Using meshstastic as a fallback network for Holochain

Technical Discussion Technical Watercooler
#1

I did recently explored a bit about LoRa, Ham Radio and especially Meshtastic. I see quite some overlaps in the general architecture of this outstanding two projects and believe, combining the to the twos could create synergies and new use cases in the IOT world.
But as non Holochain dev and with only a rough knowledge about LoRa or Meshtastic I would like to deepen a bit this idea and the feasibility with more experienced folks.

  1. Of course the limited data rates and low latency are a kind of a show stopper for applications designed for the speed of the internet. But on the other hand as a fallback mechanism and keeping in mind that many Holochain hApps that not require large throughput and low latency, it could still make sense. Especially when you consider that a Holochain node is self healing and does updates it states when other nodes go offline when they come back. So if data rates similar to LoRa (about 20Kbs) are achievable it think it is worth to give it a try.

  2. The idea is to run Meshtastic as an addon service to a device as a Holoport. Because Holoports are supposed to run 24h, when a Meshtastic Router/Repeater could get attached, this would first expand the Holochain network two other Meshtastic users and second act as a fallback network when in a emergency case the internet is down. But I don’t have a clue how those can be wired together. Of course on the software side some Meshtastic libraries in Rust would be required, but on the Hardware side?

  3. I found this thread about running Secure Scuttlebutt on Meshtastic, which goes in the same direction.
    As an ideal solution I can imagine having a Odyssey Mini PC running NixOs and Holochain. The Odyssey Board supports hybrid connectivity including 5G, LoRa, BLE and WiFi, but I don’t know if compatible LoRa extension boards (Raspi or Arduino pins) could run Meshtastic? Other methods to connect would be Wifi or USB I suppose.

If the wiring and connectivity issues could be solved I think a Proof Of Concept wouldn’t be extremely difficult to achieve. Such a POC certainly could to a wider interest and eventually adoptions in the field of commercial IOT projects.

I did post about this topic in the Meshtastics Discourse channel and ev. someone could join the discussion there too.

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