Our recently concluded event in Europe saw the return of the Hackaday Communicator badge — a stylish handheld gadget with a QWERTY keyboard, a LoRa radio, and an ESP32. It came complete with a simple messaging app built into its MicroPython firmware, and by all accounts it was a great success.
But there was certainly room for improvement, which is where [Giovi321]’s new firmware for the badge comes in. It brings support for Meshtastic proper, as well as longer battery life support for GPS module. To install this firmware you will need to have the ESP-IDF but fortunately there are very comprehensive instructions provided to help you. Under the hood it’s running FreeRTOS.
It’s something which is so often missing with an event badge, any sense of how it might have a life after the event rather than becoming a piece of e-waste. The Communicator badge is such a nice physical design that it obviously has potential, so this firmware unlocks it and gives the badge a use out in the real world. We really like it for this, and we’ll be flashing a few of our badges over to give it a shot shorlty.
If you’re looking to upgrade the hardware on your Communicator, check out the custom RGB keyboard we covered last week.
No Love for MeshCore? Either way, re-implementing the protocol guarantees it’s an ongoing maintenance hassle :/
Meshcore is a re-implementation of Meshtastic, so i guess it is also an ongoing maintenance hassle.
No, it very much is not. They are completely independent projects with nothing in common except that they are both mesh networking systems that operate over LoRA. You might as well have said something like “a car is a reimplementation of a horse”. Good luck riding a car the way you drive a horse.
For one, the network architecture is fundamentally different. Meshtastic makes every node also operate as a repeater, which works in adhoc circumstances where nodes are few and far between but starts to struggle in urban settings once node density gets high. MeshCore deliberately requires all nodes to either be a repeater or an endpoint.
if i’m understanding correctly, sounds like a good summary of why neither tastic nor core is worth anything, then :)
i would have thought the whole point of a mesh networking standard would be to hide that detail from the end user, to automatically repeat only when desirable (when densities are low). otherwise it kind of seems like either a poor implementation (tastic) or no different from a regular non-mesh network, just “smaller” (core)
That falls into “technology isn’t magic”. Anything that looks like it is is the proverbial duck – serene on the surface, furious paddling underneath.
The only reason some communications technologies look seamless to the end user is due to a lot of expensive infrastructure (in money or time or effort.) If you want a cheap low-infrastructure network, you’re going to have to accept some tradeoffs.
Adaptive role negotiation in a LoRa mesh.
Exactly, and this is a problem for the growing interest in meshtastic uses, as it’s simply less flexible for most things people actually need, including routing.
I think what’s necessary to bridge the end-user usability gap is devices running both endpoint and repeater instances. Yes there are problems, but only the same ones meshtastic navigates now. The recommendation would be for people with the capability to run dedicated repeaters, or switch their device to run only in one mode to accommodate the situation.
Wait what? No it isn’t :D
I think it’s work-in-progress by guax
Very little happening since forking the repo, publicly anyway. I hope they are working on it though.
Near, hear. Everybody seems to think mesh core is just meshtastic but harder to set up, which has led to far more support on the mess flexible project imo.
It would be awesome if there was some way for Hackaday readers to get one of these. Im travel constrained, I “go to ” the event once the video is uploaded.
Agreed. These badges are always so cool but just a little bit out of reach 😅
And to anyone for whom these are e-waste/clutter, please consider selling them online, the rest of us would love these!
This is very cool, but I don’t have one so it just makes me jealous :D
“It’s something which is so often missing with an event badge, any sense of how it might have a life after the event rather than becoming a piece of e-waste.”
Nostalgia will keep if from being E-waste even if it ends up on a shelf.
True too. But in this case Jenny’s comment is straight on point.
This badge was designed from the beginning to be a useful communicator/radio after the cons. We picked a pinout and the various components that we knew would be most easily ported to existing firmwares. We made sure it would work in US and EU. We chose an SMA connector instead of the cheaper PCB or chip antenna so that it’s easily extensible. Etc, etc.
And then we stood back and watched people who are better at software than we are make it happen. :)
If the only value is nostalgia I think you’re missing the point.
flipper one can learn from this project
How? They encourage development in many ways.