Two meshes across Scotland, one community.
ScotMesh people run two separate radio networks. They do not talk to each other, and you do not have to pick just one — but you do have to start somewhere. Here is what each is for, and what both are doing right now.
Long-range LoRa messaging on cheap radios. The mesh reaches from the top of Scotland down through the Isles and across to the south of the Republic of Ireland, and it has the most tooling behind it: a live map, coverage built from real packets, and alerts when a repeater goes quiet.
Long-range LoRa messaging with an app on your phone. Scotland only, and the easier of the two to get the hang of — the widest hardware support, the most documentation, and the largest node count here.
Node positions on the map are real; the moving traffic is illustrative, shaped like each network's behaviour. Figures come from each network's own tools, refreshed every few minutes. They are not the same measure — a MeshCore repeater and a Meshtastic node are different things — so read them as signs of life, not a league table.
Repeaters carry the message
Long-range LoRa messaging on cheap radios. What makes it MeshCore is the repeater: a radio left on a hill, a mast or a roof whose only job is to pass messages on.
Your radio just has to reach one repeater. From there the message hops repeater to repeater across the country, and each hop is recorded, so the route it took can be seen.
- Fixed repeaters on high ground do the carrying
- Every hop is recorded in the packet
- Reach depends on where the repeaters are
Every radio can repeat what it hears
Long-range LoRa messaging with an app on your phone. There is no special infrastructure: every radio can be a relay, repeating what it hears to everyone in range.
A message ripples outward a few hops in every direction and stops. The more radios there are in an area, the further a message can travel.
- No dedicated infrastructure needed
- A message floods a few hops, then stops
- Reach depends on how many radios are about