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579 points todsacerdoti | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0.826s | source
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nunobrito ◴[] No.44287588[source]
OK but kind of outdated and incomplete. Meshcore is largely competing with Meshtastic nowadays: https://meshcore.co.uk/

To remember: LoRa only permits small text messages. Don't even think about images, voice nor binary files (I mean it).

Another option is APRS using satellite connections through a cheap chinese walkie-talkie (Quangsheng UV-K5) for 20 euros to send text messages.

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ChrisMarshallNY ◴[] No.44287701[source]
Huh. Hadn’t heard of Meshcore before. Thanks for that. It sounds more organized than Meshtastic. Seems more polished, but also a bit more opaque (from my cursory examination). That may just be, because it’s not had as much time to get established. It has all the open credentials.

From her article:

> Their answer was both depressing and freeing: “You can’t. All you can do is be prepared with tools and a plan for when the crisis arrives. That’s when the organization will listen.”

That is so sad, but also, so true.

I was fortunate to have worked for a company that is over 100 years old, and that had weathered a couple of wars, depression, recession, market disruption, etc.

They were about as open to disaster planning as anyone, but they could also be head-in-the-sand knuckleheads. The biggest thing was the company had a fiscal and cultural conservative bent; quite unusual in the tech industry, these days.

Anyone that has managed a DR system, knows how difficult it is to get support. Disaster Recovery is expensive, resource-intensive, and difficult to test. It is also stuff people don’t want to think about. Sort of like insurance.

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nunobrito ◴[] No.44287801[source]
My suggestion as someone preparing for this kind of stuff since quite a while:

+ Quangsheng UV-K5 + Android phone with 3.5 mm audio jack + APRSdroid installed

Forget about LoRa, that is basically a toy. It is far more useful to have a functioning walkie talkie capable of talking with satellites and other stations at 50 kilometers of range.

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ChrisMarshallNY ◴[] No.44287815[source]
The issue with satellite stuff, is that it’s pretty sensitive to active attack. It will be available for things like natural disasters, but not necessarily for war.

In either case, jamming is a possibility.

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nunobrito ◴[] No.44287879[source]
That is inaccurate. You will NOT be able to jam a satellite outside local areas, the amount of power to do is monstrous and likely to cause cancer for anyone around.

In a real scenario these things work. Please don't fall into "what if's" which are exotic and confused as things bigger than what they are.

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1. elevation ◴[] No.44288334[source]
> You will NOT be able to jam a satellite outside local areas

It is true that you will not be able to jam the _downlink_ frequency outside local areas.

But due to the FM capture effect, anyone else in the same hemisphere with a basic 100w transmitter (and appropriate antenna) on the _uplink_ frequency will be able to deny the satellite service to all the 5W Baofeng radios that preppers are stockpiling.

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2. nunobrito ◴[] No.44289000[source]
That level of argument is already at Reddit level where every little detail is a reason to be "right". This is tiresome.

Look: if someone is jamming something with a 100 watt transmitter which causes impact on the adversary, that location is quickly bombed because it is now a giant beacon that advertises its position.

I'll even throw a cheap appeal to authority and mention that I've done this stuff professionally in the military for a decade. I'll still trust more on the usability of my cheap walkie-talkie capable of +50km range and satellite texts than an exotic LoRa used on the ground by few internet warriors.

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3. lambdaone ◴[] No.44290743[source]
I think the Internet warriors are trying to build their own entirely self-sufficient network independent of the state or commercial worlds, which is, as you say, tricky to do only with resources legally available to the general public. Armed forces have had these things nailed down pretty much since the invention of radio.