firmware

It was the safe_sleep function. Here's an issue on it [0]. IIRC there was an early issue, but really this is code that never should have made it in. Here's the conditional in question SECONDS=0 while [[ $SECONDS -lt $1 ]]; do : done Here's the fix... (s/!=/-lt) while [[ $SECONDS -lt $1 ]]; It's a fallback sleep function for if you don't have the sleep command, (or read, or ping) then it'll increment SECONDS (special variable) until the time has passed because : does nothing (it will peg your CPU though). Problem is the loop isn't computed with infinite precision. Doesn't take a genius to figure out < is infinitely better than != here and you'd be right to guess that people did in fact waste thousands of dollars getting stuck in infinite loops that were entirely unavoidable. Here's the actual merge...[1] At least it didn't

This is an interesting enhancement using Meshtastic to expand the range of bitchat https://github.com/meshtastic/firmware/discussions/7542

> It's probably reasonable that radio hardware can't trivially be reprogrammed to exceed regulated power limits. https://github.com/meshtastic/firmware/blob/develop/src/mesh... The true limits are imposed by the hardware, not the software, as it should be!

It pains me to mention this but I don't think it's responsible not to: https://github.com/meshtastic/firmware/issues/4030 At time of writing (2025-09-27, plus or minus a timezone), there does not appear to be any serious attempt to secure application-layer message contents. (At least, not yet) My hope is that this cool new radio link option will still gain traction and grow and develop without painting itself into a corner, security-wise. To wit- security hints on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSI_model have improved substantially since my last readthrough.

Meshtastic is another project that has recently made serious strides[0] in their UX on the Lilygo T-deck (and similar ESP32 devices), but specifically regarding LoRA-enabled devices. It's still on a branch, but I compiled and ran it, and now I have two T-decks that can communicate with eachother off-the-grid without a smartphone attached to send messages; it's actually usable in emergencies now, which is why I bought the devices in the first place. Currently in the process to deploy a mesh from me to my parents and family. [0]: https://github.com/meshtastic/firmware/pull/3259

Is this using unauthenticated AES-CTR mode? https://github.com/meshtastic/Meshtastic-device/blob/0447808... https://github.com/meshtastic/Meshtastic-device/blob/0447808... https://github.com/meshtastic/Meshtastic-device/blob/285413c...

That's an interesting idea, especially with routing over LoRa getting a lot of development. I've been following Meshtastic [0] where they're doing both routing and data payloads over LoRa in low powered communications devices. It would be an interesting idea to have a device that could use 802.11 for data when in close enough range. With chips like the ESP8266 you could still have a relatively low power device but with much greater bandwidth. [0]https://github.com/meshtastic/Meshtastic-device

The current alpha works pretty well. (I'm sort of retired now, but my old job included writing software for these sorts of radios). If you'd like to play with this project we'd love your help (and we have a documented ble api). Here's an issue where various iOS types are ideating on possibly making an iOS app: https://github.com/meshtastic/Meshtastic-esp32/issues/14

thanks! yes, we are very delay tolerant and a typical text message (or flooded location update) takes a few seconds to get across our likely max # of hops (which is only three, due to our uhttps://github.com/meshtastic/Meshtastic-esp32/blob/master/d...) We initially used the RadioHead mesh router (which seems to be a variant of DSR), but we are switching to something else soon. Misc notes here: https://github.com/meshtastic/Meshtastic-esp32/blob/master/d...

ooh. good to know. here's what we are doing now for the regions we know. Someone is sending in a PR soon for the extra 440ish band in EU soon. https://github.com/meshtastic/Meshtastic-esp32/blob/master/s...

Looks like you have already written a lot of low-level code for your device already (https://github.com/meshtastic/Meshtastic-esp32) but have y'all considered taking a look at the Nerves project (https://nerves-project.org)? You might uncover some really cool stuff in the Erlang/Elixir ecosystem for doing mesh communications.