it like "text messaging walkie-talkies." It is capable of running without any reliance on infrastructure, corporations, or even the Internet.
Meshtastic runs over LoRa, which utilizes the license-free ISM radio band. The devices are low-power, small, and capable of operating for long periods of time. Meshtastic takes LoRa and adds to it peer-to-peer relaying, private encryption channels, and a nice user interface that can be utilized on everything from a dedicated handheld device to a smartphone, tablet, or laptop.
Why TahoeMesh? Why this site?
Quite simply - while Meshtastic is capable of operating without any dedicated infrastructure between ad-hoc devices, LoRa requires Line-of-Sight (LOS) between the communication devices. Given the mountainous geographical nature of the area, it becomes very clear that Meshtastic would be much more beneficial in the area if there were some dedicated nodes (Repeaters) in strategic locations to facilitate the existence of a mesh and maintain communications capabilities between nodes that were behind hills from each other.
Useful Pages
- Devices - Describes the hardware we use and the devices you might consider getting
- Configuration - The LoRa, Meshtastic, and Channel configuration we're using
- Deployments - "Hey, I saw a TahoeMesh.org device. What / Where is it?"
