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Did MESHTASTIC Die At Hamvention?? | Ham Radio Crash Course | YouTubeToText
YouTube Transcript: Did MESHTASTIC Die At Hamvention??
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In highly dense MeshTastic networks, like those found at events or in urban areas, the default "long fast" channel setting can lead to network saturation and prevent users from sending messages. This is because the network becomes overwhelmed with nodes broadcasting their presence, consuming the available transmission time.
kill is kind of a clickbaity word here I
appreciate but it it is nuanced and I I
need to explain so recently at ham in
2024 there were over a hundred of these
little nodes these mesh tastic nodes and
if you've been following my channel for
long enough you've seen me do some deep
Dives on how to build them how to set
them up how to use them it's grown Leaps
and Bounds on the videos I've made and
I've tried to keep up with some of the
things they they've done even
interviewing a couple of the developers
I'll post a link in the video
description it was a really good talk
but what we found was there was so many
of these nodes meshing right cuz what do
these do right they occasionally
transmit hey I'm here hey I'm here let's
be friends and then they can send
information their packets packets is
just a useful term I'm using here it's
probably not the right term but they'll
transmit their little pieces of
information across this mesh that they
build out every time a new one of these
pops up they either build these people
in or they take nodes out as they stop
responding or stop beaconing well when
you have that many nodes in one location
it gets to the point where the entire
time or what we call link budget
capability of how many beacons you could
put into a second a minute or whatever
was almost entirely saturated by these
little devices saying I'm here so am I
hey I'm over here too let's be friends
what it caused to happen was when we
would try and send a message the human
beings actually trying to use the mesh
Network we weren't able to get our
Transmissions out we were getting
messages that said maximum transmission
reach or retransmission reach which
means the mesh device tried to send our
message multiple times to get it out
onto that time link Budgy thing and it
wasn't able to do it now this isn't a
failure of mesh tastic that's the first
thing this isn't a bug that we uncovered
this isn't a problem with mesh tastic
let me get that right out of the way
there's nothing mesh tastic is doing
wrong and I actually reached out to the
developers to confirm hey what do we do
in the future to handle this and of
course I want to be really clear mesh
tastic is used in much greater numbers
at places like Defcon Coachella The
Burning Man you know those big events
these huge events and also in urban
environments so the tips I'm going to
talk about today are going to be about
mesh tastic use in urban environments or
a very Dench mesh Network there are two
fundamental tips that the developers
recommended and there's a third that was
recommended by the user community on how
best to prevent this overloading
saturation and not being able to use
your messaging capability the first is
you must have
mqtt turned off if you're going to be
using just the standard Channel system
if you've got a 100 nodes and they're
all on the same channel you got to have
make sure that mqtt is turned off what
is mqtt well it is basically where one
of these guys will have a connection to
the internet via Wi-Fi or you know
whatever and it will try to bring in
other nodes from the internet that are
also mqtt enabled say in another part of
the country or another part of the world
into the node dense node Network that
you are currently operating in we had a
couple of these at Hamvention and they
worked great the first day it was really
cool we were actually seeing nodes pop
up in Texas and New York and all over
the place where people had used my QR
code remember that I made before
Hamvention and they were able to join
our Network which was fun we were able
to you know chat with people that was
the day before Hamvention kicked off and
at that time it was pretty novel and fun
when Hamvention started on Friday the
mqtt stations being somewhat aided by
the internet were getting pulled in and
it was causing all kinds of slow down
because now we've got even more
congestion and whatever the effect of
trying to bounce all this stuff across
the internet was causing through one
little poor node or multiple nodes are
like help help I can't handle all this
have mqtt turned off that's the the
first thing and if you you're like I
don't even know what mqtt is it's fine
it's actually not something that I'm not
really I'm not really an advocate of
that anyway with mesh tastic I'd prefer
this mesh to just be mesh tastic and not
use the internet in any way it's novel
for those that need it but just skip it
so the second thing and this one is
probably going to be the most important
when you spool up your first mesh tastic
device it's going to have a primary
Channel Channel Zero it's going to be
long fast so I I just did a a big deep
dive because I I I use the word uh
packet and that's not correct the term
that Laura uses is called a chirp and
that is a uh it it's basically a
pre-formulated message that's controlled
by time and it's almost identical to
satellite communication which I thought
was really cool so it's broken up into
sections there's a preamble bit there's
a sync section or a sync symbol there's
a payload and the payload could be like
hey I'm Josh's metastic I'm right here
and this is my Telemetry information or
my GPS information and there's a CRC and
CRC is just like a number value that if
you took that whole message and did a
algorithm against it those numbers
should match got it it it doesn't really
matter if you got it or not but there's
this spreading Factor right so we've
been talking short medium long or long
fast dot dot dot dot dot right so the
spreading factor is how long it takes
for that chirp to go out so if we are on
long fast mesh tastic is basically
saying hello I am Josh's mesh tastic I
can be found at this this location but
if you're using short it's more
equivalent to like the Micro Machines
guy back in the uh the ' 80s and 990s
like hello I'm Josh mtic I can be found
right here here's my Telemetry it's it
it reduces the time it takes to transmit
the same amount of information this is
important because it allows you better
use of what we called link budget or
that time in which any one of these
nodes could be transmitting right so if
you are in a highly contested mesh
network setup with lots of these
different nodes you dear viewer you
might not want to use long fast you
might not want to stick to that default
primary zero channel in fact the devs at
mesh tastic told me we should play
around with medium and fast make your
channel your primary Channel a a short
fast and then have a backup uh redundant
channel channel one channel two Etc you
can play around with it at that point so
yeah that's that's kind of the tips here
we didn't necessarily break mesh tastic
but we definitely uh bumped our head
against the ceiling of that long
spreading factor which I just learned a
lot about and if you'd like to learn
more about it a fantastic video that I
found link will be in the description
from Richard
Varner I uh I didn't I didn't expect it
would to line up right with what I do as
far as an engineer but boy it got there
real quick and I was like oh you dummy
and so that was was that was kind of fun
I find more interesting things about
mesh tastic every time I I play around
with these but yeah that that was uh
that was a cool one anyway if you found
this video helpful and and you live in
an urban contested environment and
you're like oh my God I don't know these
things don't work right maybe play
around with some of your channels and
you'll probably do a little bit better
give that a shot I'm Josh k6 naaz thanks
so much for watching and I'll talk to
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