@andy @james @_elena it can depend on the area. Meshtastic in London is basically useless, it doesn’t work. I can send messages out but nobody replies, they’re either ignoring it or aren’t receiving it. The only times it works is if a plane flies over and someone on it has a node and they’re sending out messages saying that they’re on a plane (usually with the flight no.). Then it works. All the other time, never.

If I go up to Crewe, though, there’s a load of people all around that pretty wide area all chatting all day, and I get most of the messages and people get my replies. Except when I’m in the house, those old houses are impenetrable.

MeshCore is quite popular there too, so both of them seem to run side by side. Except when I go up there, I’m only taking my companion node on MeshCore, obviously I’m leaving my repeater node behind.

If I go to Gibraltar, there’s loads of Meshtastic people chatting, although it’s almost all from the south of Spain, in Spanish. But it’s all day long. MeshCore in Gib was zero.

When we went to Jamaica at the end of last year a few weeks after Melissa, I took lots of nodes, within our family we had three MeshPockets mostly for use as Qi2 phone topping up battery banks, but which incidentally helped expand the mesh, but which mesh - the ones I took out to experiment with were a pair of T114s, and a pair of Seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed T1000e [1] and tried them on all the different region settings, the US setting, the EU/UK setting, lots of them. In the end I concluded that Jamaica should be AU915, the Australian setting, and with MeshCore I found that as soon as we went down the road a little bit, the contact with the T114 (acting as a repeater) at the house was lost, so MeshCore never really worked out there for us, as we were literally the only people (well I was, the rest of the family weren’t interested) with mesh radios of any kind. MeshCore’s dependence upon a fixed repeater was useless because within minutes whenever we went anywhere, we were out of range of it.

So in the end I switched all the ones I took to Jamaica over to Meshtastic on AU915, and when we left, Jamaica, I left behind the two T114s and the two T1000es with family (and some fold-up solar panels I didn’t want to take back with me). Indubitably those are probably lost or gone and have never been charged since we left, but who knows, they’re there anyway, so maybe they might be useful in the long run.

That’s what I mean, that’s why I suggest to try both, and try and have a pair of each (MC and MT) so you can see stuff happening at least by yourself.

[1] not the ‘for Meshtastic’ ones, I couldn’t get those in time, so I got a pair of the ‘for LoRaWan’ ones, but that didn’t matter, because with the MeshCore or Meshtastic firmware on they acted exactly the same as the other would’ve been

@_elena I’d suggest buy two nodes, so you can tell if it’s working or not. The second one is always going to be useful if you put it somewhere near you and high up. Having two is reassuring when you see it working between the two.

In fact, there’s MeshCore and Meshtastic, it’s worth being on both depending on the exact area (some are more MeshCore, some are more Meshtastic), so really, I’d suggest getting four nodes!

You’ll end up buying more than that in the long run, maybe not all at once in one go.

I also wrote up a page on which nodes I recommend for giving to family members, once you’re into it and can’t stop buying nodes (too early to reveal that?) pikopublish.ing/u0421793/bolg/whichradio.xhtml

@andy @james @_elena I’m getting all the way up and down England and since a day or so ago Northern Ireland too, also, as well now on MeshCore.

On Meshtastic I’m able to get from home in Beckton Park to Royal Albert dock, which is about one stop on the DLR. There’s no conversation on it ever, nobody ever replies, but it has an impressive mesh map with lots of coloured blobs on.

@smallcircles definitely a Other