What is MeshCore?
MeshCore is an open, community-built messaging network. Instead of routing your messages through a carrier's towers and a company's servers, it hands them radio-to-radio between nearby devices until they arrive.
The short version
You install the MeshCore app on an iPhone or Android phone. You pair it over Bluetooth to a small, inexpensive LoRa radio, often a board the size of a stick of gum, costing less than a nice dinner. From then on, your phone sends messages through that radio rather than through a cell tower.
Your radio doesn't need to reach the person you're messaging. It only needs to reach some other node. That node passes the message along to another, and another, until it lands. This is what “mesh” means: the network is made out of its own users.
Why a community builds this instead of a company
A carrier puts a tower where the population density justifies the capital. That is a perfectly rational business decision, and it is exactly why there is no coverage on the back half of a thousand-acre ranch, in a river canyon, or in a county three days after a hurricane took the power out.
A mesh has the opposite economics. Coverage grows because individual people put up individual nodes for their own reasons, and every one of those nodes serves everybody else nearby for free. There is no business case to satisfy, only whether somebody in the area cared enough to mount an antenna.
That is what Comchan does in Central Texas. We help people get their first node working, we host repeaters in spots that fill gaps, and we run the network analyzer and mesh explorer so anyone can see what the network is doing and plan where it should grow next.
What it is not
- Not a replacement for your phone plan. You cannot call 911 on it, stream anything, or browse the web. It carries short messages.
- Not ham radio. MeshCore runs on license-free ISM bands. No exam, no callsign, and, unlike amateur radio, encryption is permitted.
- Not guaranteed. It is a volunteer network on unlicensed spectrum. It is astonishingly useful and it is not a service level agreement.
MeshCore
iOS · Android · open source
- Carries
- Text, position, telemetry
- Encryption
- End-to-end, on by default
- Spectrum
- 902–928 MHz ISM (US)
- license
- None required
- Cost to join
- One radio, then nothing
- Typical hop
- 1–9 miles line of sight
Privacy is structural, not promised
The three jobs a node can do
Every device on the mesh is doing one of these. Most people start with the first and end up running the second.
Companion node
The radio in your pocket or truck. It pairs to the MeshCore app over Bluetooth and does the actual transmitting and receiving on your behalf.
Repeater
A node placed somewhere high with a decent antenna. It listens for packets and forwards them onward, extending reach for everyone in the area.
Room server
An always-on node that stores messages for a channel so people who were out of range, or had their radio off, can catch up when they return.
Community infrastructure, on purpose
- No account, ever
- There is no sign-up, no phone number, and no email. Your identity is a keypair generated on your device the first time you open the app.
- Nobody owns the network
- Comchan runs some repeaters. Other members run others. If we vanished tomorrow, every node someone else put up would keep relaying.
- Open source, openly discussed
- The firmware and apps are open. Protocol changes are argued about in public before they ship, which is exactly what you want from something you may need in an emergency.
- Deliberately small messages
- MeshCore carries text, positions, and telemetry, not photos or video. That constraint is what lets a message cross six miles on a coin-cell-sized power budget.
Comchan's role is unglamorous and important: answering “which board should I buy,” getting firmware flashed on a Saturday afternoon, and putting repeaters where the coverage map is thin. The network gets better one person at a time.