Hello selfhosted community,
I need a privacy respecting alternative for an Apple AirTag. I recently bought my first expensive bike and i would like to know where it is, as it will be used by multiple people.
I know gps service costs something and I am willing to pay for it but I do not want any location data ending up somewhere it shouldn’t.
Thank you.
Meshtastic. Be sure to set it up to not broadcast your precise position over the default channel.
Here is an example.
https://www.seeedstudio.com/sensecap-t1000-tracker
AirTags work because there is a huge network of apple devices registering BT beacons. Meshtastic isn’t really viable unless there are other nodes around on the same channel, as you mentioned.
I have tried to use two LilyGo t-echos to GPS track my dog. Range is really poor in the mountains, so I basically couldn’t see the collared device unless it was within 100 to 150m away, which isn’t really helpful.
In a bigger urban area, more nodes didn’t help unless I was on the default channel, so same problem again, this timeline extra emf pollution.
Meshtastic is a great idea, but use cases are really limited.
The default channel is usually populated enough and I think nodes relay other channels using lora too.
My range to the next node is 7 miles.
AirTags work but chirp and thieves know to dump them.
Lucky you. I’ve got max about 900m (about half mile) by putting a node up on the mountain near me, and that was intermittent and message transmissions were delayed between 5 and 10 min.
Like I said, great if it works. Not a whole lot of good use cases, and op’s is not a good use case.
Tracking inventory is literally one of its primary use cases.
This looks really cool. I’ve heard of Meshtastic but don’t know the first thing about it. Time to do some reading…
Buy a few t1000 to see how it works and if you have any other nodes in your area. If you do you’ll have decent coverage.
The t1000 doesn’t have amazing battery life but I think there’s devices that are dedicated to gps tracking that last a lot longer.
I see they’re promoting something called the Helium network. What’s the relationship between that and Meshtastic? Are they completely different things?
Helium just used the same radio technology as Meshtastic (LoRa) and that’s about it. Helium was some lame attempt to develop a mesh network tied to a cryptocurrency as incentive for users to deploy nodes. AFAIK Helium is basically over.
Meshtastic is free and open. The hardware and tiny amount of electricity are your only costs to get involved. A lot of devices are efficient enough to run on a 1 watt solar cell and single 18650 battery.
The reliability will depend on where you’re located and how many nodes are running in your area. If you happen to be in a particularly dense area, you might also look into MeshCore, which is essentially the same idea but designed to scale a lot better.
I have helium nodes near me. Not sure how blockchain fits in, but they offer money if you donate your wifi or LoRa, and you can buy service to use that wifi or LoRa.
I like the idea but WiFi doesn’t have the range to be very useful except maybe in an apartment building.
Do note though that MeshCore is proprietary and has a licensing cost to unlock all of its features whereas Meshtastic is open source and free as in freedom.
I could be off the mark here, but I think it’s a little more complicated than that. I believe Meshtastic has trademarks on the name and logo, and they went so far as to shut down a project that was attempting to allow a device to switch between Meshtastic and Meshcore firmwares.
On the other hand, Meshcore is all open, however the client apps are closed source and on a sort of fremium model aimed at supporting the developer. Mobile apps have a 10 second wait to admin router nodes, which can be removed by a one time fee ($9, I think?). And then there’s a more feature rich firmware for the LilyGo T-Deck (cool standalone Blackberry-like device) which has a paid option.
I’d like to see open source community developed apps, and I don’t think there’s anything to stop anyone from writing new ones, other than the fact that the existing ones work well and the paid features make for a cheap an easy way to support the project.
If I’m wrong about any of that, I hope someone else with a better understanding can chime in.