This content introduces Meshcon 2025, focusing on decentralized, community-driven communication networks powered by mesh radios. It highlights the resilience, independence from traditional providers, and practical applications of these technologies, particularly for off-grid scenarios.
I am the VP of engineering for Spec 5.
Welcome to Meshcon 2025. Uh, thank you
for joining us out here in the middle of
nowhere, Florence, Texas. Um, but it is
a great place to be. Uh, and it's a
great place to play with radio gear. Uh,
so anyway, so thank you for coming out.
Thank you for being here early. I know
we're uh we're expecting quite a few
more, but hopefully they didn't get
caught in uh in Austin traffic, but
we're going to get the get the show
rolling here. Um Meshcon, Mesh Radios.
The idea here is resilience
So uh the vision for today is to bring
innovators and creators together uh to
learn about these communitydriven
communications networks um you know
fostering collaboration education and exploration.
exploration.
So uh you know some education some
networking some community building um
and actually playing with the tech. All
right. So, we are here today to talk
about decentralized networks. So, most
people are very familiar with a
centralized network. Your cell phone is
a centralized network. When I send a
text message, that text message has to
go from my phone to the tower, which you
can actually see one a couple hundred
yards that way. Um, and then from the
tower, it bounces to the recipient's
phone. Without that tower, my phone
can't send a text message to anyone else
in that room. Centralized. Most local
Wi-Fi networks kind of work the same
way. You have to be communicating with
the hub to be a part of that network. uh
these mesh radios
and even um and even similar Wi-Fi
systems are starting to become more
decentralized, meaning every every
radio, every node in the mesh creates
the network. Uh and that is the beauty
of the mesh radios that uh we're going
to be playing with today is that they
generate their own network. You don't
need a provider. You don't need any
other resources. two or three radios can
create their own network um and they can
link together
So these radios uh for this is you know
there's probably going to be a handful
of you that that know a lot about this
but there's going to be a handful of you
that don't. Um, so these mesh radios
operate on the Laura protocol which uh
operates on the 915 MHz spectrum. Um, so
for the radio afficionados out here,
you're you're probably aware of the ISM
band. For everyone else, um, the ISM
band is the uh, in industrial,
scientific, and medical band. So, it's a
specific set of radio frequencies that
have been allocated for data packet
radios. Um, you do not need a license or
any type of permission to operate in
this band as long as you are under one
watt of um transmitting power. So
whether you are a hobbyist, whether you
are a commercial company or even the
government, um you can use this this
radio frequency which the band is
actually 9002 to 928 MHz. Um but the
9115 is the middle. Um so the 915 MHz
band is interesting um because it is a
lower bandwidth than say Wi-Fi. Most of
your most most Wi-Fi is 2.4 GHz or 5.8
GHz. Um, so it's fast, but it can't go a
long distance. 915 MHz is slower, but
you can go a much further distance. Uh,
it's got a lot better better
penetration. Um, and because it's
slower, you're going to send a lot
smaller data packets. So data packets
are usually about um 200 bytes. So in a
in a text message that's 200 characters.
Um so it's rather it's rather small. Um
but instead of feet your range is miles.
Um and again cuz these radios can link
together in a mesh you can extend that
out much further. Um over on the screen
on the side I've got a map of the current
current
um mesh that's established here in
Austin. There's a club called Austin
Mesh. You can find them um on Discord
and on Facebook. And they manage this um
this really cool dashboard. Um and we
are we're way up north
um in Florence here and we can see other
radios all the way down in South Austin
over 45 miles away. Um so that is the
power of
lowcost license free subscription free
um and these low power radios running on
this 915 MHz band. Uh the other the
other unique thing that that these
radios do is along with that data packet
uh you can also share uh GPS and
telemetry data from the radio. Um so
when you're off-rid you can stay
connected with a team.
So who are who are mesh radios for? So
industry and infrastructure um you know
that's going to be data that's going to
be uh team team communications
um and and sensor data for
security for monitoring um the outdoor
adventurer or the preparedness
communities. Uh again, this is a these
are off-grid systems. You create the
network. You control the network. Um
there's no AT&T, there's no Verizon,
there's no Starlink. You are the
network. Um so no matter where you go,
you can take these with you, create your
own network, and stay in communication
with your team. Um and then first
responders and other public safety
groups are starting to get into this as
backup or tertiary comms. Um
and the other beauty of the system
unlike other communication systems is
that because of its uh public nature
um it allows
the average citizen and the first
responders to be communicating on the
same network and having the same
information in real time where a lot of
the other uh communication bands are are
uh restricted from public access and
only uh first responders can use them.
So there are three popular protocols out
there. Um and you can switch between the
word protocol and firmware. So this is
the software that runs on the radio.
These are all lowcost uh ESP32 or nrf
52based um Laura mesh radios and they
run these three these three protocols.
Um, the most popular is currently
Meshtastic. Um, Meshcore is an
upandcomer and then Reticulum is for the
really nerdy ones. Um, it does some
really cool stuff. Um, so yeah, these
are the the three main apps that you're
going to want to play with. Again,
beginner, never done any of this before.
Start with Meshtastic,
then Mesh Core, then Reticulum.
So, uh, Meshtastic was launched in 2019.
Uh, it is an open source project and
it's become turned into a global
community. Um, they're they're
estimating about 40 to 50,000 new
meshtastic radios are entering the mesh
are being sold a month. Um, here in
Austin, I think there's like 200 radios on
on
um, scattered all over the city any day.
Um, so again, they send and receive text
messages without cell cellular data or
internet. Uh, you've got live GPS
sharing and sensor telemetry uh, visible
through the app. They allow you to broad
uh, Meshtastic allows you to broadcast
messages in three modes. And this is one
of the things that I think the average
person doesn't have access to. Um, you
can do private peer-to-peer. So, just
like a standard text message, you can do
group chats. So, just like a a group
chat in your text message app, you can
establish a private channel um an an
encrypted channel that only people who
have that encryption key and you can
communicate as a group on that. And then
third, you can broadcast to anyone. So
anyone running that same frequency, you
can broadcast a message out and if they
are running another meshtastic radio and
can receive your message, they can see
it. So that's um that's something the
the broadcasting is something really
only seen in in amateur radio um for the
young kids. It's like a walkie-talkie
um where you're just transmitting a
signal out and anyone who can receive it
can listen to you. Um you can't really
do that on a cell phone. You have to
have someone's unique unique phone
number to send them a message. This
allows you to then broadcast to anyone.
Uh Meshtastic also integr integrates
with a few mapping apps. uh one called
Atac, there's another one called Sarapo
uh which are widely used by the
military. Um anyone who's played a
first-person shooter game and has had
the map with all the dots running around
on it, it's that in real life. It's the
actual app. It's called the Android
Well, the civilian version is called the
Android team awareness kit. Uh the
actual military version is the Android
tactical awareness kit. Um but these
radios integrate with that so that you
can have uh GPS tracking and team text
message communication offline.
And then uh I think I already mentioned
that that um your communications uh can
be encrypted uh for privacy and security.
security.
Mesh Core. So Meshcore is like the the
level two. Um Meshcore has only been
around since the beginning of this year.
Um, so it's it was it really kind of
came up as a competitor to Meshtastic.
Um, it does a few things differently
that for the more experienced user um or
for more specific use cases uh I think
is really cool. So all of these radios
when they're programmed with Meshtastic,
they will constantly send out what's
called a heartbeat. Um, so about every
15 to 30 minutes they will send out a
heartbeat onto the mesh to let people
know that that radio is a part of the
mesh. Um, that's cool. That means that
you don't have to do anything and you
can find other people in the mesh. When
you have hundreds and hundreds of radios
all sending these heartbeat packets out,
it can actually start to slow down the
mesh and prevent messages from coming
through because you've got too much data
traffic happening. So, Meshcore um does
things a little bit more efficiently
where instead of sending out co uh
constant heartbeats, you manually send
out what they call an advert or an
advertisement. So, it's hey, I'm here.
Who else can hear me? Um so, that really
reduces the message traffic. Um they
also have another feature which I think
is really cool. It's called a room server.
server.
So um if if you are not in range of
other mesh radios if you send a message
out no one gets it and so and you will
get an acknow you will not get an
acknowledgement that someone has
received that. So Meshcore has this
function where you set up a radio as a
room server that that room server
basically becomes like a bulletin board.
So when my radio is in range of that
room server, I can send it a message. It
stores it on that server and someone
else can then come into range, link to
that room and read it just like a chat
room. So if you are out of range and you
come back in, you can see the history of
up to like 30 32 meages, 32 previous
messages. So, that's a great uh great
option for teams who are um moving
around in the wilderness um who might
temporarily lose range of each other. Um
but it allows you to again still still
see that message history and not have
like a gap in in information.
Um it also allows you to uh manually
configure your path routing. So uh on
the meshtastic side of the world uh the
software will automatically pick the
most efficient path for your message
because your message can can bounce and
hop across multiple radios to uh extend
the distance that you can transmit. Uh,
Meshcore allows you to uh, both do the
automatic path path planning for your
message as well as you picking the
specific radios that you want to you
want your message to bounce across off
of. Um, so when when for a group that's
really setting up their own system, um,
you can really uh fine-tune how far and
and who sees se sees your message
traffic. Um,
and yeah, so it's uh it's got some more
advanced functionality, but they're they
they're really trying to focus on making
the software lighter weight um and
easier to run for these uh you know
rather low power microcontrollers that
are that are uh running this these radio
systems. And then the last system is
called Reticulum.
Um I don't even have a full grasp on how
to describe reticulum. Um but they they
call it a uh a multi-ransport
system. So it does not care what the
device is. If the if the device can have
reticulum on it, you can communicate in
the network. So uh it's not limited to
to Laura radios. So, it can also route
over TCP IP, which is internet, Wi-Fi,
all that good stuff. Uh, and serial. So,
that means that someone with a Laura
radio can talk to someone just on a cell
phone or someone on a computer. And the
system architecture, it nothing looks
different. You're all like just
communicating on the same mesh. Um, no
matter how you're actually connected.
Um, it's a Pythonbased system, so it's
Linux native, so you can run it on a lot
of small single board computers, um, and
other server systems. Um, and again,
similar to the other protocols we're
talking about, um, are pretty modular
and you can do different routing
schemes. Um,
and the the one downside to Reticulum is
that it currently does not allow group
messaging. It's only single peer
peer-to-peer. Um but again, you share
your um your kind of username. Um and no
matter how you're connected um
Laura Internet serial um you will be
able to communicate with that person.
You really won't you really won't even
know how you're connected unless you're
actually like looking at the back end.
Uh this this little uh diagram here
shows uh me connected over to the
internet to a guy in the Chicago area.
And from there we also had a node
communicating on Laura. So this is like
a Laura connection uh with with one
Laura node also connected to the
internet. So again, you can really um
communicate over multiple different um
multiple different paths. Uh so now um
we're going to hand it over to my boss,
Mr. Amir Hussein, who's playing with a
new gadget of ours that he's really
excited about. Um Isaac, you want to get
his slides up there? [Applause]
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