From the article:
Let me save you some time. If you’ve been lurking the mesh forums lately you already know there are two camps and they don’t like each other much. Post “thinking about trying MeshCore” anywhere Meshtastic people hang out and you get a mix of “why bother, it’s not even mature” and a few quiet replies saying “do it, you won’t go back.” Both reactions are right, which is exactly why most comparisons out there are useless to you.
Most of them slap together a table, crown a winner, and call it a day. That’s not how this works once you’ve actually got the hardware on your bench.
Meshtastic will appeal to far more people, and it should. It’s easier, friendlier, more turnkey, a flash-and-go build with a stable, boring-in-a-good-way project behind it. The defaults and performance are worse, sure, but it works and it works for normal humans. If you’re starting from zero this week, start here. I’d tell my own brother to start here.
Having used both, I have to disagree. Maybe it’s just the way the meshtastic app is laid out but I feel as though it is absolutely a wash in settings and you have to set like five different sections of settings in order to get it set up the way you need it to be. I feel like the meshtastic app was written by nerds for nerds. I can absolutely use it, but I wouldn’t give it to my mom to use. She would be confused as hell. The MeshCore-open app is simple to use and does not overwhelm you with settings knobs that you have to set up on first use. Set your name, tap radio preset, tap your region, click ok, and you’re off and talking.
Just two examples. My mom is not going to know what “SX126X RX boosted gain” is, or “buzzer GPIO” pins. These are settings in the meshtastic app, and while they are set correctly by default, the fact that they are exposed to users who do not understand them is the problem. If there was an advanced mode or something, then maybe I could understand that. But KISS
And the AI part specifically bothers me, more than the trademark even. Not because AI-assisted code is automatically bad, it isn’t. It bothers me because it was undisclosed,
Says the person who wrote the entire article with an LLM and didn’t disclose it… smdh.
I read it uncritically and did not pick that up but yeah, now you mention it (and reading the “about us” on that website), it seems probable. Is there something specific that makes you think that though?
There’s a bunch, the one main thing people don’t seem to think about is that all online writing by LLMs sounds exactly the same, so all these individual voices have merged into one and that’s really noticeable. But other giveaways are uses of specific words multiple times that humans don’t really use that often.
Some parts of it feel like they used speech to text and didn’t bother to edit it. Also,that they were just speaking off the cuff.
There are plenty of spots where there should be conjunctions or even connecting clauses. Instead, just awkward commas.
What is your evidence of this?
The thing is, if I reveal all the little things, then the author just goes in and changes them. But if you read enough articles online you’ll start to notice how literally everyone’s individual voices started to all sound exactly the same. Down to the exact same weird choices of specific words. Try looking for words like
realandgenuinely.
How is MeshCore setup “Steep, under-documented, decision-heavy”? It’s the exact same Flash => Select region => Go as with Meshtastic.
MeshCore is also pretty light to getting going - basically setting node name and selecting the radio presets for your region. It is then operational pretty much the same as Meshtastic. One odd thing I’ve noticed, for Region 1 anyway, the preset defaults to a duty cycle of 50% so we have to dial that down to 10% and I don’t think many non-licensed users would be aware of that.
I haven’t seen that field show up for companion node settings, but for relays it’s there. I guess companions rarely transmit often enough to warrant it.
And it was at 50% default for me as well with the EU/UK narrow preset. And I would suspect that if you’re setting up a relay, you probably should’ve at least glanced at what’s allowed on the freq you’re using.
Yeah, I found that bit to be odd too.
What a wonderful write-up!
It has been decades since I touched amateur radio. All analog experience unfortunately.
But darn it, this article inspired me to sink my teeth into the subject!
Welcome back!
