I can't tell you how right you are. I used it in power outages" Sometimes cell signal goes down " where you look at your phone and realize ok well I have no backup plan.

I think this is really cool.
But..
What it is: low bandwidth literal physical replacement of internet infrastructure. Often seen as a very extreme manuver.

Meanwhile: there are various overlay projects like i2p which, unfortunately, create new internets which [almost totally] reliance on the old internet. But they do cooler shit.

This is not a replacement for the Internet. It's currently basically just a low bandwidth local chat app. You could maybe run more complicated protocols on top of it, but it's not going to replace what we're doing right here right now.

It's a great experiment on LoRa though. It could lead to more complex networking. I'm trying to figure out what to do with it right now.

I also tried it when I was skiing in the winter. It was cool. I have GPS on my nodes. and I can tell where my friend is, tried also the telemetry sensor to tell the ALT but since it only tells the pressure it is not intuitive. You can probably tell if the person is up or down

Which antennas do you have? How far does it reach?

You wouldn’t need internet access for these to work, although there is a public community WAN server you could join to operate under MQTT (which is their internet facing WAN function). They function off of LoRa RF on the 915mhz band in the U.S. (and other bands elsewhere) to do the bulk of the communication. BLE is also utilized for management.

These do need more than 1 node to operate properly, but since it works off the concept of a public mesh (with options to privatize), you don’t need two of your own devices in a developed location.

However, if no one is around or within line of sight… then you’ll have to work a little harder to get contacts/connections going.

Its a totally separate thing from LoRaWAN. Its useful for messaging across town (if you live in an area with enough nodes), and it can do things like report on temperature an humidity or when a sensor is tipped, some devices support GPS too.

My understanding is that it's peer-to-peer using two or more radio transmitters, so it shouldn't need access to the internet.

To use Meshtastic you only need 1 device to talk to the others. If you want to talk with a friend each one need to have a device. Other than that you don't need anything. Get a device flash it then you are good to go

It’s achievable by any frequency supported by Meshtastic. The average range you can expect, with good LoS, is between that 5-10km range.

However, if you have different circumstances you can expect less or even far above the average.

https://meshtastic.org/docs/overview/range-tests/

The range test article above shows the current record for a successful ping/chirp to another node (Point to Point, no additional hops). It’s at 254km currently :)

So the frequencies matter a bit. I run on 433mhz but I bet lora is good enough even at the US 915. So yeah it can even go further. Meshtastic 254KM was done on US 915. https://meshtastic.org/docs/overview/range-tests/