> What is the use case?

It's primarily just an experimental system. Demonstrating that fixed infrastructure isn't actually necessary to communicate.

Beyond that, it's a mixture of HAM radio for communicating with people outside of your immediate circle, and disaster prep.

The best realistic scenario I can see for using it is after a sever weather event like hurricane, tornado, tsunami, etc. that takes out significant comms equipment. Having an ad-hoc network pop up using battery powered nodes able to setup a secure comms channel to organise aid deliveries would be a powerful tool. But existing infrastructure is resilient enough that it's not actually necessary in modern times.

Beyond that, it's probably more of an IoT type thing. Setup a bunch of nodes across a significant area of land, run machinery, sensors, etc. remotely via a self-healing mesh network.

I used to wonder the same thing and then we bought a vacation home and experienced no cell service in an area close to a major metro. It's only a 40 min highway drive outside a top 20 U.S. big city. Our street is only 12 mins drive from a major interstate highway with the usual suburban superstore sprawl (Target, WalMart, Home Depot, Costco) so it feels like we're in the middle of 'civilization'. But once you turn off the highway, that last 12 mins gets both beautiful (with rugged hills) and also very empty.

Five mins from our house suddenly cell service from all the providers gets very spotty. If you live near the top of a hill facing the right direction, you can maybe jury rig a cellular antenna on a pole. There is legacy POTS phone service via 60 year-old copper but few use it because it's only ISDN barely faster than dial-up and >$100/mo. Otherwise, there was no option for reliable residential phone/data/text service until Starlink became available in our area a couple years ago.

So everyone in our entire area has 2M radios to communicate in emergencies because in four years we've had two fires come close enough to close our roads, been snowed in twice (without power) and a small bridge got damaged in flooding blocking vehicle access in and out for four days. We can't even see any of our neighbor's houses from our property yet several times a year we need to get extremely local information from, and coordinate with, people we'd have to hike to visit. And it's usually because something is happening which takes out local power and/or road access. But the old 2M radios have to be monitored in a real-time which feels really antiquated. So, to me, inexpensive LoRa that could enable store-and-forward messaging and conditional unattended alerts suddenly sounds very useful.

It's not all people trying to skirt the law. It's kind of like HAM radio as a hobby. It's fun technology that lets people do cool automation projects and sure with a mesh connect to other people. Imagine you have a few acres of land and want to turn on sprinklers or something.

A lot of people use it just to chat with friends and family in a fun way.

Of course the preppers and privacy evangelists see it as a means to get ready for living in a hostile environment. Being fair to them, things don't look awesome in the US.

I bet a few criminals use it, but it's still very niche.

It runs independently of internet and power. One use case is a group of people in a remote area (hikers, hunters) carrying their own node and being able to communicate via text over several kilometres.

If you see this technology and think "wow! that solves [problem I already have]" - then it's great.

Otherwise, you buy a couple, set them up, spend a week or two sending very slow and unreliably forwarded messages that mostly amount to "hi! i have an ACME 32ABC radio! What do you have?", and then put it in a drawer or sell it on.

Just like ham radio, really.

People will go on and on about what happens to society when the internet or cell service goes offline, but when they see an emergency solution staring them directly in the face, they wonder what the use case is.

Just like ham radio, it's a an interesting technical hobby for those that may get excited when their little 0.25W radio hits a repeater 80km away.

More practically, I'm going to try it out while camping this summer. In areas with low or no cell coverage, my phone is useless or dies quickly. Throw a repeater in a tree, and hand your friends nodes.

You send "test" and hope that someone replies.

Sometimes you discuss new Meshtastic gear or setting up a router together.

Its one of the few places you can be fairly sure you're chatting to people, not bots, who have no agenda to sell you anything.

Of course if it ever becomes popular, that will quickly change. But for now it is like early IRC.

LoRa is for long range lower power communication. It can achieve a range of approximately 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) in practical conditions and up to 330 kilometers (210 miles) in perfect conditions. There are plenty of applications for it.

"What is the use case?"

Advertising services

But only if use of the network becomes popular

(Generally no one thought this would be the eventual use case for the internet)

I would love to be able to get text alerts when an event occurs, from a location that is not connected to the Internet, about a mile away. The need is not critical, so there is no desire to spend money every month. And reliability of the solution does not have to be high either.

Something like this might work?

One of the use cases is pairing it up with ATAK or similar tactical awareness system during SAR operations by volunteer brigades in remote areas with spotty coverage by regular networks.

More info here if someone's interested: https://www.civtak.org/

I set up my first node after the last major Verizon outage that rendered my cell phone useless as a mobile communications device. Now, when the next outage happens, with the always-on base station that I have at home, I can bring a portable Meshtastic radio out with me, paired to my phone via Bluetooth, and retain the ability communicate wirelessly back home, or with any of the other many nodes in the extensive network here in the NYC / Hudson Valley region. I also enticed a couple of local friends to install them and we often opt to text over the mesh. I see it as a thing that is fun to play around with now, but which may become critical at some point in the future.

It's really for closed user groups. At least meshtastic doesn't allow you to see other people's messages, only those in your own group. They're all encrypted.

The use case is off grid communications for whatever you might need.

95% of it is people just doing ping? Pong! In chat.

The cheapest devices are like $10. Order one and have a go.

I'm using one of those devices with a tiny eink screen... as a pocket ebook reader. Sorry for the bait. Fun and easy project though, lookup Pala one if you're interested and dm me for improved firmware (restrictive license)

> What is the use case?

I worked R&D on LoRa project a few years ago. Their use case was a long-range emergency communication system for workers in remote areas(no wifi, lte or LEO at that time). Now I see a bunch of applications in this field that aren't what you describe. :)

I built one and found absolutely no use for it. No one ever, and I mean ever, answers you. It's sort of like ham radio, where you get your technician license and get on a net and discover people are just talking about their antennas. Except it's worse, because all the antenna discussions are happening on Reddit and Discord and not on the network itself.

People are very enamored with what you could theoretically do with it, but they never actually do any of it. It's a hardware fetish, it's all about building boxes with solar panels and seeing how many nodes you can light up on the map. Reminds me of another ham radio thing I never got into, "contesting".

I've seen it used by folks off-roading/overlanding for coms.

Gov/DoD/SpecOps use it to maintain radio connectivity with things like the Android Tactical Assault Kit (ATAK).

Being nerdy.

But also you don’t build these things when you need them (it will be too late), you need to build them before you need them.

There is no real use case, IMO. I setup a few nodes a couple of months ago. It's mostly no activity, punctuated by some random "can you read me" type messages, and for some unknown reason people who think there is something impressive about them having a node on a commercial flight.

The entire thing would fall over in any kind of scenario where you needed to rely on this janky mesh network as a primary means of communications.

It can be fun/useful for very out of the way things where you have a handful of people out camping, or other off-grid situations. But frankly even in those cases there are far better/established ways to keep in sync if you need to (eg: FRS).

This stuff is mostly a solution looking for a problem.

Digital Radio Hobbying, think HAM radio but with a microcontroller and apps.

hiking with so far you don't have cell access. cruises when you don't have cell access.

are you a fed? lol.