The Econotastic

Off the bat, if you don't know what Meshtastic is then let me direct you to a couple of resources:

A good place to start would be the official Meshtastic introduction page:

https://meshtastic.org/docs/introduction/ 

For something a little easier to digest, here's the YouTube video that sent me down this rabbit hole in the first place:

With that cleared up and your excitement for Meshtastic firmly cemented in place, what you will soon come to realise after buying your first node (probably a Heltec V3 board) is that to do this well, you're probably going to need more nodes, and depending on your location, potentially lots of them.  With even the cheapest devices coming in at around £20 or more a piece, Meshtastic can turn into an expensive hobby very quickly.

With this in mind I wanted to come up with DIY node that can be produced in numbers and at the lowest possible price per unit and that is the intention behind this project. I have tried to work to three key principles in creating the design:

• A modular design using off-the-shelf components wherever possible

• Accessible to people with minimal assembly and coding ability

• Cheap!

As accessible as I want it to be, there remains a basic level of skill and equipment needed to assemble it so you're still going to need a couple of items, or be prepared to buy/borrow/steal them. At an absolute minimum you'll need some basic soldering equipment and possess the ability to use it. Almost every weld in this project is surface mounted which can be tricky for a beginner.

You are also going to need some realistic expectations of what this node can do. It has no screen, no keyboard, and at the time of writing, no Bluetooth connectivity (hopefully the devs at Meshtastic will get this going at some point). It does potentially have WiFi if you use a Pi Pico W but you still won't be able to connect to it using the app or at all once either you or the node are outside of WiFi coverage.

The ideal use case for this node is for someone who already has an off-the-shelf device such as a Heltec V3 and wants to set up a wider network of remote routers.

With expectations firmly managed, we move on...