inexpensive GPS mesh radios as an extensible, super long battery life mesh GPS communicator. These radios are great for hiking, skiing, paragliding -
essentially any hobby where you don't have reliable internet access. Each member of your private mesh can always see the location and distance of all other
members and any text messages sent to your group chat.
The radios automatically create a mesh to forward packets as needed, so everyone in the group can receive messages from even the furthest member. The radios
will optionally work with your phone, but no phone is required.
Typical time between recharging the radios should be about eight days.
This project is currently early-alpha, but if you have questions please join our chat [](https://gitter.im/Meshtastic/community?utm_source=badge&utm_medium=badge&utm_campaign=pr-badge&utm_content=badge).
This software is 100% open source and developed by a group of hobbyist experimenters. No warranty is provided, if you'd like to improve it - we'd love your help. Please post in the chat.
We currently support two brands of radios. The [TTGO T-Beam](https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000119152086.html), [TTGO LORA32](https://www.banggood.com/LILYGO-TTGO-LORA32-868Mhz-SX1276-ESP32-Oled-Display-bluetooth-WIFI-Lora-Development-Module-Board-p-1248652.html?cur_warehouse=UK) and the [Heltec LoRa 32](https://heltec.org/project/wifi-lora-32/). Most users should buy the T-Beam and a 18650 battery (total cost less than $35). Make
sure to buy the frequency range which is legal for your country. For the USA, you should buy the 915MHz version. Getting a version that include a screen
Prebuilt binaries for the supported radios is available in our [releases](https://github.com/meshtastic/Meshtastic-esp32/releases). Your initial installation has to happen over USB from your Mac, Windows or Linux PC. Once our software is installed, all future software updates happen over bluetooth from your phone.
The instructions currently require a few commmand lines, but it should be pretty straightforward. Please post comments on our group chat if you have problems or successes. Steps to install:
1. Purchase a radio (see above) with the correct frequencies for your country (915MHz for US or JP, 470MHz for CN, 870MHz for EU).
2. Install "pip". Pip is the python package manager we use to get the esptool installer app. Instructions [here](https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/install-pip-for-python/).
3. Run "pip install --upgrade esptool" to get esptool installed on your machine
5. Confirm that your device is talking to your PC by running "esptool.py chip_id". The Heltec build also works on the TTGO LORA32 radio. You should see something like:
Warning: ESP32 has no Chip ID. Reading MAC instead.
MAC: 24:6f:28:b5:36:71
Hard resetting via RTS pin...
```
6. Install the correct firmware for your board with "esptool.py write_flash 0x10000 firmware-_board_-_country_.bin". For instance "esptool.py write_flash 0x10000 release/firmware-HELTEC-US-0.0.3.bin". You should see something like this:
Wrote 1184800 bytes (652635 compressed) at 0x00010000 in 57.6 seconds (effective 164.5 kbit/s)...
Hash of data verified.
Leaving...
Hard resetting via RTS pin...
```
7. The board will boot and show the Meshtastic logo.
8. Please post a comment on our chat so we know if these instructions worked for you ;-). If you find bugs/have-questions post there also - we will be rapidly iterating over the next few weeks.
Soon our first alpha release of will be released here:
[](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.geeksville.mesh&referrer=utm_source%3Dgithub%26utm_medium%3Desp32-readme%26utm_campaign%3Dmeshtastic-esp32%2520readme%26anid%3Dadmob&pcampaignid=pcampaignidMKT-Other-global-all-co-prtnr-py-PartBadge-Mar2515-1)
Since one of the main goals of this project is long battery life, it is important to consider that in our software/protocol design. Based on initial measurements it seems that the current code should run about three days between charging, and with a bit more software work (see the [TODO list](TODO.md)) a battery life of eight days should be quite doable. Our current power measurements/model is in [this spreadsheet](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ft1bS3iXqFKU8SApU8ZLTq9r7QQEGESYnVgdtvdT67k/edit?usp=sharing).
4. Type "pio run -t upload" (This command will fetch dependencies, build the project and install it on the board via USB)
5. Platform IO also installs a very nice VisualStudio Code based IDE, see their [tutorial](https://docs.platformio.org/en/latest/tutorials/espressif32/arduino_debugging_unit_testing.html) if you'd like to use it
