This section will detail a recommended Reference Setup for Reticulum. It is important to note that Reticulum is designed to be usable on more or less any computing device, and over more or less any medium that allows you to send and receive data, which satisfies some very low minimum requirements.

The communication channel must support at least half-duplex operation, and provide an average throughput of around 500 bits per second, and supports a physical layer MTU of 500 bytes. The Reticulum stack should be able to run on more or less any hardware that can provide a Python 3.x runtime environment.

That being said, this reference setup has been outlined to provide a common platform for anyone who wants to help in the development of Reticulum, and for everyone who wants to know a recommended setup to get started experimenting. A reference system consists of three parts:

An Interface Device

Which provides access to the physical medium whereupon the communication takes place, for example a radio with an integrated modem. A setup with a separate modem connected to a radio would also be an interface device.

A Host Device

Some sort of computing device that can run the necessary software, communicate with the interface device, and provide user interaction.

A Software Stack

The software implementing the Reticulum protocol and applications using it.

The reference setup can be considered a relatively stable platform to develop on, and also to start building networks or applications on. While details of the implementation might change at the current stage of development, it is the goal to maintain hardware compatibility for as long as entirely possible, and the current reference setup has been determined to provide a functional platform for many years into the future. The current Reference System Setup is as follows:

Interface Device

A data radio consisting of a LoRa radio module, and a microcontroller with open source firmware, that can connect to host devices via USB. It operates in either the 430, 868 or 900 MHz frequency bands. More details can be found on the RNode Page.

Host Device

Any computer device running Linux and Python. A Raspberry Pi with a Debian based OS is recommended.

Software Stack

The most recently released Python Implementation of Reticulum, running on a Debian based operating system.

To avoid confusion, it is very important to note, that the reference interface device does not use the LoRaWAN standard, but uses a custom MAC layer on top of the plain LoRa modulation! As such, you will need a plain LoRa radio module connected to an controller with the correct firmware. Full details on how to get or make such a device is available on the RNode Page.

With the current reference setup, it should be possible to get on a Reticulum network for around 100$ even if you have none of the hardware already, and need to purchase everything.

This reference setup is of course just a recommendation for getting started easily, and you should tailor it to your own specific needs, or whatever hardware you have available.

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