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# Meshtastic
_Off-topic · started by e on Sat, Jul 4, 2026 7:34 AM_
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## Original post
**e** · Sat, Jul 4, 2026 7:34 AM
What do you think about meshtastic ?
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## Reply 1
**Anonymous** · Sat, Jul 4, 2026 8:06 AM
I like that there are many nodes around which gives a better chance of finding others but sometimes my messages don't get through as I don't think it deals well in an area with many nodes due to congestion.
I prefer the Reticulum community to the Meshtastic community though, there, it seems that few individuals believe that since they've put up the most nodes they 'own' the network.
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## Reply 2
**bergie** · Sat, Jul 4, 2026 5:22 PM
We've been using Meshtastic quite successfully while cruising with our sailboat. The boat has a node, and each of us has a battery-powered node that we carry.
With this setup we can chat among the crew while out and about without needing SIM cards (or even existing telecoms infrastructure, here in the Pacific atolls there often isn't one). Distance seems good, too. In Cartagena in Colombia we could hear our anchored boat pretty much throughout the city.
The boat node connects us with boat systems, meaning that our cards start beeping if we get an alert text. The last one was a bit over a week ago about an activated Person over Board Beacon inside the atoll. That luckily turned out to be a false alarm.
Some other boats have Meshtastic too, and we've even chatted with them while offshore.
In these circumstances the Meshtastic routing setup is fine as we're not competing for airspace with hundreds of other nodes.
However, the plan is to switch most of this infrastructure over to Reticulumn. The multi-interface paradigm would mean that we can use the same chat apps both locally (over LoRa) and over long distances (over Starlink / LTE). And with Reticulum we can do much more. We already use rngit for our software projects. And I could see an authenticated NomadNet site for the boat being a much nicer way to control boat systems than the current Meshtastic texts we use.
The missing link is connecting Reticulum with Signal K, the open source "smart boat" platform we run. I built a pretty extensive Meshtastic integration, and now I need to port that (and more) over. But first I need to build a working Reticulum JavaScript library (Signal K is Node.js).
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## Reply 3
**KenAKAFrosty** · Sat, Jul 4, 2026 6:24 PM
**bergie** wrote:
> We've been using Meshtastic quite successfully while cruising with our sailboat. The boat has a node, and each of us has a battery-powered node that we carry.
>
> With this setup we can chat among the crew while out and about without needing SIM cards (or even existing telecoms infrastructure, here in the Pacific atolls there often isn't one). Distance seems good, too. In Cartagena in Colombia we could hear our anchored boat pretty much throughout the city.
>
> The boat node connects us with boat systems, meaning that our cards start beeping if we get an alert text. The last one was a bit over a week ago about an activated Person over Board Beacon inside the atoll. That luckily turned out to be a false alarm.
>
> Some other boats have Meshtastic too, and we've even chatted with them while offshore.
>
> In these circumstances the Meshtastic routing setup is fine as we're not competing for airspace with hundreds of other nodes.
>
> However, the plan is to switch most of this infrastructure over to Reticulumn. The multi-interface paradigm would mean that we can use the same chat apps both locally (over LoRa) and over long distances (over Starlink / LTE). And with Reticulum we can do much more. We already use rngit for our software projects. And I could see an authenticated NomadNet site for the boat being a much nicer way to control boat systems than the current Meshtastic texts we use.
>
> The missing link is connecting Reticulum with Signal K, the open source "smart boat" platform we run. I built a pretty extensive Meshtastic integration, and now I need to port that (and more) over. But first I need to build a working Reticulum JavaScript library (Signal K is Node.js).
Looooooove hearing really powerful use cases like this! Crazy that we're all just scratching the surface right now too.
For the JS/TS library need you alluded to, what kinds of the API would you expect/need to help port your system over? (Asking because I may be able to directly help you here with this)
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## Reply 4
**bergie** · Sat, Jul 4, 2026 10:42 PM
**KenAKAFrosty** wrote:
> For the JS/TS library need you alluded to, what kinds of the API would you expect/need to help port your system over? (Asking because I may be able to directly help you here with this)
Here's an early sketch: rns://adafb3153efd4d96d532568a5208b3b5/reticulum/reticulum-js
(also mirrored to https://github.com/bergie/reticulum-js)
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## Reply 5
**KenAKAFrosty** · Sat, Jul 4, 2026 11:15 PM
**bergie** wrote:
> **KenAKAFrosty** wrote:
> > For the JS/TS library need you alluded to, what kinds of the API would you expect/need to help port your system over? (Asking because I may be able to directly help you here with this)
>
> Here's an early sketch: rns://adafb3153efd4d96d532568a5208b3b5/reticulum/reticulum-js
> (also mirrored to https://github.com/bergie/reticulum-js)
>
>
Oh, perfect! I should have an update for you in the next few weeks, thanks
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