I suppose I worded that poorly. I meant that the firmware and protocol are open while the Android/iOS apps are not. My intent was to clarify what was open/closed, not obfuscate.

Directly from MeshCore’s docs:

5.7. Q: Is MeshCore open source?

A: Most of the firmware is freely available. Everything is open source except the T-Deck firmware and Liam’s native mobile apps.

Like I said, I’d prefer to see those closed bits also being developed openly and as a community, and there’s nothing to stop anyone from that endeavor. I also get that the mobile app dev has put in a lot of work on both the closed and open source pieces of the project, and he’s gotta eat.

I could be off the mark here, but I think it’s a little more complicated than that. I believe Meshtastic has trademarks on the name and logo, and they went so far as to shut down a project that was attempting to allow a device to switch between Meshtastic and Meshcore firmwares.

On the other hand, Meshcore is all open, however the client apps are closed source and on a sort of fremium model aimed at supporting the developer. Mobile apps have a 10 second wait to admin router nodes, which can be removed by a one time fee ($9, I think?). And then there’s a more feature rich firmware for the LilyGo T-Deck (cool standalone Blackberry-like device) which has a paid option.

I’d like to see open source community developed apps, and I don’t think there’s anything to stop anyone from writing new ones, other than the fact that the existing ones work well and the paid features make for a cheap an easy way to support the project.

If I’m wrong about any of that, I hope someone else with a better understanding can chime in.

Helium just used the same radio technology as Meshtastic (LoRa) and that’s about it. Helium was some lame attempt to develop a mesh network tied to a cryptocurrency as incentive for users to deploy nodes. AFAIK Helium is basically over.

Meshtastic is free and open. The hardware and tiny amount of electricity are your only costs to get involved. A lot of devices are efficient enough to run on a 1 watt solar cell and single 18650 battery.

The reliability will depend on where you’re located and how many nodes are running in your area. If you happen to be in a particularly dense area, you might also look into MeshCore, which is essentially the same idea but designed to scale a lot better.

Wow, I’m jealous you live somewhere that you can downgrade to 2.5Gb/s!

If you go that Banana Pi route, just be aware that the process of getting mainline OpenWrt on the thing is a little unusual, but not difficult at all. Just requires a cheap serial adapter and spare micro sd card.

There device has onboard NAND, NOR, and EMMC, as well as the card reader. Not all can be used simultaneously, so there are dip switches that set what is booted/visible.

Official install method is basically as follows:

-Hook up serial adapter to the send/receive/ground pins on the board, open serial terminal in something like PuTTY

-Set dip switches, boot the sd-card

-In serial terminal select option to install to NAND

-Power off, change dip switches, boot to NAND

-In serial terminal select option to install to eMMC

-Power off, change dip switches

-You’re done, now booting mainline on eMMC

Basically just putting the image on the NAND memory temporarily so it can be put back on eMMC since eMMC and sd-card can’t be used at the same time.

The Banana Pi forums are a good resource in addition to the OpenWRT docs.

My only gripe at this point is that the mainline configuration by default only sets up a 100mb partition on the eMMC to install packages to. Some folks have had success resizing that partition but I wasn’t having any luck there, so I may just compile it myself and set it larger. That change should be persistent through system upgrades after it’s done once.

Anyway, if you or someone reading this goes that route, I hope this helps!

Check out the Banana Pi BPI-R3. It’s getting mainline OpenWRT support with the 2023 release (RC builds available now). Amazing performance to price ratio. The only thing on your list that might be an issue is the 5Gb SFP. It has two SFP cages but I believe they max out at 2.5Gb. Also recommended to get the bundle with case and antennas included. Amazing price for what you get.