Anyone using any custom #meshtastic channels? Here in #sacvalleymesh I've been experimenting with some ideas... 
Discussion
Are they just different keys? Or are you doing something different with the broadcast itself?
They all just use the default key of AQ== except for ghostmesh which is part of ghostnet. https://github.com/s2underground/GhostNet
Then how are they distinguished on the network? Like if I send something, how do I get it to show up in “News” on your node?
Anyone who adds a channel named News with the same key can read and post.
Interesting. I don’t know it worked like that.
So if I just send to my default channel with that same key, it doesn’t appear in News? Where would it appear? I see you have a LongFast channel. Maybe there?
Once you add a channel it will show up in your chats tab and its like you've joined a chat room. Any other node configured with the same channel will also be in that room.
I like this idea. I have custom channels, but they are either private or quasi-private (like the HackerComms channel, which will be at every HackerCon from now on).
I got the weather on LongFast when I was visiting Seattle, which was an absolute delight. Might be better on its own channel, but than again, I wouldn't have found it if it weren't on LongFast.
I feel like bots could have some potential. Like send "/channels" on LongFast to see channels, and then something like "/7day" to get the 7 day forecast on demand. Could be done with a computer over serial or MQTT with a node that is on wifi. Probably already several projects that do it, if you can find 'em. Link us to them if you know of a meshtastic bot program that actually works.
I actually created the Alerts channel for my space weather bot. It was posting space weather alerts to LongFast but I didn't want to annoy people at odd hours if they weren't interested. I had my bot post a notification to LongFast occasionally for a few days to let users know about the channel.
To do all this I'm using #homeassistant as a back end which is really easy if you already have HA set up. Then the bot has access to all kinds of data online and off. I can also control HA using meshtastic messages.
I like the idea about a regular channels announcement. I think I'll implement it today. Here's my current bot menu. It only replies to DMs currently. Considering creating a prefix that it would respond to in LongFast. 