At that point, given the extremely small bandwidth, we might as well just use a massive wifi, everyone already has the required hardware for that instead of producing more trash for a pretty much non-existing use case.
Ever since I switched to lemmy, I constantly stumble upon people trying to guilt other people for their hobbies. That’s pretty unhealthy.
Whoever reads this, don’t feel guilty living your life. Spend time on whatever you’re passionate about. Build new things, even if they do not have a rational use case at the moment. They might play an important role in your future.
WiFi goes down and people sometimes NEED to communicate instead of streaming Netflix.
This is just an alternate channel, if Eheran doesn’t have the imagination to understand how low bandwidth can still be extremely valuable, as compared to, say, screaming at the top of your lungs to attempt to be heard 5 miles away, then… I’m not really interested in what they think.
Or more to the point, the ISP fails. A Wi-Fi router isn’t that much more difficult to power than a meshtastic node, but my old ISP, I don’t think they even bothered to install UPSes, if the power was out, so was the internet. I could keep my Wi-Fi up indefinitely, but it’s basically useless outside my house.
Funny thing about Wi-Fi, it overlaps with an Amateur radio band (the 2.4GHz spec does) and so hams are allowed to run Wi-Fi with no encryption but a tremendous amount of power and high gain antennas on like the highest channels.
A portion of the 5GHz WiFI band overlaps with the 5.8GHz ham band too. There are also a few WiFi radios that will also work above the US WiFi band where they can operate without interference from other license free devices. Those are used in the HamWAN network.
I wonder how much you could Jerry rig up Wimax for these days. That’s like 30 miles of range. I remember thinking if I was only going within a 15 mile area of my place it would have been cool, but prices 10 years ago immediately made it a no.
Edit: like it sounds dumb, but what prevents someone from picking up a used Wimax base station, putting it as an uplink from their router, then using a Wimax card to receive it? Could even maybe just rig up a small rechargable wifi box, that received the Wimax signal, then rebroadcasts it back out as wifi using your home network name/password. So anywhere near your home the antenna would just pick it up and rebroadcast, maybe just hook it to your cigarette lighter to charge so anytime your in the car it’s on. I assume most people would find it easier/cheaper to just buy a cellular card… haha. But hypothetically, I am curious what would make it not work
You can have one or the other. If you choose high bandwidth, you’re going to get very short distance because you can’t do serious error correction, etc. If you choose long range, you’re going to get low bandwidth because you need to include error correction, etc. In the transmissions.
But the point of LoRa is in the name, long range. Wifi barely reaches outside my house. Also a WiFi mesh is dependent on a variety of complicated and proprietary networks and systems while meshtastic is entirely independent.
Yes. LoRa (from “long range”, sometimes abbreviated as “LR”) is a physical proprietary radio communication technique.[2] It is based on spread spectrum modulation techniques derived from chirp spread spectrum (CSS) technology.[3] It was developed by Cycleo, a company of Grenoble, France, and patented in 2014.
In trying times you’re missing the big picture. If they were more commonplace, you’d have a decentralised communication network that can’t be shut down by the government.
At that point, given the extremely small bandwidth, we might as well just use a massive wifi, everyone already has the required hardware for that instead of producing more trash for a pretty much non-existing use case.
Ever since I switched to lemmy, I constantly stumble upon people trying to guilt other people for their hobbies. That’s pretty unhealthy.
Whoever reads this, don’t feel guilty living your life. Spend time on whatever you’re passionate about. Build new things, even if they do not have a rational use case at the moment. They might play an important role in your future.
WiFi goes down and people sometimes NEED to communicate instead of streaming Netflix.
This is just an alternate channel, if Eheran doesn’t have the imagination to understand how low bandwidth can still be extremely valuable, as compared to, say, screaming at the top of your lungs to attempt to be heard 5 miles away, then… I’m not really interested in what they think.
“WiFi goes down”
Or more to the point, the ISP fails. A Wi-Fi router isn’t that much more difficult to power than a meshtastic node, but my old ISP, I don’t think they even bothered to install UPSes, if the power was out, so was the internet. I could keep my Wi-Fi up indefinitely, but it’s basically useless outside my house.
Yeah, whenever I tell the kids “WiFi is down” what that really means is “Comcast has killed our link, again.”
They’re a godsend for camping, and would be legendary in a disaster event.
Low power requirements, battery + solar power source… this isn’t science fiction anymore.
People are just discussing the pros and cons of technology in the Technology comm. Chill out.
This has much greater range compared to wifi
Funny thing about Wi-Fi, it overlaps with an Amateur radio band (the 2.4GHz spec does) and so hams are allowed to run Wi-Fi with no encryption but a tremendous amount of power and high gain antennas on like the highest channels.
A portion of the 5GHz WiFI band overlaps with the 5.8GHz ham band too. There are also a few WiFi radios that will also work above the US WiFi band where they can operate without interference from other license free devices. Those are used in the HamWAN network.
I wonder how much you could Jerry rig up Wimax for these days. That’s like 30 miles of range. I remember thinking if I was only going within a 15 mile area of my place it would have been cool, but prices 10 years ago immediately made it a no.
Edit: like it sounds dumb, but what prevents someone from picking up a used Wimax base station, putting it as an uplink from their router, then using a Wimax card to receive it? Could even maybe just rig up a small rechargable wifi box, that received the Wimax signal, then rebroadcasts it back out as wifi using your home network name/password. So anywhere near your home the antenna would just pick it up and rebroadcast, maybe just hook it to your cigarette lighter to charge so anytime your in the car it’s on. I assume most people would find it easier/cheaper to just buy a cellular card… haha. But hypothetically, I am curious what would make it not work
You can transmit over whatever, but there’s trade-offs with everything. LoRa is kinda neat because it’s low power.
And you don’t need to be a ham to run it.
Might be smarter… wonder if
…for you.
I can see a use-case where a low-powered off-grid communication device can be useful.
You can have one or the other. If you choose high bandwidth, you’re going to get very short distance because you can’t do serious error correction, etc. If you choose long range, you’re going to get low bandwidth because you need to include error correction, etc. In the transmissions.
Some people already are
https://map.nycmesh.net/
But the point of LoRa is in the name, long range. Wifi barely reaches outside my house. Also a WiFi mesh is dependent on a variety of complicated and proprietary networks and systems while meshtastic is entirely independent.
Isn’t LoRa proprietary? Like, Meshtastic is open source, but something about the radio itself is proprietary tech?
No.
Yes. LoRa (from “long range”, sometimes abbreviated as “LR”) is a physical proprietary radio communication technique.[2] It is based on spread spectrum modulation techniques derived from chirp spread spectrum (CSS) technology.[3] It was developed by Cycleo, a company of Grenoble, France, and patented in 2014.
Did you have a question?
In trying times you’re missing the big picture. If they were more commonplace, you’d have a decentralised communication network that can’t be shut down by the government.