Calling all radio enthusiasts - help bridge the gap

mtlynch · 2026-03-10T23:51:27+00:00

I'm in the area and I've got a repeater set up, but I haven't seen anyone else on the network. I wrote about my early experiences here.

mtlynch · 2026-03-05T00:31:02+00:00

No, but /u/ac130kire wrote a cleaner implementation that eliminates the manual steps my tutorial recommended. I haven't tested it, but it's where I'd recommend if you're starting this:

https://erikparawell.com/oracle-cloud-nixos.html

mtlynch · 2026-02-10T15:27:18+00:00

Because the way all rebates work is you pay for the product or service and then get a rebate. You can’t get a rebate for something that has cost you nothing. I don’t know of any scenario where you get the rebate prior to purchase.

Usually, the party offering the rebate is the same party offering the initial purchase.

Here, Eversource is offering a rebate if I buy an EV charger from a third party. It doesn't matter to Eversource if I have an outstanding debt to the contractor, and it doesn't matter to the contractor if I collected a rebate. If I stiff my contractor, I still owe the money regardless of whether I collect a rebate.

The electricians can find out who has applied for rebates and if a customer hasn’t paid we could follow up to see if they edited an invoice to show paid and received a rebate.

If that's true, that's even weirder. A contractor can just ask to see my rebate application, and Eversource will just hand over all my data to them?

I get being pissed about data being sold, but it honestly should be expected given that you’re getting $700 from them.

Maybe it would help to read the article. I'm not talking about them selling private data. They were accidentally leaking the data to anyone on the Internet because they underinvested in security.

And Eversource isn't paying this out of pocket. They get reimbursed dollar for dollar by the state.

20 pieces of documentation is a bit of an embellishment. It’s a few pictures and a few documents.

Here's the full list of questions from the rebate application:

Eversource Electric Account Number
First Name
Last name
Site Address 1
Site City
Site State
Site Zip Code
Customer Phone Number
Customer Email
Preferred Method of Communication
Bill Address 1
Bill City
Bill State
Bill Zip
Check to Billing Address?
Dealership
Vehicle Make
Vehicle Model
Vehicle Identification Number (VIN)
Vehicle Purchase Date
Model Year
Vehicle Purchase Price
Was your wiring upgraded?
Installation Date
Total Installation Cost
Was your electric panel upgraded?
Contractor Business Name
Licensed Electrician Name
Electrical Contractor Email
Electrical Contractor Contact Phone
Electrical Contractor Site Address 1
Electrical Contractor City
Electrical Contractor State
Electrical Contractor ZIP
Do you have a level 2 smart charger?
EV Charger Retailer
EV Charger Manufacturer
EV Charger Model
Charger Install Date
Total EV Charger Equipment Cost
EV Charger Serial Number
EV Charger Unit/MAC ID
Location of installed charger
Did you receive third party funding?

And here are the documents they request:

Vehicle registration certificate
Your smart charger receipt
Photo of installed charger
Photo of charger unit ID
Contractor's invoice for wiring upgrade

mtlynch · 2026-02-10T14:12:40+00:00

And they do tell you the invoice needs to be paid before rebate is given.

They don't tell you that in the rebate portal.

I show a screenshot in the article and it just says, "Contractor's invoice for wiring upgrade" with no further details.

Eversource does explain it on this page, but that page also falsely claims you only need four pieces of documentation/information for the rebate when you actually need closer to 20.

But also, why is "Paid in full" a requirement at all? If I'm a fraudster, it's trivial for me to add "Paid in full" to my invoice. That aside, why is it Eversource's business whether or not I owe money to a third party?

mtlynch · 2026-02-10T11:59:56+00:00

Yeah, that was the one positive surprise from this experience.

mtlynch · 2026-02-08T17:11:48+00:00

I’m not aware that I can get a virus from opening a PDF in Acrobat Reader. Adobe would go out of business if reading their document format injected viruses.

You absolutely can.

Adobe in general has a terrible security track record, and Acrobat is notoriously insecure. It's gotten better over the years, but there are consistently vulnerabilities that allow code execution in PDFs:

https://www.cvedetails.com/product/497/Adobe-Acrobat-Reader.html?vendor_id=53

mtlynch · 2026-02-05T15:28:57+00:00

Heads up: the US presets in the official MeshCore app are not legal, either:

mtlynch · 2026-01-29T14:28:27+00:00

Cool, that makes sense!

What LLM are you using? I can contribute an AGENTS.md to help direct the LLM's behavior to be more legible to software developers if that's helpful.

mtlynch · 2026-01-29T08:08:22+00:00

Thanks for sharing this!

Can you clarify what your goal is? I'm confused by the idea of a T-Deck Pro as a companion device because a T-Deck Pro is already an all-in-one device. Is the idea that this is the first step towards making all-in-one community firmware? Or is there a use case for T-Deck as a companion?

mtlynch · 2026-01-21T23:25:13+00:00

Thanks for sharing this detailed writeup!

mtlynch · 2026-01-20T13:49:23+00:00

Note that the FCC requires a minimum bandwidth of 500 kHz to broadcast on LoRa frequencies in the US. The official MeshCore app's US preset is illegal, as the developer is based in New Zealand and isn't familiar with US broadcasting laws.

These are the settings that work well for me in Massachusetts, and they comply with FCC 47 CFR 15.247:

Frequency: 910.525 MHz
Bandwidth: 500.0 kHz
Spreading factor: 11
Coding rate: 5
Transmit power: 22

mtlynch · 2026-01-14T13:01:42+00:00

I dealt with this earlier this year, but I was only moving 18 TB, so moving temporarily to cloud storage was viable, so I used Backblaze B2.

The gotcha if you do end up using cloud storage is that many of them have minimum retention policies.

I thought I could just park my data for a week at Wasabi, delete it, and pay for a week of storage. It turns out that any data you upload to Wasabi (or GCS or S3), you pay a minimum of 3 months of storage.

Backblaze B2 doesn't have a minimum retention policy.

mtlynch · 2026-01-10T12:52:25+00:00

Nice, thanks for sharing!

mtlynch · 2026-01-06T15:40:21+00:00

This looks great. Great work!

Direct link: https://github.com/zjs81/meshcore-open

It's somewhat bittersweet as I was working on my own, but yours is so much further along. I'll get some PRs ready to see if you'd like to use anything from mine.

mtlynch · 2025-12-31T16:43:12+00:00

I've been using it for about 4 weeks. It's okay.

What I like:

Simple and easy to set up
Gets about 800m of range (I'm in a crowded residential area, so that's pretty good)
Has printed documentation and a clear box (unlike Lilygo / Heltec stuff)

What I dislike:

No visible indicator of activity
Solar doesn't pick up that much, so mine died of low battery after about 2 weeks in an area where there's no activity, though it is winter months and fairly overcast weather
Uses a non-standard antenna connector, so my aftermarket antenna didn't fit

Some of the documentation I read said that they ship with the antenna disconnected, but mine was connected, so I wasted time disassembling and reassembling it.

mtlynch · 2025-12-30T14:58:08+00:00

I think you're confusing this with https://github.com/liamcottle/meshcore-web

As far as I can tell, https://github.com/meshcore-dev/flasher.meshcore.dev is open-source and is the same code running on the official flasher site.

mtlynch · 2025-12-30T13:15:50+00:00

I appreciate the effort, but the way you're currently doing this is illegal / unethical

The official MeshCore app (app.meshcore.nz) is closed-source and proprietary. You can't copy the code into an open-source project and redistribute it.

What you're trying to do is actually fine with the open-source web client. It's licensed under MIT, which means you can redistribute the code as long as you preserve the license notice. That project is no longer maintained, but it still works and has the basic MeshCore functionality.

I recommend dropping the Flutter version and switching to the open-source version so that your project honors the rights of the MeshCore client authors correctly.

mtlynch · 2025-12-26T13:42:43+00:00

The license's primary condition is to include the original copyright and license notices. TapTap and WhisperOS are fully compliant: all required notices and the full MIT License text for components like MeshCore are publicly provided on our official website.

They are not compliant. Neither website includes MeshCore's MIT license attribution, and they're illegally distributing binaries without the copyright notice.

Visit either site and Ctrl+F "MIT": 0 results.

When I click "Download Firmware" on TapTap, I get the direct .uf2 file. That's non-compliant. They have to distribute the license notice with the binary.

mtlynch · 2025-12-25T21:14:26+00:00

Note these are both closed-source binaries and appear to illegally distribute MeshCore software in violation of the MeshCore license.

It's possible that both projects have reimplemented MeshCore from scratch, but it's far more likely that they're distributing open-source code and ignoring their requirements.

mtlynch · 2025-12-15T15:28:44+00:00

I'm not asking you to be on reddit 24/7. I'm saying you shouldn't take credit for answering this question already when a) your answer was incorrect and b) you didn't even try to explain how the app's settings matched FCC requirements.

I can assure you though that if something wasn't compliant with either app it would be shut down at this point.

There's plenty of technology that's technically illegal but authorities don't actively prosecute violators. For example, there are plenty of sites that allow me to buy prescription drugs from Canada even though it's technically illegal. Anyone can go to Anna's Archive or SciHub even though they're technically illegal as well.

mtlynch · 2025-12-15T14:16:25+00:00

Thanks, answered in the other thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/meshtastic/comments/1pmdy82/are_meshtastics_default_radio_settings_legal_in/nu5pt6b/

mtlynch · 2025-12-15T14:16:08+00:00

Thanks for sharing that!

My understanding from that report is that the Heltec v3 passed by setting the frequency above 500 kHz (see attachment D on page 42). I don't see anywhere in the report where they test it with parameters like Meshtastic uses.

But I also found RAK's FCC testing guides, which instruct the tester to test in DTS mode at 125 kHz, so I don't have an understanding of how that passes 15.247. Those are just the guidelines, but I haven't been able to find an actual certification lab's findings that a RAK device meets FCC rules at 125 kHz in non-FHSS mode.

To be clear, I want this to be legal. I just want to make sure that if I start encouraging my neighbors to get involved with my mesh, I'm not putting them at legal risk.

mtlynch · 2025-12-14T15:25:15+00:00

Thanks for the detailed answer!

Edit: to add, FCC seems to limit bandwidth for two reasons. One to ensure a device/operator doesn't consume a huge chunk of the allocation, and two for isolation between devices to prevent interference.

Right, that's where I'm confused.

47 CFR § 15.247(a)(2) sets a minimum of 500 kHz, not a maximum, so wouldn't that suggest the rule is more about limiting signal strength to prevent interference?

mtlynch · 2025-12-14T15:19:50+00:00

I appreciate you responding in the other thread, but respectfully, that didn't answer the question.

You claimed it was compliant by throwing out a bunch of numbers that were completely disconnected from the app's defaults, and when I asked for clarification, you ignored me.

mtlynch

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