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Comment by lukeasch21

20 hours ago

I would absolutely encourage everyone reading this to check out Reticulum [1] if you haven't already. I believe the base project might be in need of new maintainers(?) at the moment and the main dev has some very strong takes, but it is a very well-thought out approach to distributed networking at the protocol layer. The existing implementations out there include a desktop app which can function over the internet (IP) or a USB connection to some existing LoRA boards. I recently purchased a LilyGo T-Echo [2] and have had a great experience flashing the open-source firmware and using it connected to a desktop over USB or connected over Bluetooth to the fantastic new companion app Columba [3]. This app seriously makes Reticulum feel like a first class citizen when it comes to parity support for messaging. You can even send files/images (with limitations of course)! And since it works at the network level, you can make your own apps to run over Reticulum as well.

[1] https://reticulum.network/ [2] https://lilygo.cc/products/t-echo-lilygo [3] https://github.com/torlando-tech/columba

24 comments

lukeasch21

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405nm  15 hours ago

don’t forget that although it already works fine on lora, it’s a protocol that’s transport channel agnostic, and is gonna do great with other transports (halow, optical, wifi, whatever) when people finally start realizing that lora is never going to be able to keep up with bandwidth/speed requirements of anything much beyond simple text messaging.

although, i’ve already done real time voice calls over 1 hop of reticulum lora on and it works pretty ok.

edit - community wiki with getting started instructions is here:

https://reticulum.miraheze.org/wiki/Welcome

montyanne  16 hours ago

I spent an entire month trying to build something with Reticulum, but there just isn’t great tooling for dealing with the protocol. Makes for a pretty infuriating devex if you’re just trying to build your app.

Neat concept but so many footguns that (imo) it’s not really sustainable to try bootstrapping.

Specifically, I had tried to port the stack to Rust no-std to use on nrf52 LoRA devices to use/abuse the existing MeshCore network to deliver reticulum packets. Turned out to be a nightmare just trying to figure out if my packets were even correctly formed.

LaserBeam1000  19 hours ago

I've never seen a working Reticulum network in the wild.

Only very very small testbeds.

  • forkerenok  19 hours ago

    There are tons of entry points available now [0], and I get thousands of announcements every day.

    https://rmap.world/

    It's so much fun with little pages, message boards and random people hitting you up for a chat. I brought up my own transport node and propagation node too to contribute to the mesh.

    • fooqux  15 hours ago

      I'd love to get a node working just for fun. But it also seems like a waste since I'm extremely rural. The closest node is 200+ miles away. The chances of seeing any other device but my own connect to it seem slim.

      Is there still a reason to do this?

      7 replies →

    • jubilanti  11 hours ago

      > There are tons

      I'm sorry but are you serious? That map shows 224 nodes in the world, fewer than 30 in the entire Western hemisphere. And only 24 in the world are using LoRa? Meshcore has 38,000 nodes, Meshtastic 10,000. Those two projects can actually be said to have "tons" of nodes.

      It hurts your credibility. I trusted you, spent time trying to debug the map, thinking that something was wrong on my end... why am I only seeing 224 when there should be "tons", is there a filter, are these just super nodes....

      So I looked into it because of what you said, but you raised expectations so much that I feel nothing but disappointment.

      2 replies →

adammarples  17 hours ago

Which frequency do you get? Does it matter?

  • jonah  17 hours ago

    It matters legally.

    Different countries allow unlicensed use on different frequencies. Look up which is correct for your location.

    • adammarples  3 hours ago

      Sadly there seems to be only one or two people in the uk on the reticulum network, I looked on rmap. Given these things have a range of maybe 8km I don't think that for all intents and purposes that it really exists yet.