I'd buy one at $200.
Discussion
what's the bandwidth like on these things?
my house internet is 500mbit/100mbit
doesn't really seem that useful except for sensors and text messages from what impression i get of the bandwidth of these things
i mean, that's nice for what it is i guess
Low. That's exactly what it is good for. Plus, the mesh nature of the network is rather robust with enough nodes and elevation.
These devices were (and are) invaluable in disaster areas and when all the internet infrastructure is disrupted. An example of this is what happened last year in North Carolina and the surrounding States. Meshtastic nodes played a critical role in helping coordinate rescuers relief.
yeah, i see the use for it, all kinds of uses, and it pairs well with nostr, especially if you make a more bandwidth optimised protocol encoding, plus, you can flip the model a bit because mesh nodes are peers not master/slave connections, you could have nostr relays in your place and on your devices and their location is propagated and other nodes can push messages to the network listener
Yeah, it's not an Intetnet replacement. With the radio setting I'd get 1.07kbps. The max is 21.88kbps. But that's not the point of this network.
I also am working on an 802.11 mesh network, which IS high bandwidth. The problem is that it's short range (typical wifi range). This is the trade off with radio.
Long range, difficult to disrupt, but low data rate or,
Short range, interference easily causrs packet loss, but high data rates
Here's the page with the speeds that I quoted. https://meshtastic.org/docs/overview/radio-settings/
And here's the project that I work on intermittently which in intended to do 802.11 mesh networking with whatever gear you havr lying around.