I used these several years ago on a cruise. Allowed wife and myself to see each other's location, and send texts, without international roaming charges.
But if you're doing other LoRa stuff, possibly meshtastic, I don't think goTenna really gives you anything more.
When I bought 'em, I was kinda hoping they'd become THE thing, such that a dozen other people in the area would also have them, which would dense up the mesh.
@kelvin0mql @dug it's interesting how it advertised "off grid", but apparently requires a "mesh" to operate.
How realistic is using this in the middle of the Gibson Desert? My guess is that it doesn't work at all for its intended purpose.
In contrast with something like an EPIRB or Spot Tracker.
@vk6flab @dug
Well, imagine you're a group of 4 & you get 5 of them. You set one up as just a repeater, & hoist it up high, & each of you clip one to your pack.
You split into 2 pairs & one pair gets lost & can't find the trail back to camp. Easy to get separated enough to not be able to see or hear each other, but if one of the units can be heard by any of the distant 3, then everybody can see everybody else's dot on the map.
It could do well like that.
When goTenna put out their Mesh device earlier this year, I thought the off-grid gadgets would be great for an emergency kit or back-country hike. But it turns out that I underestimated the demand for a resilient, user-powered mesh network: dedicated nodes now populate cities across the country, and volunteers are using them to get Puerto Rico back online after a devastating hurricane season.
@kelvin0mql @vk6flab
Yes they had promise but the product has been abandoned and the apps to use the devices have been pulled.
Side rant: The company who made them is very adept at hiding this fact. And the modern, AI-generated web is no help either.
Yes I think that is unfortunately the case. I haven’t come across a hack for them. And they don’t operate on the same frequency as Meshtastic anyway.
@dug @ludman1 @vk6flab
It may feel that way, yes.
However, I believe they sincerely intended to make a helpful product for the general public. Especially given what they did after Hurricane Maria in P.R..
I bet they were struggling to keep the company afloat, & taking an offer from the military was their last chance to survive.
"ASAP" is a stretch, IMO. I bet the opposite is more likely. They tried as long as possible.
WA6L
Kelvin n0mql EN35ld
Onno (VK6FLAB)
ludman1