Well, a week is a long time as a radio and electronics hobbyist and I’ve found a better bread. I have now decided to go with Meshcore.
Last week I did a post on how I discovered Meshtastic and thought it was the best thing since sliced bread.
Both formats are similar but different. Meshtastic is great as a ‘plug and play’ technology and everything I said in my previous post is valid. But what I have learned is that Meshcore is a better long term solution. This is a good article from a hardware maker.
I have decided to build my network with the following.
- 1 x Elecrow M5 as the radio that travels with my iPhone
- 1 x Elecrow M5 as the home base radio that is linked to my Mac Mini via the iPad/iOS app that works on M-series Macs
- 1 x Elecrow M6 as a repeater at my home to serve the local community. There are two models of this unit. One takes Meshcore and Meshtastic firmware. The other doesn’t do Meshtastic.
A few things:
- As with Meshtastic, If you’re in the US, AUS or NZL (and other places – check) get a radio on 915 MHz. 868 MHz is used in Europe.
- Elecrow has a M1 model which looks the same as the M5. They do the same thing but have a different chip. The M1 is built on the nRF52840 chip, making it much more energy-efficient for long-term field use, according to Gemini.
- If you switch from Meshtastic to Meshcore, tell your iPhone to forget the device and delete the Meshtastic app before installing the Meshcore app.
So, why did I switch? A few of the hobbyists I follow all moved to Meshcore. I also watched a “product presentation” from Meshcore and was quite impressed. Now, there is an internal ****fight in Meshcore land but it’s not enough to bother me.
The reason for switching
The product presentation
Equipment recommendations
I wrote to the presenter (Hayden vk7hh) and said the following:
I was surprised you promoted a kit for the repeater. You’ve previously promoted the Seeed Studio assembled repeater. I’m actually going with the Thinknode M6 repeater. They have two versions, one works on Meshtastic, the other doesn’t. Also, you link to an 868 MHz Heltec unit. Be careful to get the right one (915 MHz for AUS, NZL and USA and more).
I should also say, I am going to run two Meshtastic nodes. One will be on my Lenovo ThinkPad E14 Gen 7 (or Lenovo Tab K9) and the other on my Motorola G55. I have both platforms for testing and software not on Apple platforms. The radios I will use are Heltec V3.
11 May 2026