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This Tiny Radio Lets Me Send Texts Without Wi-Fi or Cell Service (www.howtogeek.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

What is the range of a device like this? Is there any chance of using a mesh system like that if you're not in a city? I'm about 30 miles away from a few towns, so there's little chance for repeaters to be nearby.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Theoretically you can get 50 ish miles or more with line of sight. In practice, you can get around 10 ish with repeaters. With around 30 devices, our city has effective coverage.

    You also have options to use MQTT if you want to make sure a message gets through. But that requires an internet connection.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    What about without line of sight? If I get one of these is it going to work while it's sitting on my desk, or am I going to have to mount some antennas on the roof to actually make it usable? The maps only show like three other people in my city with one, so I'm not sure how useful this will actually be for me.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Honestly, its a fun side project, but without enough nodes its more of a hobby. If you want to make it usable, its probably better to use internet or higher power devices (like ham). Or buy a metric ton of these and throw them up high.

    As long as you have a node in sight, it should be good for at least some communication. My little window node gets 20+ nodes.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Additionally is there a way to search what's already out there without a device?

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    You can, there are websites that show some of the devices. But from what I've found, it's only showing around 1/4 of the real devices in the area. Or at least where I am at.

    I'm on the phone so I'm not sure off the top of my head, but I think someone already linked a couple above.

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