No internet required… In this video, I build a public Reticulum node and test whether it can bridge completely different networks into one encrypted communication path. I send messages from a normal phone over LTE, through the internet and Starlink, then off-grid over LoRa—eventually using a $20 drone-mounted relay to reach a phone with no internet connection at all.

repo: https://github.com/markqvist/reticulum

  • AgentSeven@lemmy.zip
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    2 hours ago

    I believe this stuff is going to be huge. Reticulum, Lora, Meshtastic all bit players now in a drama that has yet to get a finished script. It will start out as a supplement to the Internet, allowing you connectivity even when your Internet falters and as it becomes more ubiquitous, it will be increasingly used/usable and increasingly important. It can’t be shut down, it can’t be controlled. A country would literally have to ban radio signals of any kind in order to shut it down. It’s free. Buy the hardware, use the network, because you are the network. I love this.

  • ThePantser@sh.itjust.works
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    6 hours ago

    “Internet killer”

    I send messages from a normal phone over LTE, through the internet… to reach a phone with no internet connection at all

    • NOPper@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      6 hours ago

      Sure. But the point is with Reticulum you dont NEED to leverage existing internet infrastructure. This guy chose to for his demo, but you could easily do the same thing over RS485, or a serial port, or ametuer radio bands. The protocol is medium agnostic.

      No, its no internet killer. But its useful right now and pretty fun to mess around with.

  • Telorand@reddthat.com
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    5 hours ago

    Reticulum is a great project, but it’s not a replacement for the internet. LoRA (a potential piece in that chain) has very low data throughput; it’s fine for messages, but you’re not delivering web pages or streaming media with it.

    Unless and until the throughput can be increased, Meshtastic/Meshcore is really only a replacement for text messaging, which might be perfectly fine for setting up encrypted comms or rapidly deploying communications in an emergency scenario.

    • sculptor0725@sh.itjust.works
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      10 minutes ago

      That was the thing that made me think reticulum was worth pursuing actually. It does work over a lot of stuff besides lora. You can mesh WiFi routers or other protocols. The issue is bandwidth ota since so much is dedicated to commercial stuff, but you can route reticulum over that including through i2p for anonymity. Meshtastic very much focuses on lora only, reticulum does not.

    • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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      2 hours ago

      Both are terrible for that. I hope that it’s a small number of people that get killed relying on LoRa for emergency communications that result in the project(s) being sued out of existence.

      Hey guys, I’ve got a great idea: Let’s buy some $15 Arduino-like devices with milliwatts of transmitter power and trust them to life and limb! Even stupider than the people who buy Baofeng radios to put in a “bug out bag” and never use. Those at least mostly work.

    • artyom@piefed.social
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      1 hour ago

      There’s a guy that lives maybe 2 miles from me. Could see nodes all around him, and many even further away, but could never see him.

    • foxfell@lemmy.ml
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      3 hours ago

      Where are you living? Make sure you read local forums, they might have specific connection settings to hide. Anyway meshtastic is slow and cannot even transmit voice. This could be better if there will be nodes.