I’m not much of an expert but it’s basically low power UHF radios that use a particular waveform and FFT process to decode signals that are well below background noise. My radio regularly picks up messages with an SNR -10. I like it to the GPS system’s algorithms.
The main drawback is that, because they’re low power, you have to have LOS between antennas.
Meshtastic long range radio systems. Off grid, user created, low bit rate but stupid long range.
Sweet I’m pretty inexperienced with radio stuff but I’ve been meaning to look into that for a while. Time to hop down the rabbit hole!
It’s just the right amount of DIY to be engaging and so cheap to get into. Plus the discord community is really active.
How did you learn to not fuck up? I heard if you interfere with important radio frequencies (airplanes I think) you’ll get punished by the law.
Edit: I looked into transceivers at one point and saw that mentioned.
They operate in bands intended for stuff like LoRa and IoT. So there’s no danger of messing with other systems.
You a ham? Or is this LoRa? APRS?
This is LoRa but there’s heavy crossover with the HAM community.
Cool. I got licensed just before the pandemic, I’ve played with APRS a bit but never LoRa
Like ham radio bounce off the ionosphere over the horizon long range?
Not that far. Most LoRa systems use UHF bands so you need LoS to get these super low powered radios to work.
That’s fascinating. I just picked up my first 10M radio, can you elaborate a bit?
I’m not much of an expert but it’s basically low power UHF radios that use a particular waveform and FFT process to decode signals that are well below background noise. My radio regularly picks up messages with an SNR -10. I like it to the GPS system’s algorithms.
The main drawback is that, because they’re low power, you have to have LOS between antennas.