But how exactly does Meshtastic work? The answer is fairly simple. We took a look at the ThinkNode M1, a LoRa- and Meshtastic-compatible system. There is a wide selection of such systems, including on Amazon. The ThinkNode M1 comes with an e-ink display, a GNSS module, a rotary dial for powering it on and controlling brightness, two buttons, and a switch for the GNSS connection. The battery-powered system can communicate directly with other Meshtastic devices. A smartphone can be connected via Bluetooth, with the ThinkNode M1 then also acting as an external “LoRa modem.” The Meshtastic app supports setup and configuration of Meshtastic devices and also works as a messenger. This makes it easy to send messages from a smartphone. <\/p>\n
Operation via the two buttons is not entirely intuitive. The e-ink display remains easy to read even in direct sunlight, though overlapping image content can occasionally appear, which is partly due to the technology. This can happen with a partial refresh, although the ThinkNode M1 eventually performs a full refresh again. The e-ink display is relatively sluggish. Overall, we have little to criticize about the ThinkNode M1, although we simply lack the comparison base for a fully detailed assessment. Recording the user\u2019s own position works without issues. This position can also be sent to the mesh network, and the location history of a device can be displayed. Users can receive notifications on their smartphone for incoming messages. <\/p>\n
At this point, however, one thing should be pointed out directly: ranges of hundreds of miles are unlikely to be achievable with two ThinkNode M1 handhelds and a network established only between those two devices. For that, several mobile devices or repeaters have to be integrated as relay stations. With 868MHz and the LONG-SLOW modem preset, around 1,600 feet was achievable near a river, while in inner-city areas the range was more like a few hundred yards, in both cases without line of sight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But how exactly does Meshtastic work? The answer is fairly simple. We took a look at the ThinkNode…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":984783,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3159],"tags":[17467,65191,209930,86527,24876,49998,187580,547,86526,24877,86528,14998,6080,6082,53,32504,32438,273797,16,15],"class_list":["post-984782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mobile","tag-benchmarks","tag-diy","tag-funk","tag-graphics-card","tag-laptop","tag-lora","tag-meshtastic","tag-mobile","tag-netbook","tag-notebook","tag-processor","tag-reports","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-technology","tag-test","tag-tests","tag-thinknode-m1","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116637920939574708","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/984782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=984782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/984782\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/984783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=984782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=984782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=984782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}