We're making an open-source $30 GPS/mesh radio, would like advice

Re:We're making an open-source $30 GPS/mesh radio, would lik... by atourgates on Tuesday March 10, 2020 @07:21PM (#22541066)

Really cool.

Seems like an open-source mashup of something like Lynq https://lynqme.com/ - and Gotenna https://gotennamesh.com/

I've never liked Gotenna's requirement to be paired with a cellphone for tracking, so I've been watching Lynq's development for a while. But, I'd much rather have an open-source solution than one that depends on the fortunes and whims of a single compnay. Particularly if there was easy-to-use commercial hardware available with the open source software.

The other downside of Lynq is that it doesn't use mesh networking, e.g., every Lynq unit can only communicate with other units it can connect to directly. That means if you have a group of 3 people all in a line, separated by 3-miles, only the person in the middle will be able to find the location of the entire group, and the people at the ends of the line would be invisible to each other.

Anyway - all that to say - I'm super-excited for your project and wish you all the best.

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Re:We're making an open-source $30 GPS/mesh radio, would lik... by punkgeek on Tuesday March 10, 2020 @07:26PM (#22541112)

yes, that's what we thought also. Also, the phone is optional for our case (though you need it for sending texts - if you don't have one the display still shows rxed texts and headings/distance to members of the channel)

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Re:We're making an open-source $30 GPS/mesh radio, would lik... by myself248 on Wednesday March 11, 2020 @11:21AM (#22546563)

In my case, only the Heltec boards were easily available, and they lack the GPS that's in the TTgo boards. So I hope there's a way for the phone's GPS to participate!

(Or, since the esp32 has bluetooth, recognize a bluetooth GPS puck? That's extra work and they're quite rare, so maybe nah.)

Otherwise I'm totally fine soldering another GPS onto some random GPIO pins, I have a whole bag of those. I'm just not sure what it would take to get it recognized.

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Re:We're making an open-source $30 GPS/mesh radio, would lik... by punkgeek on Wednesday March 11, 2020 @01:30PM (#22547844)

also, adding support to dynamically probe for a GPS attached to GPIOs would be very straightforward (almost identical to the tbeam case). If you're interested in this ping us on the devchat and someone will help talk you through it.

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Re:We're making an open-source $30 GPS/mesh radio, would lik... by punkgeek on Wednesday March 11, 2020 @01:29PM (#22547815)

yes. If your radio doesn't have GPS the phone will provide GPS updates to the radio. Everything is treated identially (though there will be a bit higher battery consumption on both the phone and the radio)

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