Meshtastic is an open-source project using low cost LoRa radios as a long range off-grid communication platform in areas without little or no communications infrastructure. It’s a portmanteau of Mesh and “fantastic”.
I found it shared on Facebook, which lead me to the subreddit post, which lead me to reading more about it and even finding Lemmy communities and local groups!
https://mander.xyz/c/meshtastic
I also made sure to check if this wasn’t a hail corporate thing. And I also felt like I missed the era of homemade radios. So this is exciting for me!
On a practical level, I was thinking of using it for camping/traveling.
Some of the hardware looks like beepers/pagers, and I know a lot of folks that would want one just for that experience again.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DOZitOGEs2D/