Text your friends, family or whole town with no phone signal, no Wi-Fi and no monthly bill. Small, cheap LoRa radios pass your messages to each other, hop by hop, across the hills.
LoRa (short for "long range") is a low-power radio technique that sends small amounts of data many kilometres on licence-free frequencies. Pair a pocket-sized LoRa radio with your phone over Bluetooth and you can send text messages, share your location and read sensors.
The clever bit is the mesh. Every message can be relayed by other radios in range, so it hops from node to node until it reaches the person you are talking to. Add a radio on a hill or a rooftop and coverage spreads for everyone.
The two big open projects are Meshtastic and MeshCore. Both run on the same kind of hardware and both are free.
There is no central server, no mast and no company in the middle. Each radio is battery-powered and talks directly to its neighbours, so a power cut, a mobile outage or a remote valley does not stop your messages.
Works with zero mobile data and zero internet. Your phone only acts as a keyboard and screen over Bluetooth, or skip the phone with a standalone handheld.
No single point of failure. If one node goes offline, messages find another path through the mesh.
Low-power radios can run for days on a small cell, and fixed nodes can run on a small solar panel for years.
Private channels and direct messages are encrypted end to end on modern firmware. Public channels are open for anyone to join.
Enthusiasts place solar repeaters on hills, masts and rooftops, so coverage grows every time someone joins.
A starter board costs about the same as a takeaway. No subscription, no SIM, no licence for EU868 devices in the UK.
Share location and check in with your group where there is no signal.
A backup comms plan for power cuts, storms and network outages.
Keep a crew in touch when thousands of phones swamp the local mast.
Build nodes, flash firmware, log range tests and map coverage.
How each one routes messages, which suits hiking or town-wide coverage, and why they cannot talk to each other.
Read the comparison → buying guideHandhelds, trackers, cheap starter boards and solar repeaters, matched to how you will use them.
See the kit → buildHow people put self-powered repeaters on hills and rooftops, and what to get right first time.
Plan a node →