It’s Been a Good Run, Phone Providers.

move over flipper zero because there's a

new tech darling in town it's called

mesh tastic and it promises to bring us

an off-grid decentralized comms Network

that's entirely open source and outside

the control of Big Brother best of all

it runs for free on Tiny affordable and

low-powered radios sporting esp32

microcontrollers but besides looking

really cool and getting me to empty my

wallet what can these things actually do

well think text-based walkie-talkies

enabling you to send encrypted messages

over long range radio AKA Laura this

novel application Shields your

Transmissions from potential wiretapping

by big telecommunication companies

ensuring your messages remain

confidential and most importantly yours

but it goes even deeper there are a

number of scenarios today where

traditional cellular networks fail for

instance Urban festivals and Gatherings

where the cell network is saturated like

New Year's Eve in Time Square

overlanding or other remote adventure

activities in isolated areas like

deserts also overseas traveling if you

don't have roaming or a local Sim and

NGO work in places without cell

infrastructure we'll also cover the most

common pitfalls enthusiasts make and how

to correct those finally I'm taking this

Innovation to new heights literally by

outfitting my drone with one of these

groundbreaking devices to conduct an

epic range test to see how far these

things can actually go by the end of

this video you'll thoroughly appreciate

the unique Freedom that these powerful

mini Mish tastic devices provide and

we'll find out ultimately if they're

worth it welcome to the future of

communication this is the tiny and low

power Laura 32 board from htech and it's

a system on a chip designed to do only

two things look cool and send encrypted

messages over long range radio so I

ordered two of these from Amazon and

grabbed two of the coolest cases I could

find in one Laura 32 box you'll get the

following one esp32 Laura OLED board V3

a Laura antenna and a 1.25 mm two Pin

cable they sell them in pairs presumably

so you have someone to talk to and best

bet is to grab these from Amazon or Ebay

and I'll put links in the description

below however the stock antenna on these

things is not very good I'd suggest

upgrading to this whip antenna for

improved signal now let's demystify the

hardware real quick this board is

powered by the esp32 S3 fn8 chip it has

a 1.25 mm battery connector which will

come in handy later as we test its

portability the socket type for the

battery is sh 1.25 X2 it features a USBC

for flashing the firmware and providing

power there are two physical buttons on

this board the reset and user

programming button it also has two LEDs

and a monochromatic OLED screen if you

want to use these on the Move you'll

want to grab a battery be sure to get a

3.7 volt 4.1 W rechargeable battery with

the correct polarities on the cable

while we're on the subject of power you

might be wondering what the battery life

is for one of these devices and it

varies dramatically based on what

functionality you're using if you're

testing the different capabilities and

actively using everything I think you

can expect around 12 hours but if you

turn off the hungrier features and

reduce send intervals and utilize the

Deep Sleep settings you can probably

extend that quite a bit for anyone

looking to Nest one of these Outdoors

permanently you should be able to use

solar to reup the battery for those

scenarios and here is the power draw

well idle and here is the power draw

while fairly active now I noticed these

really cool 3D printed cases on

printable but since I didn't want to

deal with printing them I went to The

muzy Works laab Etsy store and bought

two cases faster than you can say

impulse by Simon was super helpful and

even sent me some of my favorite kinds

of batteries the free kind he also added

a custom whip antenna upgrade these

cases are pretty much the Tesla of

Gadget housing Sleek smart and probably

too cool for me I'll put the link for

his store in the description below but I

also wanted to see if my PCB

manufacturing buddies over at jlc could

do anything with these schematics since

they have Commercial Printing Machinery

so I sent them the STL files from

printable and they delivered in Spades

they sent back this Phantom black case

featuring a nylon back stop and a super

durable resin front face not bad right

and these things have a Nifty custom

Loop ring for tethers okay so let's get

our Hardware situated in our new cases a

few things to note connecting a Laura

radio without an antenna can cause the

transmitted energy to reflect back into

the device potentially damaging the

radio's transmitter components due to

overheating so make sure the antenna is

attached these antennas snap into place

like so the lower 32 has two

front-facing buttons the left button

Cycles through the information displayed

on the screen and a long press of the

left button will shut down the device

and the right button will reset the

device there are also two LEDs on the

device the blinking white LED will

indicate that the device is on and awake

and the red LED will light up when it's

charging okay so now that the hardware

is set up we want to flash the mesh

tastic firmware to our board this

familiar esp32 based Hardware means we

can tap The Usual Suspects when it comes

to programming Dev environments like

Arduino IDE micropython espressive IDE

should all be compatible but I'd also

note that mesh tastic the open source

software that enables much of this

functionality is built with the tool

platform. and if you want to get your

hands dirty or play around with further

customization you can download the

platform IO plugin for your favorite

code editor I use cursor which is a work

of VSS code that brings gen AI to the

party but if you're just looking to

flash the latest mesh tastic firmware to

your Laura device you actually don't

need any intermediary software okay so

the device doesn't come with the mesh

tastic firmware that's a separate

organization open source project um

historically to get software onto your

microcontrollers you'd have to use

something like Arduino or an IDE or

something like that and what's really

cool is because of the new apis that

Chrome makes available to developers you

can actually connect to USB devices or

USB serial devices as well as Bluetooth

devices and things like that so um what

Mish tastic has done is they've actually

created an application flasher mt.org

where you can get the mesh tastic

firmware onto your device right through

a chromium based browser so this will

work for Chrome Edge Brave Etc so we

just come over to Flasher mesh. org we

select our device and then we select our

firmware version if you want something

more stable you can go here I want the

latest stuff even though it might be a

little buggy so I'm going to do the

latest Alpha and then I'm going to click

flash if you have previous installations

then you might want to do full erase and

install if you want to keep data from

prior installations just keep this

unchecked and that's what I'm going to

do here so I'm just going to go ahead

and click update and it shows all my

devices that are connected um on various

serial ports I am going to use this guy

here it does look like there's two

entries that probably both going to work

but I've had most success with slab USB

to uart if nothing shows up here you

probably have a faulty USB cable you

need a USB cable that can do power and

data uh so we might want to cycle

through a couple cables until um your

device shows up so I'm going to do

connect and then I'm going to just um

well it actually automatically starts

updating and it'll take a couple minutes

if you don't see this going it probably

lost a connection again the connection

is usually the biggest issue the cable

so you might want to try a couple

different adapters a couple different

cables Etc until you get it

working okay and then this stuff's going

to keep logging we can just go ahead and

unplug and we will be all set okay so

you need to run a client with your lower

device so there's always a pair the low

device sends the messages using the

radio it gets on the mesh tastic network

but your client is how you set up the

configuration it's how you type out the

messages how you receive the messages in

many cases um so you can use the Android

app the IOS app chromium based web

browser uh python CLI and they even have

Linux support now uh the iPhone app is

much better than the Android app so

that's what I'm going to use so I'm just

going to go to the App Store and you can

search for mesh tastic you will find the

app here I'm going to go ahead and

download

it let's open that up and then we're

going to start giving it permissions we

do want it to have GPS access we do want

it to have Bluetooth access and no on

the notifications so the device name is

going to be mesh tasticore and then it's

going to be a four character truncated

version of the hash ID just so you know

which device you're working with um and

uh if you've connected and reconnected

then you might have to go into your

Bluetooth settings and forget the device

uh in order to reconnect but I think I'm

going to be good here so you know 84 EC

is my hash it says a right here A4 EC so

I know that's the right device I'm going

to go ahead and select it and now it's

going to ask me to pair it it's going to

flash a unique code

998

389 and we're going to pair it once uh

you only have to do that one time you

will have to keep connecting in the

future but you only have to do that

formal pairing once okay much better so

now we want to configure it and ma'am

there are a lot of settings uh but we

definitely want to give it a region so I

just select um you can go to config and

you can go to Laura and then right here

there's going to be this region section

we definitely want to do United

States um and let's go ahead and save

that now what happens here is when you

make configuration changes uh you have

to save and it will reboot the device in

many cases so like I just set United

States I'm going to go ahead and click

save and it's look watch the device

reboot see and then when it reboots I'm

going to have to reconnect to it so

let's watch that happen

here and it should I think automatically

reconnect yep there it goes and look has

a region now so now uh we are paired

right and so you have your messaging

section here where you can do direct

messages with other devices that are

picked up you have your pairing uh this

is using Bluetooth it could use Wi-Fi

can't use both at the same time that is

um you have other

nodes you have a mesh map but you also

have the configuration settings here so

there's a lot you can do with it um this

guy does not have a GPS but what you

might want to do is uh you can use your

phones GPS so like if you go to app

settings you can select the share

location location use your phone's GPS

to provide location to your node I just

think that's useful because when you

have multiple nodes um you can see how

far away they are I'm going to go ahead

and do share location um you can set the

interval and all that stuff but uh okay

so now it's sharing the

location um let's go down to user uh we

can give it a nice name so let's go in

here so I'm going to call

it um I'm going to call it data Slayer

black okay I'm going to go ahead and

save that again it's probably going to

reboot but then it's going to have a a

more true

name um okay and then so like look if I

go over here yeah data Slayer black um

and other devices will be able to see

that name so I actually have a bunch of

other devices in my vicinity I'm in

Miami here so uh it just automatically

picks up those devices um but let's go

back to settings here let's go to

display um I'm going to turn on this

always Point North on the

compass um display units I'm going to go

to Imperial don't hate me and like now

we can see it's going to use miles and

feet it's talking about distances okay

and I do want to show you the web client

real quick quick so the gist of this is

instead of using the native app on your

phone as the client you can use your

computer's browser your computer's

Chrome based browser so I if I open up

Chrome here and I go to uh client. mesh.

org um this is a remote hosted

application but what it does is it

connects to local devices the

presumption here is that your computer

has either Wi-Fi or Bluetooth and your

mesh tastic device is either emitting

from W Wi-Fi or Bluetooth I'm going to

use Bluetooth here you can see it's

enabled right over here and so what you

have to do is you have to connect and we

can go over to Bluetooth here and again

it can give you Wi-Fi Bluetooth USB

serial if you want to plug it in just do

new device it's going to search for

devices here okay so I found one of my

mesh tastic devices I'm going to go

ahead and click pair let's

see oh and then I just click on it here

okay and there it goes and so you know

it's basically the same as the native

app um you can you can modify the

configurations you can send your

messages so like for instance if I go

over to config these are the basic

device configurations and then they call

uh these extra modules like mqtt and the

range test uh they call this uh module

configurations okay so this is how these

things work each of the Mish tastic

devices should be connected to a client

and it can be connected to a client over

Bluetooth USB seral or Wi-Fi I usually

use Bluetooth so you know if if these

two individuals were say hiking together

and they diverged it's okay if they

don't have cellular service anymore or

satellite or Internet or GPS or anything

like that as long as they have a close

proximity uh Wi-Fi capability or a Clos

proximity Bluetooth capability and can

connect to this this will these will do

the heavy lifting of sending the

messages several miles in some cases uh

using Laura and so let's send some

messages is real quick within close

proximity so if I open up my phone here

and I go over to mes tastic um let's see

here okay so I'm going so let me turn

this on

first and then the radio should connect

and then okay there it goes and I'm

going to do the same thing over

here

okay so um both of them are connected

you see this node here this is what this

looks like when this is connected so I'm

going to send a message from here to

here and show you what happens so again

you can't type on this thing right um so

you come over here and you can create a

channel that you can talk on or you can

send direct messages to uh different

nodes so like if I wanted to send a

message to data Slayer green go to

direct messages kill that all right data

Slayer layer

green and I can

say Yeah so basically instantly that

message came up here so okay so that's

you know I just sent a message from here

to here and then I could do the same

thing over here the app's not quite as

good

but I can do

aoy see so it shows up on the app and it

also shows up on the um

shows up on the device here okay so

that's that's sending messages um and

because we enabled uh

GPS these things should be able to

determine uh where they are in relation

to each other so if I toggle through the

available nodes here let's

see

uh See data Slayer green 159 fet away

obviously like the GPS isn't perfect but

as you move more significant distances

it will be able to get a good read there

and you'll see I mean some cases I was

able to see it was 3 miles apart um and

then this this Compass thing here uh

people have had issues with it it uses

something called dead reckoning so

basically if you're on the move and you

have GPS enabled then it will try to uh

determine where you are in relation to

True North and it also will give you a

heading and It'll point to other nodes

in some cases um and again though people

have gotten varying degrees of utility

out out of that so if it's more

confusing than it is helpful you can

just turn that off okay something you're

probably going to want to do is a range

test technically you could continually

just send messages and then see when the

messages stop sending and then that's

your range but the problem is um when

you're conducting the range test uh a

lot of the messages won't get through

and so what the range test does is it

will keep sending uh new messages every

specified interval like 30 seconds or so

and it will um increment a counter so

you can kind of figure out from there

you know what messages you're getting

and which ones you're not getting and

you don't have to worry about keep

sending messages which gets annoying so

in order to do that you need to enable

range test on both devices and then you

would go your separate ways and you

would see how far you can go um while

still getting messages so the way you do

that is you go to config you go to uh

modules or settings it's different based

on what app you're using you go to range

test right here and you enable it and

then you can go to the interval you I'll

do every

15 seconds and then you just go ahead

and save that it's going to reboot and

then you do the same thing on your other

device so if you go to Radio

configuration range

test enabled 15

seconds and then that should reboot and

then it'll start sending

messages with the prefix seq for

sequence and then the counter the

increment okay so I got my first message

already

seq1 and we should just see seq2 right

and so what you can do is as you get

these messages you can flip over to

nodes like say I get a sequence 3 and

I'm walking away right I can then go

over to nodes and then I can go to the

other um node that I'm that I'm working

with here and I can

actually uh let's see okay it doesn't

show the distance right there but it

does right here see 200 feet away and I

actually did a test like this where I

put the um I put one of them in the

window in my building and my building's

you know fairly high and I went out to

like an island that was like 3 and2

miles away and I actually got a message

through at 3 and 1/2 miles which was

pretty cool you know line of sight is

important but I will say even in the

urban area that I'm in if I stayed

within a mile it would get messages even

if there were like you know buildings in

the way and things like that so I'm not

convinced that's the only thing that

matters uh but then beyond that there's

different uh Network pre presets right

like um you could do different megahertz

and some have higher data rates some

have lower data rates higher distance

things like that when it comes to the um

the Laura settings the gist of uh how it

works is the trade-off is between uh

throughput so like high data and then

distance so something like WiFi is uh

low distance right it's within the order

of like 100 ft but it's high data high

throughput you can send a lot of

information what Laura is is it's low

data so you can't send you know Rich um

you know heavy packets of data but you

can send them long

distances um so that's like the basic

just but they're both radio waves they

use you know the same technology

essentially but then from here they give

you other presets and they try to

describe what the presets have but at

the end of the day most people say to

just use a default settings long fast

and the reason is because if you want to

pick up on other nodes they need to be

on those same uh frequencies SE the same

wavelengths okay so one thing you might

want to do is create your own encrypted

channel so let's go ahead and do that so

if you go to settings and then you go to

channels and then you go to add

Channel let's see

private private chat

default

all right there it

goes and so and then to get it onto my

other device to get the private key over

there you go to

settings you go to share QR I'm going to

kill all

these and then what I'm going to do is

open up the camera over here right and

then it's going to open up that local

link it's going to ask you to

accept and now private chat is here so

what I can do is I can say

testing send that

through let's

see okay so it finally worked so

creating those private channels is um a

little

tricky but um if you just test it out I

think you should be good let's see yeah

okay and so what this channel is

encrypted right so anyone who inter

intercepts like the radio signal um is

only going to get encrypted messages um

encrypted um data so your Communications

are going to be private in those cases

okay so now for the range test I

conducted four distinct types of tests

using a number of different settings and

parameters and uh locations and I want

to talk about what worked best for me so

for the first test I did I live on the

32th floor of a high-rise building and

so what I did was for one of the nodes I

I uh set it on my balcony and um I went

out about 1,000 ft uh with a direct line

of sight and for this test I was using

the default long fast uh frequency and I

used one stub antenna and one whip

antenna and that worked pretty well

those messages came through just fine

okay so for the second test I conducted

both of the nodes were at the beach so

they were both at ground level there was

really no promise Min or elevation of

either nodes all right so we have a

connection right now the connection is

it says 80% we're going to keep just

sending messages

until we no longer

have uh a connection a signal so let's

go again I was using the long fast

frequency and I was using two stub

antennas and I was actually pretty

surprised that I wasn't able to get any

more than about 500 ft of distance

before the messages stopped going

through so these stub antennas just

aren't that great or they can be hit or

miss okay so for the third test I did um

I did a direct line of sight test we did

about one mile so we're going to run a

um a range test we got node operator one

right here and I'm going to be

out there running the second node and

we're going to see what we get terms of

uh con activity so we'll see we were

using long fast both devices were using

the stub antenna but one of the devices

I put on my drone and I elevated it to

probably about 100 ft again though uh no

signal was able to get through so I was

pretty surprised by that cuz I had a

direct line of sight and uh these things

are rated at those types of distances so

I thought that would get through I

attribute it to the uh stub antenna okay

so for the final test I put the first

node in the window on the 32nd Floor in

my apartment so it was quite elevated

had a good bit of prominence and I also

put the whip antenna on that node uh for

better power but I also changed the

preset I changed the frequency from long

fast to very long slow so the trade-off

there is the data transmission is lower

the throughput is lower but in theory

the distance might be greater so I was

on that um different frequency and then

for the other node uh I again I used the

stub antenna and I went out around uh on

a sort of peninsula near where I live

and I just let the range test keep going

and I got messages at a couple miles but

then I continued to get messages all the

way up to about 3 and 1/2 miles so what

I would just call out there is the first

node had the whip antenna it was

elevated quite a bit on the 32nd Floor

and it had basically a direct line of

sight with no obstruction all the way

out to where I was uh 3 and 1 half miles

away now not every single message got

through so it wasn't like a perfect

connectivity but um when the messages

did get through it caught up and sent

all the messages that uh didn't make it

through so uh it was a true range test

and it worked pretty well um so you know

I was pretty happy with that what I

think might help even more though is if