this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2026
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Meshtastic

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My first Meshtastic radio! And the smallest case I could find. (more photos inside) (thelemmy.club)
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by bdonvr@thelemmy.club to c/meshtastic@mander.xyz
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Smallest that would fit a battery and a Heltec v4.

Live in a fairly small town in the southeast US but the local Amateur Radio club has a Meshtastic radio on a tall building in town and I was immediately able to see ~20 nodes and had 5 people talking in LongFast.

Wish I could have an outdoor pole mounted base station, but living in an apartment makes it hard. It seems to work okay on my 3rd floor windowsill though!

Link to case model: https://www.printables.com/model/1519914-heltec-lora-32-v4v3-pocket-pager-case/files

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[โ€“] xorollo@leminal.space 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Wow this is cool,. New to meshtastic, you popped up in my feed. I have questions.

  1. is this voice or text?
  2. looks like you can get pretty inexpensive kits on Amazon for about $30. Do I have to have anything else to get started? Base station required?
  3. website looks like it's got some great documentation with a lot of depth, but is there like a quick top level overview that helps me understand what this does/how it works?

Edits because I've sort of answered some of my questions:

  1. text, and this device sends the text to your phone which explains why there are so few buttons/input options on it.
  2. https://youtu.be/oAo2sb8LpFc This was a great video recently posted in this community that was a great overview for me.

I'm still curious about the base station.

[โ€“] bdonvr@thelemmy.club 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Yeah the device connects to your phone. But you can also get devices you can type on directly.

A base station? No, you just need one radio. It's a mesh network. Now it's pretty common for people involved in this to get two radios and mount one on their roof/on a tower/up a hill nearby - then they'll have a second device they keep near them. This gives you excellent coverage at all times, especially when you're indoors. These are low powered radios, even if the signal can go many miles in ideal conditions. But in a healthy mesh someone nearby enough could have a high up node, negating the need for you to have one.