Comment by 👻 darkghost
Re: "How big is the intersection between Geminauts and…"
It is not WiFi and the default public channel is 1 kbps. It is useful for relaying information across a large geographic area using low power radios without a license. And it is encrypted. With the density in my area I was able to send a message from my work in the nearest major city 45 miles to my home. I don't know how reliable communications are at that distance but I haven't been able to achieve that in HAM radio with portable rigs. (I am not putting up a gigantic antenna at work.)
2025-09-11 · 8 months ago
22 Later Comments ↓
ok. that's quite interesting. I was not aware you can deal with such distances.
what about interferences/obstacles?
👻 darkghost · 2025-09-11 at 23:21:
At 900 MHz in the US these are considerations. That frequency is line of sight so height and not being densely forested will make a difference. My range improves in the winter months. It uses the ISM band which means interference is possible. Despite all this it does work. The online maps I have found capture a small number of the RF nodes I can see.
☯️ Cotteux · 2025-09-12 at 12:29:
I use Meshtastic with a bbs called Meshing-around. I try gemini on meshtastic (is doable but so slow and disrupting) https://github.com/cotteux/Meshbrowser . The best way to browse Gemini over Lora is Reticulum Network. it's work great, on 1.5 km at 3.14kps, using the proxy in sherbynode but I also working on a proxy using lagrange.
🐙 norayr · 2025-09-13 at 00:07:
today i was freezing at the roof to see if i can see the meshtastic node of my friend who lives not more than 3 kms away.
we tried last time around a month ago and were not able.
but this time we were able! not directly but via 2 or even 3 hops.
there are more meshtastic users around!
still meshtastic has no clear separation between the application network layers (or i don't understand it) and i can't use netcat over meshtastic. or can i?
in this sense perhaps something like wifi halow + yggdrasil would be much better, but my concern is power saving: i suspect ygg needs linux and linux needs lots of power.
🐙 norayr · 2025-09-13 at 00:07:
so we can't just hang linux boards with solar batteries and rechargeable batteries here and there.
🚀 shtrophic [OP/mod] · 2025-09-14 at 17:27:
Well, meshtastic is obviously not WiFi, but the same rationale applies to gemini, which is obviously not HTTP :)
🚀 devoid · 2025-09-15 at 17:08:
I'd like to but I'm not.
Would be good for the network too. There are no nodes within a 100 miles of me or so.
I've already determined where to place the nodes, now I just need the money and time (and a decent dev job) to set it up.
🐙 norayr · 2025-09-17 at 22:21:
i got my device because i saw a friend i knew from other town at art exhibition. and we talked and i told him about meshtastic. he have heard about lora but not meshtastic. and he said: i have already everything necessary to build it. don't bother buying anything, it is dirt cheap. he already had esp32, a screen, lora module and battery and antenna. and he printed a case for it.
he gave me a device a couple of days later, he said each component is like a couple of dollars.
but if you buy online an assembled device it is much more expensive.
👻 darkghost · 2025-09-17 at 22:42:
All true. It is about $30 in parts and people sell them for $80 or more.
i'd really like to go into lora... so far only running a reticulum/nomadnet node on an older smartphone with postmarketOS, which is amazing. but beeing able to comunicate without sim would be a dream @norayr: yes we can hang some boards on solarpanels and mount them guerilla stile on high places, people already doing this...
🐙 norayr · 2025-09-25 at 00:18:
yes we can hang some boards on solarpanels and mount them guerilla stile on high places, people already doing this...
not some boards but linux boards. linux boards are less power efficient than esp32 boards. i was discussing possibility of using linux plus halow plus yggdrasil instead of esp 32 with lorawan.
👻 darkghost · 2025-09-25 at 00:53:
I have a very energy efficient solar node based on the rak4631. It could go for a month without the sun. The panels are 2x 1 watt panels and the batteries are 2x 5Ah 21700 lithium batteries.
ESP32 is pretty power hungry for solar nodes. Linux boards like the Raspberry Pi are practically out of the question at least guerrilla style. I have run a Raspberry Pi 3 off of a 20 watt panel and a used car battery. It died after 9 days of rain. I had to charge it up to 60% and the sun slowly brought it back to a reasonable charge over a month or so.
then i would go for a flashed smarthphone...
I think the similarity of Meshtastic and Gemini is minimalist communication, as I'm not sure Gemini is best described as off-grid.
I've been operating Meshtastic relays for about a year now in ND.
One of the things I find appealing about Gemini is how well-suited it seems to something like a low-power high-altitude 802.11 deployment. Gemini needs TCP, which translated directly to radio typically involves the dark arts of AX.25 ...
@Ian_Grey thank you for mentioning AX.25, i was searching for such a protocol and could not find it.
i'll explore now!
👻 darkghost · Jan 21 at 17:12:
Linux has kernel modules to allow you to bind AX.25 to serial devices. There are reasonable things you can also do with raw audio (eg use a sound card as a modem.) It is a data link layer (like ethernet and WiFi) so TCP sits on top of it. You can use it without TCP like in APRS.
Conventionally on HF you use 300 BAUD, VHF 1200 BAUD, and UHF 9600 BAUD. These aren't fast protocols but are intended to fit in the space of a voice channel over the radio.
yes very cool.
am i right that unlike meshtastic these radios operate on frequencies for which i need a permit?
👻 darkghost · Jan 21 at 22:42:
That is correct. An amateur technician license will let you do VHF and UHF. You can do hundreds of watts and communicate a hundred miles or more.
@norayr AX.25 is explicitly disallowed on unlicensed TX frequencies. So, you more or less need licensure to legally use AX.25 anywhere. As long as you're not causing interference, you can mostly get away with unlicensed testing without any issues. However, never ever ever connect to the Internet via Winlink etc on a pirate connection, or the neckfat sleuths will be talking about you for weeks.
i guess this is very much offtop here, and if/when i get a license and equipment, i will know it, but i know you need to tell in the radio cast your identification, but ax.25 is not your voice, how do you identify yourself?
👻 darkghost · Jan 22 at 13:20:
The software you're using handles that.
Original Post
How big is the intersection between Geminauts and Meshtastic users? — I wonder how many people here are also meshtastic users! After all, one could say that Geminispace is as "Off-Grid" to the Internet as Meshtastic is to ... WiFi? Just on a different layer of the OSI model!