Congratulations. You re-invented the pager.

I dont think im out of line when I say you did not clearly state WHY this is a phone provider killer. Clickbait title

Goodbye phones. *Requires Phone.*

If you are concerned with privacy, why on Earth would you use ANY Google product, especially Chrome?

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.

"outside the control of big-brother" FCC says hi.

I know a dude in this industry. Trust me, anything with a frequency can be listened in on.

yes goodbye phone providers , all my friends in a 3 mile radius bought walkie talkies

I can assure everyone, that no cell phone providers were harmed by the production of this product.

You lost me at 500 feet, that’s 152 meters. I can shout to my friend at that distance.

Hello 1995. Happy to see the 1995 Motorola Tango is back. Nice new complicated way to send text messages to each other.

"outside the control of big brother" Uses proprietary communication protocol.

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 understand anything here, yet i feel so excited to watch this.

"This will kill phone providers" *needs phone to work* lmao

They’re headed in the right direction, still much room for growth, looking forward to how much better they’ll make them

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.

The antenna makes all the difference. Currently building a small mesh network in my area.

Neat little solution. I'm having difficulty locating the problem it solves.

My dealer is going to love this

Wow that's complicated. I don't think providers have anything to worry about 😂

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.

Loved this but, utility utility utility. Imagine your grandmother using this thing, it's been a good run grandma, just flash this device and muck about with the stub antenna. If you catch my drift?

Hey props to you for not disabling the comments.

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

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.

Thank You Officer.

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 old pagers are back and just as useful as before

Don't forget about antenna polarisation - keep them vertical. For those antennas RF radiation emits as a donut.

Everyday consumer is not going to do this.

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.

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.

In 2015, a me and my supervisor talked about this technology. This will be very helpful when disaster comes and no telecommunications are available.

Great at camp while family is on the boat with no cell service. Also great for encrypting comms when you and your team are getting ready to pull a lick. People who dismiss this as just a late model pager is not thinking too critically LOL

Great so some how it did work .we are looking forward to see innovation from across the globe that will improve the quality of life and bring smiles on millions of faces .

We at the cia thank you for notifying us and we will ensure to hardwire our "protective system mangament" on to all sold chips

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.

Congratulations. You reinvented the intercom.

*I served in Ukraine for about a year before I got shot and came back to live in California. My Ukrainian squad buddies let me fly drone missions live and I control live Ordinance with real-time video feed from 12,000 miles away! Fun and amazing!*

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.

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.

Great video - thank you - been interested in LoRa for some time now - you detail and explain it well.

Definitely in its early stages, can’t wait for what lies ahead for Meshtastic

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.

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.

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.

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.

1:03 That's a nice watch. Had many of them. You can even use the stopwatch function with gloves on.

I was pumped about the item and concept behind it until 17 minutes in and then it was like: This is more trouble than, (yawn), I want to deal with.

You can also use GRMS radios with rattlegram for longer range in some conditions.

This is indeed an over-engineered private paging network.

Fascinating stuff! Now's there's yet another thing to use my time/cash on! I haven't read all the comments below so apologies if this has been mentioned before. I think if you pay greater attention to the 'antenna' side of things that will improve range. Firstly, the stub antenna: not only does it have less gain, but also, it's physically shrouded by the device itself and also your hand, if you're carrying it. This will detune the antenna, causing a mismatch with the device, resulting in even more inferior range-performance. With the longer whip, not only does it provide more gain but only the connector and coil(?) at the bottom are shielded by the device, leaving the antenna exposed and visible. Also, hand-holding the device does not mean you're also holding on to the antenna. Another thing to consider is the orientation or 'polarisation' of both antennas, with respect to each other. For consistent results, both should either be horizontal or vertical. Preferably, vertical, as then both antennas will definitely be broadside to one another, maximizing signal range. This might be why your drone test wasn't as impressive as hoped for. The device on your drone was horizontal and I'm assuming the other device was vertical. This can make a huge difference. :-)

Really good explanation and run-through of the tech. Since it has to interface with a cell phone in order to send/receive text, I wonder how "private" it really is. I understand the device encrypts, but cell phones capture pretty much everything that goes through them and sends all of that data (and audio and video?) back to who-knows-where at some dark, dusty NSA closet. Ergo, the transmitted signal may be secure on the Meshtastic end, but who knows on the cell phone end. Oh, and I have never owned a cell phone and don't intend to start that bad habit ever. I simply don't trust them...and don't feel comfortable being connected and tracked 24 hours a day.

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.

It’s Important to understand that this device operates on line of sight. just like a walkie talkie

Very good that you know how to make those devices. Respect.

Amazing. Now everyone around me will start buying them to say “HI” to each other 😢

True! Lower frequency is increased range but yes less data can be transferred.

This reminds me of the old chat toys from the early 2000's like the CYBIKO and CHAT NOW.

Thank you for not including the unnecessary and disturbing bass music.

Thanks for sharing this . This willbe helpful for stalking victims tracked and harrassed via sting ray technology

Antenna performance is very important for transmitting, because it raises the signal at the receive end above the ambient noise level….same as increasing transmitter power. On receive end, once you have enough gain to raise the signal above the receiver’s internal noise floor, there is no improvement. The only way good antennas help on receive is if they are directional, so they don’t include interference from all directions….of course you then have to know where to aim. Of course if you are running duplex or half duplex, then both ends will want good antennae…though if one direction is just handshakes you could maybe lower data rate on the acknowledgement replies to compensate for a wimpier antenna.

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...

To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves there lies the great, singular power of self-respect.

Thanks for the video. I've been playing with Meshtastic off and on for some time. This is good info and very helpful.

I have lived in Miami so long that my mesh network was through a CB radio!

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.

US Army Signal Corp. had this in 1967 .I was there , learning repair & operation .

A better description would be "Something to entertain your kids with for half an hout; if you build two of them. Otherwise no real-world use case that is not better served with walkie-talkies"

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.

Hey brother, then antennas preform best when the are straight up in the air. Laying on their side will greatly reduce their distance.

I actually thought of making something similar to this. Neat to see it already exists.

We need this to speak to each other privately so we the people can talk without them listening

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 :) ..

@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.

The Helium Network is way more likely to extend the current network providers. Also, there are messaging apps that use bluetooth to piggyback from user to user until the end receiver. They work great in villages that don't have internet.

The future of comunication. Exciting!

This is absolutely stunning devices!!! ❤ very helped

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.

Organize crime is doing the Birdman hand rub right now 🤣🤣🤣

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

The open source makes this very interesting. It's a good start. And the chip can be amped.

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.

I recently learned about comb filtering and now I'm hearing it everywhere 💀

"Outside the control of big brother.". **HEARTILY LAUGHS IN BIG BROTHER**

I'm glad I found this video, I think I'll integrate this into my Cyber Deck as she's a disaster build. This would be useful for it to have.

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.

Great explanations in this video. However, there are many pros and cons in the radio tech realm. Thanks

This is gold when comms are down and you are unable to talk to anyone that's not shouting distance. We all take communication for granted.

Looking at the settings has options for frequency selection I think you would have to select the frequency range that would be optimized with your 915 Mhz antenna. And for max range find the optimum antenna and frequency selection. There's got to be documentation and resources for this information.

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.

Radio, line-of-sight, no threat to phones or even walkie-talkies except perhaps range. Encryption? Generally speaking, who cares? Sure some will, but seriously. Still, glad to see innovation happening in this space. Thanks.

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.

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.

They just reinvented HAM radio 🙃

Could these be used also as a transmitting/receiving beacon to locate someone? (great for backpacking/skiing etc.) I got some learnin' to do

Cute! So basically a modern Walkie-Talkie but instead of talking it's just Text.

Woah good job, my DS could do this 20 years ago. God that makes me feel old.

I am in Jupiter, have flown the Heltec V3 on my Drone and got over 5 miles with the stub antenna!