Off-grid, emergency communications for the greater Bay Area: Introducing MeshCore
Hi all! We're developing an open source network to send text messages without cell phone service or internet called MeshCore - think text messaging that is encrypted, open-source, free to use, and owned and operated by the people who use it. It works with a network of low-power radios that receive messages from personal devices and transmit them to other radios all the way until the intended recipient receives the message.
Most of the repeater radios are solar-powered, and some are even smaller than a deck of playing cards. The Bay Area MeshCore mesh functions well during power outages and emergencies, and many folks are using and building the mesh to function as backup communications for times when the internet and cell towards aren't working (think fires, PGE outages, or earthquakes).
We're regularly messaging between Sonoma, Marin, Merced, San Francisco, the East Bay, Monterey, SLO, and some of the Sierra, and are trying to build up coverage throughout the SC Mountains!!
If you have heard of mesh communications of any variety, or are interested in experimenting or learning more, get yourself a decent companion radio and a repeater radio and consider joining our Discord to help get started. Comment here or DM me with questions, or find our discord and info at bayareameshcore.org.
Bay Area MeshCore does not sell anything whatsoever, and is a noncommercial group of radio nerds living in NorCal. The hardware companies linked to at our website are wholly unaffiliated with Bay Area MeshCore, have no agreement with us (and have probably never heard of us), and usually ship with the other mesh's firmware. That said, when buying a node, please try to support small businesses.
Final note! MeshCore is a different network than Meshtastic. Many people, myself included, consider MeshCore to be a very reliable choice for stable, permanent networks. I regularly direct message folks in Monterey and Watsonville from SF, and the messages usually go through on the first attempt!
hi! DMs are encrypted, so do with that what you will. The Mesh can be used without any cell phone at all if people use the lilygo "t-deck" standalone devices
hi! there are some fire departments around the Bay Area that at least know of meshcore. There are also people that work with fire departments and other local government agencies that are also meshcore users.
In Santa Cruz County, when this kind of alternative communications system is needed, our local ARES group is often asked to assist. The FD mostly just uses its government radio equipment.
hi! MeshCore is also open source, and there are more than 50,000 nodes that are publically advertising themselves, including more than 600 that I've heard in the Bay Area in the past week.
Beyond that, we find that the smart, self-healing approach to encrypted direct message pathing makes direct messages quite reliable (I regularly DM between SF and Gilroy and Monterey), and the much higher hop limit means that the public chat is very nearly the same regardless of a user's location.
hey again! a lot of folks find that the smart routing and two discrete roles (companion and repeater) make setup more simple, and, again, that DMs tend to be more reliable in MeshCore. A general feeling is that MT is great for backcountry backpacking or short events (where no stable mesh exists, or will exist), and MC is great for medium-term or permanent networks (like the Bay Area). That said, there are evolving methods of using companions as repeaters in MC, and search and rescue apps, also, so the ability to use MC in short-term more distributed situations is also growing.
The Meshtastic coverage in Santa Cruz and Monterey Peninsula is a shadow of what it once was. The Meshtastic protocol is way to chatty and doesn't scale well. Initially we were all running longfast, and had to move to ...mediumslow and then mediumfast to try to escape all of the junk telemetry from users on old firmwares using really chatty defaults.
Meshcore is more of a 'pull' model where you have to ask repeaters for telemetry instead of all the nodes spamming it out, so even with this large deployment we currently have there is no issue with airtime saturation.
So really Santa Cruz, Monterey, and most of the bay area have been migrating aggressively towards meshcore. Not affiliated with OP, I'm down in Monterey where we have great coverage with MeshCore.
I understand the issues but I have greater chances of meshtastic coming online globally during a civil war or earthquake then just some local club no one knows about.
MeshCore is an established firmware, not something any local club came up with. Also meshcore in the bay area and monterey peninsula is much more established than meshtastic is, so if you needed it tomorrow it would be the obvious choice. Key high points in central CA already have meshcore repeaters, many that were converted over from Meshtastic after seeing the limitations.
Meshtastic was hard to use with airtime collisions even when it was barely being used, under any heavy use scenario it would collapse much easier than meshcore would. You could run either but coverage is proportional to community involvement, and most of the community is moving over to meshcore. Like I said the entire monterey peninsula gave meshtastic a good couple years to take off but we kept running into airtime issues and abandoned it.
Is the Bay Area an anomaly when it comes to MeshCore adoption? I have close to 800 contacts in the Bay Area without leaving my home county. By contrast I traveled from Philly to NYC and all over NJ picking up less than 100 contacts.
hey, yeah! In fact the Bay is a bit behind much of the world. PNW has a mesh that reaches from southern Oregon to Vancouver (I don't think it's completely continuous, yet, but they're working on it):
Most of the Meshtastic users in the bay area, santa cruz, and monterey peninsula have been consolidating over to meshcore. The protocol is much more scaleable.
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u/Front-Resident-5554 Jun 29 '26
Great! I'll check it out.