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!
That reminds me, I want to get some walkie talkies for my kids. There may be loRa walkie talkies maybe?
short answer, no.
Long answer, LoRa is a very low bandwidth digital scheme. It can BARELY do SMS-like text messaging. Audio, especially in real time, is way out of the question. There are devices sold as more or less complete Meshtastic nodes with their own built-in UI, one of which looks quite a bit like an old Blackberry, but it’s not exactly kid friendly.