All true, but the tradeoff is zero additional hardware cost and zero setup. For a family hike, small team, or a hunting party staying within a few hundred meters of each other, pulling out your phones beats buying and configuring radios for everyone.
That said, BLE Long Range (Coded PHY) pushes it to 400m-1km and is on the roadmap for the next version. I'm also planning a Meshtastic bridge so if you already own LoRa hardware, the app can route through it for multi-kilometer range. Best of both worlds: works without hardware, works better with it. Would love some feedback if you ever try it out!
Comments
Yeah the range of BLE makes this an order of magnitude less useful or practical than a $50 LoRa transceiver.
All true, but the tradeoff is zero additional hardware cost and zero setup. For a family hike, small team, or a hunting party staying within a few hundred meters of each other, pulling out your phones beats buying and configuring radios for everyone.
That said, BLE Long Range (Coded PHY) pushes it to 400m-1km and is on the roadmap for the next version. I'm also planning a Meshtastic bridge so if you already own LoRa hardware, the app can route through it for multi-kilometer range. Best of both worlds: works without hardware, works better with it. Would love some feedback if you ever try it out!