[gardners]

Howdy, as the founder of the Serval Mesh adhoc networking protocols and hardware, what I would look for in a new radio is: 1. True packet radio mode, that doesn't hide the radioness of the link etc, but lets the programmer use it's strengths. 2. UART link, ideally using 3DR/RFD900 compatible connector (then we can include it directly in our existing systems, and so can others). 3. Field-flashable, but with robust protections on the boot loader, as it is not uncommon for a radio to be on the boot serial interface, on hardware that has only one serial port. 4. Support 434, 868 and 905-935MHz ISM bands. 5. Use advanced interference tolerant wave-forms, like Chirped Spread Spectrum or even something better. 6. Fully open chipset/firmware design, so that it can be truted. Anyway, poke me at [e-mail] if you would like to talk further about it. Paul.

[punkgeek]

Thanks for the feedback. I think this project is a little bit different, we are focusing for now on making a nice end-user friendly consumer product using hardware that is already shipping from various aliexpress vendors. our tag line is "An opensource hiking, pilot, skiing, Signal-App-extending GPS mesh communicator for $30" We are currently using RadioHead mesh library, but we might shift to a common implementation with the disaster radio geeks.

btw: Back when I was writing Andropilot I also wrote a fair portion of the code that is in those RFD900 radios (or at least was, I haven't checked in a while). I'm super glad you are using them!

[th0ma5]

Keep the hacking ability. Your large target demographic may not use or need it, but tinkerers will hype your product for free, at least in theory. See the RTL_SDR as an example, although it is a low cost DVB tuner.

[yetihehe]

> Keep the hacking ability.

Unofficially, CEO of one of the biggest vendors of dvb-t receivers in my country said that he isn't that technical, but he knows very well that he is still biggest vendor because his devices can be hacked.

[punkgeek]

oh yes - definitely want people to hack and add features (or use it as auto configuring pipes for other projects etc...). I'm just trying to say "at least for 1.0" we are trying to stay focused on this one primary thing. ;-)

[donquichotte]

Good advice. I also recommend to make sure the toolchain is usable and documentation is readily available.

I worked on a project that had an Silicon Labs EFR32, and while the hardware may have been great, their proprietary, closed-source "Radio Abstraction Interface Layer" was hard to use and badly documented.

The Eclipse based IDE that you HAD to use to configure the radio front-end (the EFR32 is a system-on-chip with an RF front-end and an ARM Cortex M4F core) is a GUI, and porting or comparing radio configs between different chip generations, and even different versions of the IDE, is a nightmare.

The Java IDE crashes regularly, debugging does not really work etc., so it really is worth taking some time to evaluate the whole package around an RF IC.

[drumttocs8]

Upvoted for the deep knowledge shared here- but as a consumer, I don't know enough to care anything about any of that. I think a mesh radio that keeps us all together on a hike, festival, or emergency situation sounds pretty cool, and being open and extensible makes it even better.

[bloopernova]

As a fellow consumer who doesn't have the knowledge to contribute to this space, I really wish I could offer something to help out with these efforts.

The idea of a secondary low bandwidth Internet being robust to interference from goverment and disasters? That stuff is true cyberpunk to me.

[punkgeek]

thanks. that was our motivation also.

[linuxguy2]

I checked out the page you linked and it doesn't load very well. FYI

* No http -> https redirect

* Broken layout when forced to https

* Play store link 404's

* Icon on the download button is broken

[gardners]

Yes, we know we need to fix the website and app store. This is the pain of depending on grants to get work done :/ Getting the app back up on Play Store is our current priority.

[gardners]

... also, if anyone is interested in helping us with maintaining the website, that would be very welcome.

[punkgeek]

really - on www.meshtastic.org?

It is just a standard github pages page. I think you might want to check your web browser config.

[jesse_m]

I think he's talking to the serval mesh guy

[punkgeek]

ah! thanks!

[jsilence]

Awesome advice!

Would love to know what you consider better than chirped spread spectrum.