overview for Cowboy

[–] Cowboy 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Its the built in standard. And recently was upgraded to be even more secure

[–] Cowboy 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

This is awesome. I’m a big believer in stocking legacy tech because its cheap, readily available and usually can be repurposed for stuff like this. My only concern would be eating up a whole fancy SDR just for some more walkie talkies, but if you could find some dedicated 2G infrastructure radios on ebay or something I bet you could build a pretty cohesive system for a lot cheaper than other options. I personally always keep around a few dial-up modems still because I know that if a disaster ever strikes I can jack in anywhere where i can get a tone and dial up a telephone ISP to hopefully be able to access the internet

Meshtastic Comms Network in c/Comms

[–] Cowboy 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

Basically meshtastic is a widely available system used to send location data and texts between a local network of devices. This allows for texting and location sharing between people within a group without reliance on infrastructure like cell towers or wifi, so basically you can text and see your friends on a map without service. It’s pretty widely available across a few different devices from different manufacturers and you basically just need the device, and a phone to connect it to in order to get up a running.

Meshtastic Comms Network in c/Comms

[–] Cowboy 1 points 2 months ago

That would be a pretty cool experiment. HF is one I would love to get into but alas I too am at capacity for hobbies. I would also like to try to up the bandwidth on my network but I think my plan is to use traditional 5GHz internet radios to build an IP based network to hopefully not need to re-invent the wheel too much. We'll both get there one of these days!

Meshtastic Comms Network in c/Comms

[–] Cowboy 4 points 2 months ago

My recommendation is to get a couple lilygo T-Beams to start out experimenting. The Heltec radios are also pretty good but require a bit more DIY-ing to get them to the same level of functionality. The T-Beams are cheap, and include GPS, wifi and serial support all in a pretty good bundle. Pair with an old android phone and you'll be rolling

15

Meshtastic Comms Network (self.Comms)

submitted 2 months ago by Cowboy to c/Comms

14 comments fedilink

Hi all,

Welcome to the community I have formed to discuss various communications technologies. I wanted to discuss some of the new comms and information systems I have been personally setting up and how I’ve integrated them all into what I like to call my “C2 at home” setup.

Most recently I’ve gotten into meahtastic radios, which if you are not aware are a really cool, relatively new, kind of mesh radio that enables text style chat and location sharing across devices without reliance of cell infrastructure. They are very cheap, usually under $50 per radio, and you don’t need a HAM license to operate them wich is great. I swept up a few T-Beams off of lilygo and have setup a small network to talk with friends.

Now what’s really neat about these radios is that they integrate with ATAK using a plugin, which has enabled us to utilize ATAK together as a team on phones without having to worry about cellular data or hotspots, and without needing to worry about getting a license like with the older hammer plugin strategy with baofengs. OpenTAKServer, a free TAK server, also implements a meshtastic gateway tool into their platform, which lets devices link together to a server over the meshtastic protocol. I’ve combined all of this to build a small meshtastic network, with a laptop based, portable TAK server which can be deployed and setup anywhere, and then give me and my group a decent communications network anywhere.

There are certainly still some limitations to the LoRa protocol that meshtastic is built on, but overall I think its a very neat tool for people to know about so I wanted to share my own usage of the tool and hopefully start a discussion here that we can all learn more from,

Thanks!

Interest and permission on forming an communication systems community in c/offtopic

[–] Cowboy 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Just spun up a community called comms. Hope to see you there friend!

Interest and permission on forming an communication systems community in c/offtopic

[–] Cowboy 4 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Thanks dude. I appreciate the platform you’ve built here

Any Research on New Materials in c/general

[–] Cowboy 1 points 2 months ago

I’ve begun to do very similar things. I’ve started to use a combination of different materials for sifferent components to maximize the functionality or aesthetic appeal of each part. Most often I’ve used either PLA+ or nylon for frames and large pieces and PETG-CF for small internals like mag releases. I think from what people have mentioned here I want to try out some PPA-CF next though

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Interest and permission on forming an communication systems community (self.offtopic)

submitted 2 months ago by Cowboy to c/offtopic

5 comments fedilink

Greetings,

I am wondering about the overall interest and whether it would be permitted to start a community for discussion on SIGINT technologies, radio communications and other information systems? While not directly a 3D2A discussion, I think these tools serve a valuable place in the arsenal of anyone involved in this community and there is a significant amount of knowledge I believe should be preserved and disseminated outside of subreddits and within this community. I know I’ve recently been working recently on a meshtastic network with some 3D printed radio builds and expanding my knowledge of ATAK through some really cool plugins and custom built tools and would love a place to share and discuss a lot of this and I feel like this is the perfect community. After all I think this whole recent situation should be a good wake up call on the importance of communications routes and technologies

13

Any Research on New Materials (self.general)

submitted 2 months ago by Cowboy to c/general

27 comments fedilink

Hi all,

Long time community member here. Very sad to recently find out about the massive loss of information from the banning of fosscad, but before this I was trying to do some research and am hoping to get some information here if anyone has it on some of the newer filaments that I have seen recently and if any are worth picking up. I am just polishing off the last of my PAHT-CF and Polymaker nylon-GF spools, which have been incredible for my projects, and I've seen that polymaker has been releasing a lot of new filaments under the fiberon line and rebranding old ones. Are there any of these that are worth checking out and has anyone been done any up to date experimentation with some of these newer blends?

Thanks all, RIP r/fosscad