Hacker News: mikeytown2

New comment by mikeytown2 in "An Introduction to Meshtastic"

mikeytown2 — Fri, 08 May 2026 16:48:41 +0000

It's because we've tried Meshtastic and MeshCore. Look at where the bytes go in the network. Meshtastic it's usually under 5% of traffic is text and for MeshCore it's over 50%. If you want to communicate MeshCore is designed to do that.

New comment by mikeytown2 in "My First Meshtastic Network"

mikeytown2 — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 03:15:12 +0000

He went off the rails as a reactionary move is how I see it. He got mad because his issue was deleted. I'm banned from the discord for a disagreement with one of the developers; but I've done code contributions to the project as well.

New comment by mikeytown2 in "My First Meshtastic Network"

mikeytown2 — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 18:39:50 +0000

Here's an example of an issue they didn't like getting deleted https://github.com/meshcore-dev/MeshCore/issues/1159

New comment by mikeytown2 in "My First Meshtastic Network"

mikeytown2 — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 18:17:39 +0000

You can run a full blown weather station on MeshCore with wind rain temperatures etc

New comment by mikeytown2 in "My First Meshtastic Network"

mikeytown2 — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 18:14:45 +0000

There's only so much bandwidth available so pick and choose what the firmware is good at. MeshCore went all in on messaging and tracing. Meshtastic is a more noisy protocol which is perfect for camping and hiking in small groups.

New comment by mikeytown2 in "My First Meshtastic Network"

mikeytown2 — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 18:11:42 +0000

Both have GitHub projects that you can compile firmware from. One is MIT, the other is aggressively GPL

New comment by mikeytown2 in "FreakWAN: A floor-routing WAN implementing a chat over bare-LoRa (no LoRaWAN)"

mikeytown2 — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 05:24:03 +0000

You'd need two radios, one antenna stacked on top of each other. Z offset of a minimum height of 1m/3'. In the X,Y offset of 0,0. You want high gain 8-10db antennas in this arrangement; you'd need more space between if you use lower gain antennas.

If you're looking for parts the Diamond BC920 is the best antenna. Station G2 with a $100 3-4mhz cavity filter for each frequency as well.

New comment by mikeytown2 in "FreakWAN: A floor-routing WAN implementing a chat over bare-LoRa (no LoRaWAN)"

mikeytown2 — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 05:17:34 +0000

6 seconds or so

New comment by mikeytown2 in "FreakWAN: A floor-routing WAN implementing a chat over bare-LoRa (no LoRaWAN)"

mikeytown2 — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 00:20:10 +0000

Checkout MeshCore; we're doing 400 miles using 12 hops going from north Vancouver to Eugene Oregon https://analyzer.letsme.sh/map?lat=47.36113&long=-122.20419&...

New comment by mikeytown2 in "Meshtastic 64 – A meshtastic radio for the Commodore 64"

mikeytown2 — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 03:57:21 +0000

They're looking at ways to have regular nodes repeat on the network. Right now it's a one line change to enable it. Doing it well and smart is what's holding it back

New comment by mikeytown2 in "Meshtastic 64 – A meshtastic radio for the Commodore 64"

mikeytown2 — Sat, 27 Sep 2025 15:56:30 +0000

Checkout MeshCore, it has the concept of a room server which is a private store and forward server. Also see this https://github.com/mikecarper/meshfirmware/blob/main/MeshCor...

New comment by mikeytown2 in "Meshtastic 64 – A meshtastic radio for the Commodore 64"

mikeytown2 — Sat, 27 Sep 2025 15:53:15 +0000

Check out the alternative https://github.com/meshcore-dev/MeshCore Seattle has the largest functioning mesh core installation in the world

New comment by mikeytown2 in "Open Source is one person"

mikeytown2 — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 16:10:57 +0000

Drupal isn't one person last time I checked; but yes this is correct for almost all projects

New comment by mikeytown2 in "Burner Phone 101"

mikeytown2 — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 04:32:35 +0000

Yes you can get decent reception inside buildings. It operates in the 915mhz band. Similar frequencies to old school pagers. Lora is an interesting RF protocol, it has really good properties for operating below the noise floor.

New comment by mikeytown2 in "Burner Phone 101"

mikeytown2 — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 04:27:49 +0000

MeshCore has verified public key sharing; see what happened to the other network at defcon. Direct messages are encrypted.

New comment by mikeytown2 in "Burner Phone 101"

mikeytown2 — Sun, 24 Aug 2025 20:59:54 +0000

Range is line of sight. If you can see it, even if 100 miles away, odds are it'll work. Seattle area has one of the better networks for MeshCore. Tacoma to Vancouver BC is the range for semi reliable messaging

New comment by mikeytown2 in "Burner Phone 101"

mikeytown2 — Sun, 24 Aug 2025 20:57:08 +0000

It's mostly open source. https://github.com/meshcore-dev/MeshCore They have a couple minor things that are paid features.

New comment by mikeytown2 in "Burner Phone 101"

mikeytown2 — Sun, 24 Aug 2025 19:31:38 +0000

If you need to communicate with people in your area and not be tracked; MeshCore software with LoRa hardware like the this https://lilygo.cc/en-ca/products/t-lora-pager is something to consider. Text only, completely offline

New comment by mikeytown2 in "All known 49-year-old Apple-1 computers"

mikeytown2 — Tue, 12 Aug 2025 04:56:41 +0000

I don't see prices of previous auctions. What do these go for roughly?

New comment by mikeytown2 in "More than two hard disks in DOS"

mikeytown2 — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 17:31:24 +0000

Sound Cards with IDE ports for CD-ROM drives were definitely a thing back then