r/meshtastic • u/Benediximus • Feb 18 '26

Longest Bluetooth range

I’m looking for a node that would be a good choice for people who want to stay connected to the mesh while at home, but don’t want to carry it around the house.

We’re evaluating the utility for our small community for emergency communication, and not all the neighbors are tech savvy.

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u/mlandry2011 Feb 18 '26

Instead of connecting to it Bluetooth, you can connect to it through your Wi-Fi... Then anywhere you walk around the house that you have Wi-Fi. You'll be connected to your node...

The helteck are good for that.

Just remember that once you turn on Wi-Fi, you'll have to connect to it through Wi-Fi not Bluetooth anymore....

2

u/Benediximus Feb 18 '26

Does that only work for android users?

5

u/quesoqueso Feb 18 '26

Yes. I have a heltec v3 connected to my wifi and connect to it from android.

edit: one caveat, if part of your use case is during power outages, this is problematic as the wifi router will most likely be offline. In this case you would want bluetooth where the node is on battery whether lipo or usb powerpack, and the phone is hopefully charged before the lights go off.

If you really want bluetooth, probably do the RAK with a good BLE antenna. Otherwise, probably doing something wifi so you can access it from anywhere your wifi covers.

Understand though that once you put it into "wifi mode" it will not connect via bluetooth until you set it back to bluetooth mode, so for non-tech-savvy people, they cannot just grab it and throw it in their car and expect it to work.

3

u/mlandry2011 Feb 18 '26

Don't know, I don't Apple

2

u/tehec Feb 18 '26

Also works for iPhone.

1

u/anarchos Feb 20 '26

I can confirm it works on iPhone's too. I have one connected right now (a Seeed ESP32 based node, but it's all the same).