columba

I would absolutely encourage everyone reading this to check out Reticulum [1] if you haven't already. I believe the base project might be in need of new maintainers(?) at the moment and the main dev has some very strong takes, but it is a very well-thought out approach to distributed networking at the protocol layer. The existing implementations out there include a desktop app which can function over the internet (IP) or a USB connection to some existing LoRA boards. I recently purchased a LilyGo T-Echo [2] and have had a great experience flashing the open-source firmware and using it connected to a desktop over USB or connected over Bluetooth to the fantastic new companion app Columba [3]. This app seriously makes Reticulum feel like a first class citizen when it comes to parity support for messaging. You can even send files/images (with

Reticulum is a production-ready full network stack. Cryptography and anonymity are first-class citizens there. It is transport-layer agnostic, not just tailored for LoRa. I like it, but is see two main problems that prevent the wide adaption, and they are related: 1. The library is written in Python. If you want to design phone apps, Linux server daemons in C, or embedded software (for example for the Lilygo T-Deck) this is a bad choice. Somehow doable (execpt for embedded), but no fun. A small lib with C API and C ABI would be better. 2. Most of the end user software has a horrible UI. But it gets better with software like the Android messenger Columba (https://github.com/torlando-tech/columba). If we would solve 1., we would have more end user software. Currently, there are 4 project who try to solve 1. by writing a Reticulum lib with a