The "100x bandwidth" claim needs to be substantiated.<p>There are some significant regulatory issues with the current popular mesh network protocols in the USA, namely that neither MeshCore or Meshtastic are compliant with the actual FCC regulations. 100x bandwidth because you're breaking the rules isn't the same as 100x bandwidth <i>legally.</i><p>Here is the issue discussing this in the MeshCore repository: <a href="https://github.com/meshcore-dev/MeshCore/issues/945" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/meshcore-dev/MeshCore/issues/945</a>
I never understood the popularity of these protocols, because when I looked at the legal duty cycles and multiplied that by time in a day and instantaneous bitrate, the result was a disappointing amount of data per day...<p>So many spectrum rules are totally weird though: should they be interpreted per radio device? or per user?<p>What -apart from cost- prevents a user who wants more bandwidth from installing 10 devices in parallel and alternate each radio so none of the radios exceed their allowed transmit duty cycle?
These things aren't "Internet Access", they're an easy way to get service that is bandwidth-equivalent to SMS, MMS, IRC or walkie talkie, over complex and distant terrain, without any central coordinating authority. Potentially even acting as last-mile to repeater nodes that pass through the actual Internet.
> What -apart from cost- prevents a user who wants more bandwidth from installing 10 devices in parallel and alternate each radio so none of the radios exceed their allowed transmit duty cycle?<p>Folks with badges knocking on the user’s door. It is pretty trivial to locate stationary signals.
The point they are making is that if the limit is _per device_ than using 10 devices doesn't break the rules.
Law enforcement that isn't solving 50% of murders also isn't looking for exotic crimes unless there's a lot of money in it for them.
Meshtastic routing is also completely broken.
The issue you linked to is about MeshCore using channels that are too <i>narrow</i>. A mesh system claiming to offer 100x bandwidth is <i>probably</i> not violating regulations in that particular way.
Correct. The LoRa configurations mentioned which offer 100× the speed of Meshtastic/Core operate at 800 kHz and 1.6 MHz bandwidth, which are permitted by the FCC in 15.247.<p>As far as I know there's not actually anything particular to 2.4 GHz allowing higher throughput for LoRa than that the corresponding Semtech chip happens to support wider bandwidths. (I.e. no legal barrier.)<p>The tradeoff is less range due to lower link budget. Doubly so because 2.4 GHz has higher free-space path loss. You're not going to get outside your house with these speeds. The primary use (as stated in the original post) is likely through clear space with a directed antenna.<p>(The 2.4 GHz band is better suited to this use since you can use antennas with higher than 6 dBi gain. If my math is correct, anything higher than 11 dBi is a win even accounting for FSPL and the power derating the FCC imposes.)<p>(Aside, I am the author of that MeshCore ticket.)
At least in Europe the 868 Band is is in contrast to 2.4 allowed only for low duty cycle applications that do not actually occupy the channel for more than 1% afaik (given space multiplexing). I also remember also that the free to us band was quite narrow by design (we built sensor nodes bit banging a PHY transceiver that were in the grey area of unenforced rules, 20 years ago .l)
What issues does it create for others to use too narrow of a bandwidth? Why “should” the FCC care if someone is only using a small portion of the spectrum that would otherwise be fine fr them to use?<p>Thanks for educating us!
Spectral power density is the primary concern.<p>The legal power limit in these bands is 1 W. If you spread that out over 500 kHz, that signal is weaker than background noise at any given frequency for anyone more than about a city block away. (Give or take many factors.)<p>But, if you compress that 1 W into, say, 12.5 kHz (typical for FM voice), your signal is now detectable (and will interfere with other, possibly licensed, users) at over 6 times the distance.<p>There are probably other factors. For example, it's not legally sufficient to simply reduce your power by a corresponding factor. I suspect it may simply be the FCC's goal to reduce conflict between users by mandating spread-spectrum technologies for unlicensed use.<p>Note also that 47 CFR 15.247(e) [1] gives a spectral power limit which corresponds approximately with the 1 W max / 500 kHz min specified in (b)(3) and (a)(2).<p>Final side note – <a href="https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-02-151A1.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-02-151A1.pdf</a> is interesting reading as to how the current form of 15.247 came to be. Specifically it changed the rule from specifically DSSS to digital modulation generally, which in turn allowed the transition from 802.11b (DSSS) to 802.11g (OFDM) on 2.4 GHz.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/part-15/section-15.247#p-15.247(e)" rel="nofollow">https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/part-15/section-15.247...</a>
The idea with either requiring very wide band or frequency hopping on the 900Mhz band is to make it so that usages of the 900Mhz band 1. are tolerant to some loss (ie: by temporary collision) and 2. don't collide continuously (by using wide band or frequency hopping).<p>It's a mechanism to try to make the 900Mhz band more useful to uncoordinated users.
There are more rules being broken. For example, overusing the frequency which effectively prevents others users from sending messages.<p>In the end, won't be used.
i am just reading "its not allowed" "rules are being broken" "not premitted" lol. how should you invoate and break free from the current ISP model, if everythig is not premitted?
That's just "using lora in the same band as WiFi and Bluetooth" no?
The 915 MHz, 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz bands are regulated in the US largely in the same manner, see <a href="https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/chapter-I/subchapter-A/part-15/subpart-C/subject-group-ECFR2f2e5828339709e/section-15.247" rel="nofollow">https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/chapter-I/subchapter-A...</a>
At least the start of the discussion is around the 915 MHz band which is not WiFi/Bluetooth
Seems more of an issue of outdated and de facto unenforceable regulations than an issue with the protocol.
> de facto unenforceable regulations<p>I guess you have never encountered the anger and wrath of a retiree who's into ham radio and has the regulatory office on speed dial.
In the U.S. I believe the FCC has federal authority to knock down your door, if they can pinpoint an illegal interference emanating from within your home. Intent is not particularly a factor in that, since interference can have a large radius and be unintentional. Seems like an awful time to be <i>intentionally</i> emanating ‘de facto unenforceable’ illegal signals.
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"regulatory issues with the current popular mesh network protocols in the USA"<p>There are other countries in the world.<p>And there are also places where there is no electromagnetic policies (think about over the oceans).
Correct me if I am wrong but I thought the primary appeal of LoRa was range? Also isn't the primary factor in making long range radio go through things is the frequency? So 2.4ghz is the same frequency as consumer wifi right and thus would propagate about the same right?<p>It doesn't seem like this would be that useful except that the protocol is LoRa so you can have higher bandwidth between two devices if they happen to be close enough together.
LoRa would go much farther than Wifi on 2.4ghz. Lora uses Chirp Spread Spectrum (CSS) modulation while wifi uses OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing). The first being designed for extreme range while the latter for bandwidth. At 2.4ghz you could probably get LoRa connections up to 6 miles with the right antenna height.
6 miles seems a very optimistic estimation: 2.4Ghz propagation is very reduced by obstacles like buildings or trees and at that frequency the atmospheric water (fog, rain, humidity) have a big impact on propagation. And you need also to consider that 2.4Ghz is a very polluted band, then the noise floor is significatevly higher than in the 865/915 Mhz.
Moreover at 2.4Ghz the Fresnel window is smaller and the risk of multipath fading is higher.
The record seems to be 830 miles (with antennas at sea level, no less)<p><a href="https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/article/new-lora-world-record-1336-km-830-mi" rel="nofollow">https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/article/new-lora-world-reco...</a><p>But, that's receiving 3 of maybe thousands of packets.<p>There's work on bouncing of LoRA signals off the moon:<p><a href="https://engprojects.tcnj.edu/lora-eme/" rel="nofollow">https://engprojects.tcnj.edu/lora-eme/</a><p>Yes, but Joe Shmoe won't see this on their home setup trying to talk to a buddy 2 miles away behind a hill.
LORA uses a sub noise-floor link budget. It allows some pretty crazy performance, at the expense of massive speed losses. Like 203kbps for LoRa vs 1,376,000kbps for WiFi lol.(max phy speeds, ymmmv).<p>WiFi sensitivity is about -90dB, while LoRa sensitivity is around-150dB…. So that’s about a million times more sensitive. So you need about a million times more signal strength to use low bandwidth WiFi (still impossibly fast by LoRa standards) than to use low bandwidth LoRa.<p>Those are radio specifications. Real links require about 10db more to get any kind of reliability, but the comparison stands.
I did a test with my long range drone on ELRS and managed to get 6km (not miles) so it might be reachable with higher TX elevation.
> 2.4Ghz propagation is very reduced by obstacles like buildings<p>I never did much 2.4ghz stuff because that was what rich people did, or people mad enough to modify microwave oven magnetrons. However I was always under the impression that freespace loss on 2.4 was terrible. but it turns out its "only" ~9db more than 865
I have skepticism too. But also, from a recent LoRa thread, and talking about 900MHz here, but someone said:<p>> <i>Wifi HaLow 802.11ah. LoRa is another level. It works down to -146dBm. 802.11ah dies around -100dBm.</i><p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47890598">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47890598</a><p>LoRa looks like someone is dropping a saw wave on the spectrum. It so clearly looks like such a blunt force user of spectrum. Just wild.
What makes OFDM inherently worse at long range? Don't you just lengthen your symbols and use the extra frequency bins until you have tolerable losses?
When I worked in the Trimble Navigation radio group, 2.4 GHz was tried but its real world range sucked compared to ~900 MHz and CB ~450 MHz bands of existing solutions. It's simply limitations of physics that lower frequencies propagate farther (at lower bandwidth) than higher frequencies.
Just use Unifi Airfiber for 6 miles at gigabit speeds. If you're relying on line of sight then 2.4GHz is nonsense.<p>And if you don't have line of sight then no you're not getting 6 miles
> would propagate about the same right?<p>No. Free space loss increases with frequency.<p>FSP loss for 915 MHz at 10 kms is ~ -111.67 dB while for 2.4 GHz is -120 dB.<p>That is a 9 dB loss which is significant. It could mean the difference between a copy or just plain static though the LoRa is supposed to be copyable down to -140 dBm.<p>The max tx power is around 150 mW (21.76 dBm), so at 10 kms, the RSSI is 21.76-120 = -98.24 dBm which is above the -140 dBm limit.<p>This calculation is assuming there is no loss due to vegetation or humidity or other barriers.
...or have line of sight at least. But yes higher frequencies have a bigger issue with this. A great mesh network for people who live on hill tops
"Going through things" isn't always necessary / is avoidable in some deployments. And 2.4GHz signals can propagate an okay distance between nodes if there aren't things to go through. (Globalstar's emergency SOS satellite constellation uses the n53 band, which is right above the 2.4GHz "wi-fi" band, and it propagates between handsets and LEO through 1400km of air just fine.)<p>So you could probably pull off a 2.4GHz mesh outdoors in rural areas? It'd be feasible in the same places a microwave-laser hilltop-to-hilltop link would, but instead of "fast but point-to-point" it's "slow but meshed" (and with much larger tolerance for slop — you don't need to put everything on fixed masts so they have perfect line-of-sight, you can just stick them on the tops of trees or whatever and if they wave in the wind it still works.)<p>Mind you, the authors' motivating use-case for the hardware seems to be their project (<a href="https://github.com/datapartyjs/MeshTNC" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/datapartyjs/MeshTNC</a>) to (AFAICT) bridge LoRa (or some specific LoRa L2 protocol — Meshtastic, probably?) to <i>packet radio</i>, i.e. digital packet-switched signalling over amateur (HAM) radio bands.<p>In <i>that</i> context, the tradeoff of high throughput for low propagation makes sense. Insofar as you're working <i>with</i> LoRa, and want to build and experiment with a bunch of site-local devices that mesh between themselves and interoperate <i>with</i> LoRa data-link protocols, you'd likely be speaking something <i>like</i> LoRA over 2.4GHz (LoRa itself doesn't spec a way to do that, but you could make it happen within the closed ecosystem of your own home/office.)<p>And in that context, you could use a MeshTNC device as something like "LoRaLAN" router. It'd be something you'd keep somewhere central in your house (like a wi-fi router), plugged into power + an antenna (internal to your house, like a wi-fi router) <i>and</i> plugged into a packet-radio transceiver with its own even-bigger antenna, outside your house. (Like a wi-fi router being plugged into a gateway modem on its upstream WAN port.)<p>This MeshTNC device would then pick up signals from:<p>- regular LoRaWAN IoT devices and Meshtastic handsets in your building<p>- more custom devices in your building†, that you've built yourself, that use another MeshTNC module; where these other devices do their part of the meshing only on the 2.4GHz band, which means they don't need big fiddly external antennas like LoRa devices do, but can be quite compact<p>- and possibly, a <i>separate</i> bidirectional LoRa <i>repeater</i> (made from any existing "high-gain" LoRa module, i.e. the kind used in mains-powered LoRaWAN base stations) — which brings in LoRa mesh traffic from outside your building, and picks up and carries away "destined for elsewhere in this area" LoRa mesh traffic that your "LoRaLAN" device has emitted (either due to forwarding it from your 2.4GHz-only mesh handsets/devices, or due to forwarding it after receiving it from packet radio.)<p>Though keep in mind you only need that complexity for the 2.4GHz-only mesh devices, since there isn't an existing mesh to forward those packets. But this whole setup is still also a regular LoRa mesh, and so you can still use regular LoRa (e.g. meshtastic) handsets, and put out packets that make their way through your regional mesh, back to the packet-radio bridge in your building; and from there to who-knows-where.<p>† To be clear, the 2.4GHz mesh handsets would only work <i>reliably</i> inside your building (if the 2.4GHz antenna is inside your building); but knowing HAMs, half the point would be seeing how far away you could get from your house/office and have your 2.4GHz mesh handsets keep working. (You'd probably want to have a second MeshTNC "base station" with a building-external antenna to try that. Pleasantly, that doesn't complicate the topology; it's all still just mesh, so you can just drop that in.)
Capping off a pretty wild week for Meshcore: <a href="https://www.pedaldrivenprogramming.com/2026/05/meshcore-is-having-a-week/" rel="nofollow">https://www.pedaldrivenprogramming.com/2026/05/meshcore-is-h...</a>
That stuff is good for drone warfare, mesh networks already been used in Ukraine<p>E.g. drones geographically organize themselves into a chain with each of them serving as a mesh-network node, then each of them, including the tip of a chain, can be controlled by operators, and the whole setup is a closed network which works without requiring Internet access
The bandwidth of LoRa networks is really low. Anything beyond a environment sensors is stretching the design, especially on mesh networks.<p>Meshing two digit number of drones on a military grade reliability is a real uphill battle with chirp based protocols, as the high ToA reaches congestion fast.
> That stuff is good for drone warfare<p>> each of them serving as a mesh-network node<p>might have worked for a bit in the past, but is easily disrupted by jammers, and forced a switch to fiber-optic in-theater. People have learned from that and don't bother with radio anymore, even in new theaters.
Not everything is fiber optic.<p>Fiber optic tethers limit range and target conditions. You can't go into a forest or even an urban canyon, you basically need to run the drone along roads and fields. And you have to drag it with you, which reduces what you can carry. The fiber itself is very light weight and has a habit of getting sucked up into the props on quadcopters.<p>There's a lot of frequency hopping and chirp systems being used now, with a mix between analog radios mostly for FPV and digital radios or Starlink for larger ISR drones or larger gliders. Digital still gets used a lot for FPV because of how readily available it is, but good drone FPV pilots want the lower latency of analog and will take it if they can get it.
> which reduces what you can carry.<p>the flip side of that is that your operator can be miles away, and using repeaters, hundreds of miles away. As the operator is the difficult to replace part, its a fair tradeoff.<p>Frequency hopping is nice, as is spread spectrum but its still easily detectable, as is the operator.
How about spread spectrum techniques?
Something like Trellisware's TSM waveform would be a better fit:<p><a href="https://trellisware.wpengine.com/waveforms/tsm-waveform/" rel="nofollow">https://trellisware.wpengine.com/waveforms/tsm-waveform/</a><p>Nodes can cooperate to beamform and reach greater distances.
> drones geographically organize themselves into a chain with each of them serving as a mesh-network node,<p>And giving away their location. Radio is prettymuch dead for drones.
If this was good for drone warfare i think we'd see fewer carpets of fiber optic cable in the ukraine
<a href="https://focus.ua/voennye-novosti/723589-drony-rf-shahedy-poumneli-i-poluchili-mesh-modemy-foto" rel="nofollow">https://focus.ua/voennye-novosti/723589-drony-rf-shahedy-pou...</a><p>Depends on the context, I guess. Distance, jamming probability, availability of relays, etc.<p>Fiber-optics are close-range.
Seems like this would support institutional/campus environments or changing environments where the sensors at the edge are sending higher bandwidth ultimately back to an Internet node using LoRA mesh--instead of directional WiFi?<p>I'm trying to envision the application of a mesh like this. These could be examples?<p>- interconnected nodes need to share data (like images)<p>- interconnected nodes are acting as a collective array of sensors (eg. geolocation)<p>- interconnected mesh nodes provide redundant pathways back to the central node<p>- interconnected mesh nodes provide spatial diversity in case of interference or jamming<p>- nodes are mobile (eg. drone or vehicle) and mesh provides alternative connectivity based on node location and RF attenuation (also provides longer range with mesh connectivity)
> an Internet node using LoRA mesh--instead of directional WiFi?<p>not really, the reason why Wifi is useful is that its reasonably efficient and high bandwidth. Unless you need to cover hectares of land without any buildings, its easier just to use decent wifi (ie unfi)<p>Mesh networking with multi-path is really hard to tune for bandwidth efficiency, throughput and power efficiency at the same time
I’m guessing it’s just haloW without the licensing requirements.
Gonna reply here, but this isn't about <i>you</i> or this post:<p>HN has a lot of us that have ~0 idea what you'd use this for, even when we steelman, all we can do is vaguely handwave about easier to setup wireless internet on a vast compound we own.<p>Would be really cool if someone could hop in and just give a couple one off examples, i guess? Only other one handwave I can think of is IOT x assembly line stuff for businesses, but I'm real curious why individuals are so into it -- or maybe they're not, and that's why the codebase quality is so poor? Idk.
You'll read a lot of illusions and wishful intentions.<p>In the end: LoRa is only good for very short text messages at somewhat long distance (up to 10km without special setup) and without bad conditions (obstacles on line of sight, rain/fog). There is an ongoing fight between each of the two frequencies to be used as default and this publication adds another frequency into the battle.<p>There is WiFi HaLow, a relatively new WiFi protocol which seems to solve the low bandwidth issues with LoRa on relatively confortable distance (likely up to 8km, same as with LoRa in regards to Line of Sight), albeit slightly less affected by weather conditions. The advantage here is permitting to send images and binary data in general, but think about something being sent at the speed levels from 2005 (which in any case is good speed for most usable things).<p>Then there are other relevant mesh protocols yet to mention here like ESPnow which is my personal favorite. Whereas the other two options above are exotic and with transceivers around the 50 EUR and above. With ESPnow you just need any cheap ESP32 embedded device with an optional antenna to increase range for about 3 EUR (antenna included). With that you get similar returns to WiFi HaLow with less range (about 3 kilometers max on my experiments) but cheap like heck.<p>To setup internet on a vast compound, WiFi HaLow might be a good investment. If you are with a constrained budget, then ESP32 is your friend. To remember, long distance is limited so if you are considering more than 8 devices exchanging heavy data, you should just go for proper WiFi long range transmitters.
Assuming you mean mesh in general:
Meshtastic like projects<p>- emergency communication<p>- low power data transfer for sensors<p>- low data rate data transfer for mobile groups. Air softers use it to transmit information to each other while playing.<p>HaLow:<p>- "high" data rate over shorter range, though much higher range than 2.4 wifi
- data sharing between mobile groups like above, but high enough bandwidth for low quality video<p>- large area wifi deployments
I build environmental and structural sensor networks for work and this has my wheels spinning, but honestly I can’t think of many uses for the additional bandwidth. You could packet additional metadata maybe? GPS or network info? I’ll get one and play with it but off the top of the dome I think sub-Ghz is sufficient for most everything I do.
How are they increasing the bandwidth? It's a hardware limitation of the radios. Even if you run the lowest spread factor (SF) and highest <i>bandwidth</i> setting on the radio, it's still not great. And the radio buffer is 255 bytes. I'm also curious why they're starting a new project with the SX1276 instead of SX1262.
There is also a Long Rage (low data rate) function built into the ESP32, claiming 1KM line of sight, see: <a href="https://www.hackster.io/news/long-range-wifi-for-the-esp32-9429ab89f450" rel="nofollow">https://www.hackster.io/news/long-range-wifi-for-the-esp32-9...</a>
I think I can give it a pretty nice use: distributed ring signature over long distances. We can distribute people over different regions for redundancy and form long distance encryption channel to deliver a signature of some data, and use it to make consensus with enough provenance. Kind of like e-voting but with stronger assumptions.<p>By using a long distance communication device this eliminates the proximity strike problem. This could easily be extended to say like distributing the voting rights to different generals at different regions, and given that the device is genuine and not modified, can be a hardware voting key to say like launch the nuke in secrecy or not.<p>Whether adversarials can use the radio signals that it emits to triangulate you and thus track you is another story, though.
Propagation (FSPL) is a lot better at 868/915 Mhz than 2.4Ghz.
What is the advantage to have a "super BLE", that can propagate for few hundred meters?
Sounds like a solution to a problem already solved by DECT NR+ -- a 5G technology that is 'subscription free'.
I didn't know about this. Neato. Links for the lazy:<p><a href="https://www.nordicsemi.com/Products/Wireless/DECT-NR" rel="nofollow">https://www.nordicsemi.com/Products/Wireless/DECT-NR</a><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DECT-2020" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DECT-2020</a>
DECT is definitely neat. But it’s significantly different than LoRa. At the lowest/slowest modulation you might get single digit kilometers out of it.<p>Doesn’t change my excitement about it a bit though. Eager to get this onto my workbench!
If could manage and firmware upgrade it over the 2.4GHz.
I know it’s all open source and I’m not paying for anything so I cant be choosy. But after playing with a bunch of Lora peer to peer chat systems. All I wish is a chat service that uses haloW. Since it uses wifi backend, regular wifi should work as well.
Is the design for this open source? I’m not an rf guy so it would be really handy to be able to reuse some parts of this in my sensor network on our farm. I can do the digital and sensor part all day, but I respect the skill of rf engineering in getting decent performance out of tiny pcbs.
Did anyone else think of LoRA [0] at first?<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LoRA_(machine_learning)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LoRA_(machine_learning)</a>
Sending photos on meshtastic
With that frequency range, I really hope the people using it have radio licenses.
How does this compare to Meshtastic, MeshCore and Bitchat?
Is the poster maybe confusing bandwidth (range of frequencies over which a single board can work) with bandwidth (data transfer speeds in bits per second)?
Cue xkcd on standards. I've been interested in mesh radio, and I keep hoping that a winner will emerge. Probably won't until a large commercial vendor gets interested and picks one.
Sounds like bs. Why would someone pay $50 for almost 10 years old hardware when there are plenty of well-supported and cheaper options like MuziWorks Duo / Ebyte / etc with newer LR1121 or LR2021 which combine both 2.4G and SubG bands in single and modern chip at 1/2 of the cost less? SX1281 and SX1281 are relics.
100x of what? As someone not too familiar with LoRa, what is the significance and how this could be used?<p>Say I start the node and then what?
What is the max distance between nodes in the mesh
nice to not see some non-ai titles
Every day, we get closer to reinventing Ricochet, 27 years later...
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Does it run Doom?
These technologies may not be illegal atm but as soon as the eu gets around to it they probably will be. These things circumvent all their control!?!
This should be a "Show HN:" given it's author submitted and quite promotion heavy.<p>AFAICT, this just combined two chips on a board. And the 100x bandwidth is due to using a higher frequency chip. Nothing revolutionary.