About¶

What is Chicagoland Mesh?¶

We are a growing community of people working together to create an off-grid, decentralized, and resilient communications network using inexpensive LoRa devices. Operating within the unlicensed 915 MHz ISM band, these devices are typically loaded with either Meshtastic or MeshCore firmware, enabling users to communicate without using traditional networks.

The FCC allows people to operate on ISM frequencies without having any form of FCC-affiliated license (such as that required for Ham/Amateur Radio). However, the 902-928 MHz range in particular is special, because transmissions under 1 watt over those frequencies can be encrypted, meaning your private messages will remain secure from prying eyes.

The purpose of Chicagoland Mesh is to expand coverage in our area and build out mesh networks to make them more usable. We currently have a number of nodes located in downtown Chicago and on top of other buildings out in the suburbs. We are always looking to expand our coverage and rely on ourselves and others who can get nodes in elevated places to join us in building our off-grid communications network.

What is Meshtastic?¶

Meshtastic® is a community project that allows anybody to communicate over LoRa radios, serving as a decentralized communications platform. Learn more about the inner workings through the documentation.

Long range (254km record by kboxlabs)
Decentralized communication - no dedicated router required
Encrypted communication
Excellent battery life
Send and receive text messages between members of the mesh
Optional GPS based location features

What is MeshCore?¶

MeshCore is a similar project that aimed to address some of the shortcomings Meshtastic had in larger networks. As networks grew, some areas began to notice issues with message delivery reliability. This is because Meshtastic was designed to be more peer-to-peer, which meant that by default all client nodes would repeat messages (thereby flooding the mesh network). However, this, coupled with the automatic sending of telemetry data, meant that the mesh network was oftentimes flooded with traffic, causing a lot of packets/messages to get dropped.

MeshCore addresses this by relying on more defined repeater infrastructure. Messages are sent from 'companion' nodes, which typically come in the form of standalone or BLE-connected devices that you use through your phone. Once they are sent, they go through a network of dedicated 'repeater' nodes, until they finally reach the recipient node. An initial message is sent in 'flood' mode, meaning all repeaters will repeat the message until the message reaches its destination. Once it is received, the repeater path it took will be retained on the device that sent the message, which enables future messages to be repeated only by repeaters defined on the path.

Notably, the Pacific Northwest switched over to MeshCore, which has seen messages sent from Vancouver with a received destination as far south as Eugene, Oregon! You can see real-time nationwide network activity here.

Meshtastic or MeshCore: What Should I Use?¶

Meshtastic began development in 2019, whereas MeshCore launched in 2025. As such, the former has a far more developed network. However, many high-traffic meshes are moving over to MeshCore to take advantage of the increased reliability for message delivery. This does not make MeshCore better than Meshtastic. Meshtastic still has a very real use case for more rural areas, where you cannot expect to already have the established infrastructure that MeshCore requires. MeshCore also requires users to explicitly request telemetry data (like temperature, node position, etc.), so it may not be as well-suited for nodes that are meant to consistently track positions or sensor data.

Hopefully this provides some insight on what mesh network fits better for your use cases. If you are still on the fence, feel free to host both firmware on separate devices, or look into using a firmware like LunarCore, which enables you to use both protocols on certain supported boards.

Getting Started¶

Join our Discord
Purchase supported hardware and antenna
Flash your hardware with the Meshtastic or MeshCore firmware
Download the corresponding app for your firmware, then connect to your node (Meshtastic: iOS or Android; MeshCore: iOS or Android).
Read the getting started page for your respective protocol for more information