A community to discuss Meshtastic (https://meshtastic.org/docs/introduction)
Other mesh communities:
MeshCore: !Meshcore@feddit.org Reticulum: !Reticulum@mander.xyz
I went the Heltec V4 route and DIY'ed and it was not difficult. I am happy to share more if you are interested and DM me.
The Heltec V4 is power hungry compared to others but also has the most power for TX(some firmware shenanigans makes this not always the case but it is improving). If you do not care so much about long battery life it is a great option. To give perspective with a 3000 mah battery I am still lasting days.
To give perspective with a 3000 mah battery I am still lasting days.
Is that connected via bluetooth or just running the LoRA radio? Curious if the V4 is any less power hungry than the V3. I never did a rundown test with one of my 3,000 mah V3 units, but my daily driver had a 2000 mah battery and barely made it 14 hours before it was throwing the battery low warning. I kept it connected to my phone the whole time under most conditions.
Same conditions but with the nRF-based T1000e, it runs for about 2 days on a 700 mAh battery AND has GPS (I didn't have GPS on my daily driver node). The difference is amazing.
With GPS but not connected to my phone constantly, I have been pretty happy with battery life.
LoRa is a proprietary radio interface, so I don't how how FOSS you can go with it, but the Meshtastic firmware itself is FOSS.
What are your use-cases? Are you looking for something to use as an everyday carry? An outdoor solar node to relay messages in your area? A node to use as a base station? All of the above?
For everyday carry, I semi-recently bought the SenseCap T1000e and I love it. I did a post about it here: https://startrek.website/post/34105873
Seeed (the company that makes the T1000e) also makes a nice outdoor, solar powered node: https://www.seeedstudio.com/SenseCAP-Solar-Node-P1-Pro-for-Meshtastic-LoRa-p-6412.html
They've also got a lot of options for various other configurations as well: https://www.seeedstudio.com/LoRa-and-Meshtastic-and-4G-c-2423.html
Those are all "turnkey" devices, but I've heard good things about the Heltec V4 if you want to go a more DIY route and make your own case and add your own accessories (GPS, accelerometer, etc).
To add a few more turnkey options, I've had good experiences with my Wismesh Tag and ThinkNode M1