I've been playing with meshtastic on and off for a while. It seems to have been a bit fiddly. Trouble connecting BT and then occasional issues sending messages once connected.
Meshcore sounds like it's more solid but doesn't seem to have the popularity. I tried it out and it's much more polished but no other nodes in sight.
This latest run at meshtastic has been much better and I even have folks chatting on the mesh.
What's a guy to do? Just run repeaters for both?