Can anyone explain if #Meshtastic is a good choice for family communication? As I understand, one radio pairs to one device, which would mean for a family of 3, I'd need 3 radios? How would that work in practice?
Discussion
Our family has one Heltec v3 radio per person which pairs with each person's smartphone. The phones don't need to have a SIM card nor cell service.
If you get the one DeFrisselle pointed to, you can skip the smartphone all together.
As for the question of whether it works well for family communication, it depends on how far your family goes, how many other people in your area are using Meshtastic, and whether there are a bunch of hills, valleys and buildings in the way. In my experience, putting a radio in a second story window gets you about 1km in real world conditions. Putting it on the peak of the roof does substancially better.
If you have line of sight (or close to it) the signal can easily go a few miles. If others are using Meshtastic nearby, they'll retransmit your messages so they go further.
I'm working on putting together a solar powered node that I can strap to a radio tower which overlooks our entire town. That should provide coverage for nearly everyone with a single hop. To be clear, that solar node will be one additional radio for that node on top of the one-per-person.