Meshtastic Node Up and Running!

Our capstone team recently took a major step forward in our Community Flood Intelligence project by successfully integrating a Meshtastic node into the existing mesh network within Canberra. This milestone brings us one step closer to our goal of creating a decentralised, resilient communication system for flood-prone areas.

Figure 1 - Heltec Meshtastic Node

Expanding the Network

Leveraging Meshtastic, an open-source long-range radio mesh network, we connected our node to the broader Canberra mesh, allowing real-time data transmission with other public nodes.

Figure 2 - Canberra Mesh Spatially Mapped

Network Coverage and Connectivity

The following image shows a list of other nodes in the Canberra region (65 of them!), able to be picked up by our node. Meshtastic provides some interesting stats, including their connectivity and the number of hops away each is from our node. This visualisation provides valuable insight into the mesh network’s reach and redundancy, confirming our integration's effectiveness within the existing infrastructure.

Figure 3 - Meshtastic User Interface.