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!
Meshtastic is cool, I haven’t gotten into it. It’s all license free. I say that because some other radio based hobbies need a license (GMRS and ham).
Folks looking into it, many of the devices use Bluetooth to communicate with a phone or computer so you don’t need to type messages directly on the device, but the technology is still off grid. There are totally self contained devices you can type on directly. I just wanted to mention that because seeing “off grid” then seeing them pairing with phones can be confusing. It’s truly only to enter messages and keep devices a little cheaper and easier to use.