Meshtastic 64 – A meshtastic radio for the Commodore 64

It pains me to mention this but I don't think it's responsible not to: https://github.com/meshtastic/firmware/issues/4030

At time of writing (2025-09-27, plus or minus a timezone), there does not appear to be any serious attempt to secure application-layer message contents. (At least, not yet)

My hope is that this cool new radio link option will still gain traction and grow and develop without painting itself into a corner, security-wise.

To wit- security hints on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSI_model have improved substantially since my last readthrough.

I appreciate you pointing that out. I've been curious about meshastatic and wondered how well the encryption was being handled.

As if the Meshtastic devs care about anything but pretending to be a business masquerading as an open source project.

They are quite possibly one of the most toxic projects right now.

Check out the alternative https://github.com/meshcore-dev/MeshCore Seattle has the largest functioning mesh core installation in the world

I keep seeing folks in my circles playing with it but this is the first I have heard this opinion.

Could you elaborate?

MeshCore seems to enforce a strict separation between client devices and repeater devices, which is a significant downside for many use cases.

At least in the linked issue, the project member who, on request of an outside contributor, reopened the issue seemed pretty open towards a fix?

It seems like there are some people in the Meshtastic and MeshCore community who have it out for each other, for reasons beyond me.

I've only personally tested Meshtastic, and from a technical perspective, it still feels very beta, and I wouldn't put critical communications on it. However, it's a fun introduction to LoRa and long range low power RF, and can be a fun way to communicate much like I think amateur radio was to its early adopters.

I think one thing that causes a lot of community strangeness is the strong push by some to make it what it's not, like some doomsday-proof communication system that will outlive cellular networks and atomic bombs. It could be useful but requires skilled operators and coordination to work well (like using different frequencies and coding at events for much more bandwidth).

I find meshcore way more useful as I know if my messages arrive. On meshtastic the conversations especially in groups are always incomplete.

Meshtastic is GPLv3. So all source code will always be available.

Meshcore is MIT licensed. And closed source applications already started to creep in. See the smartphone apps and the T-Echo implementation. This has already the classic smell of ham radio projects I honestly don't want to support.

The maintainers of MT are friendly. The people using it - not all of them. Like all community driven projects.

I saw some twitter-like shit comments on chi-mesh while visiting family in IL.

But I've seen nothing but friendly interactions on the SF bay mesh which is much larger and thriving.

Nothing seemed particularly toxic, not on either of these meshes. Considering it's an open system anyone can say anything on, I'm sure it'll devolve into chaos as it gets more popular.

But when it comes to toxicity I'm going to assume you're either referring to the Discord, or making shit up. Discord having its roots in gamers is known to be a dumpster fire and I expect nothing less than toxic behavior on any Discord "server".

I do not understand why people spend time on Discord to play with Meshtastic though. Play with the mesh, that's the whole point.

They're looking at ways to have regular nodes repeat on the network. Right now it's a one line change to enable it. Doing it well and smart is what's holding it back

Given the fact that your account looks to be specifically created for this comment....it would be good to have some sort of citation to back this up?