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sign up today and thank you for the support. What is the best mesh Tastic device that you can get for a starter if you're just getting started into the world of mesh Tastic or Laura Wan or long range Laura on the nine hundred and fifteen megahertz band in the USA, which is called the ISM band. If you're just getting started, where to start, where to go, what to get and maybe some discounts that I have for you, my audience, So stick around. So this is an article
that I found. I don't even remember where I found this article. Actually, this is on a Drillian dot com Adrillien dot com. It's a blog post, okay, but it caught my eye. It was written in February of this year, and it caught my eye because it says, what is the best device for Meshtastic. Now, these are some really cool looking outdoor enclosures he's got on these nodes right here, and I don't even know what that is, but I'm sure you could go find him on his blog if
you want to. So he says, we talked about Meshtastic in another post full guide to how to get started. He got a link right there. I will link this article, this blog post in the description below so that you guys can go find that and read more about it yourself. But he lists four devices, all of which I have, and I think he's correct in what he said about each one. And I'm gonna give you one, maybe two more that I would recommend for those of you who
get a little bit more seasoned into the world of Meshtastic. Now, this is my current This is my current stash right here. Okay, so we're gonna talk about this device and this device and this device and this device. We're not going to talk about that one today. We're talking about this one a little bit, that battery whatnot. So this is my current stash that I've got. But I wanted to read you guys this blog post and see what you thought
about it, and some of you, I'm getting email. I'm starting to get emails from Meshtastic vendors now and from Meshtastic interested parties, and say where should I start? So he lists all his links here to Ali Express. I'm gonna give you three different places you can buy this stuff besides Ali Express in case you don't want to shop there. Some people don't like shopping there. This Lilygo t Echo. I'm not exactly sure why he lists that
one at the top. These don't seem to be any specific order at all, but the first one he lists is the Lilygo t Echo Meshtastic. I've got this device right here. I just got this in haven't really done much with it yet. I'm going to record a new video about this device very soon. But he says, the
t Echo is like an all in one package. It's got a backlit e inc screen, five point zero bluetooth, GPS okay, GPS's that's one thing that some devices do and some device do not have, and it's it might be something that you want, it might be something that you don't want, depending on whether you want your GPS. Your current GPS location always beaconing. So we'll get to that later, a newer chip, the SX twelve sixty two chip, an eight hundred and fifty milliamp hour battery packed into
a sleek case. No fuess, no soldering, no needed. Thanks to whatever that is, it keeps going without stressing over power. Okay, so this is an all in one package. So that makes sense. Now I kind of understand why he listed that one first. A lot of these, the first two or three devices I got, I had to put together myself. I have to solder a screen onto the T beam. We're going to talk about that here in a second. You have to put together the hell Tech V three,
which is not hard. You just snap it together. But then you have to get an external case for it. You have to get a third party case for it and put a battery in it, because the way the Helltech comes it doesn't have a way to carry a battery on its own. But we're going to get to all that here in just a second. So stick around, we're going to talk about this. So this one right here is he lists the pros as in r F five two eight forty, which is far more powerful and
efficient than an ESP thirty two. I might have to look that up and see what it is. I think that's a chip. I think he's talking about the chip the or no, he's SX twelve forty two chip. Hold on, you know, I'm gonna google that over here at Norda. I'm sorry, over here at Mauser, which is actually written down the road from where I live from Nordic Semiconductor. This is an RF system on a chip, an SoC SO RF system on a chip. Sc that number q I AA QFN seventy three L seven x seven data
sheet there. This is more information than most people are generally gonna need or want or care about. But it is the chip on the board, or one of the chips on the board. So it's more efficient than the ESP thirty two, which is a lot of times the chip that's on a lot of these Laura boards. So it has GPS and has a battery included. That's good, battery included, e ink screen. Newer Laura chip with case comes with its own little case right here. That's good,
ready to use. Some versions with a B and ME two eighty censor for telemetry like pressure, temperature, commidity. The cons is that the little price it does not have Wi Fi stock is limited. Screen a little bit finicky and no easily upgraded. So there's two ways you can control your Meshtastic device. Okay, you can connect to your device via Bluetooth. Most of them have that, and most of them have also Wi Fi, so you can change. And one of the dumb things about Meshtastic at least
the units I have. Maybe there's a unit out there that'll do both Bluetooth and Wi Fi, but the units I have, the t Beam, the Helltech, and the Well I guess the t Echo doesn't even have a choice for Wi Fi. It'll only use one at a time.
If you turn on Wi Fi, it comes default. The Helltech and the t Beam come default with Bluetooth on, So you just bluetooth it to your phone and wherever my phone is, and you use the Meshtastic app to connect to it from your phone, and then you can turn on Wi Fi on the device the device reboots, and when the device reboots, it turns off Bluetooth, so you can no longer connect via Bluetooth to your phone. You have to connect to the same Wi Fi network
that your Meshtastic device is connected. To connect your phone and your Meshtastic device the same Wi Fi network and the app will then scan and it should automatically pull up the DHCPIP address for the meshtastic device, and then you can control it from Wi Fi. Those of you with nodes high up on a tower at your home, maybe it's out of range of Bluetooth, you can control these via Wi Fi, assuming you have Wi Fi outside that will reach your tower, your push up pull, your
push up master, something like that. So two different ways to control it. But as of yet, I've not seen a device where it will have Wi Fi and Bluetooth both enabled at the same time. Maybe some of the more expensive devices will do that, if you guys know of one, put a comment in the video. Blow and again he lists all these on the Ali Express page here, and the Alli Express page is listed at sixty three ninety eight. Now they fluctuate prices quite a bit right now,
it's actually forty eight ninety four at Ali Express. And I was looking at a couple of things at Alli Express. Oh yeah, see this is what Ali Express they want you to want you to do. Okay, No, I don't want your stupid notifications. They want you to buy one. If I go over here to the quantity down here, I cannot increase the quantity. Like if I was to buy, if I say, oh that's a good price, I want to buy two or three or five of those, they won't let me do that. It only let me buy one.
So that's kind of that's kind of lame because Ali Express there. So after looking at Ali Express, I've got I've got I've got three other stores here I'm gonna share with you today, different things, different to different stuff. Rockland dot com which recently contacted me and uh, we're gonna work out maybe a coupon code at some point in time. But they've got the they're sold out right now.
They've got the t Echo for with the same chip GPS nine ERN fifty megaheurts, which is what you want if you're in the USA SX twelve sixty two wireless module. It's out of stock. It's for sixty seven dollars, and then Amazon has it for sixty one dollars and it's in stock. A lot of you like to shop on Amazon. It's a little bit safer. Returns are easier on Amazon than they are on Ali Express. I can guarantee you that. So for forty eight bucks, I would probably buy one
of these on Ali Express. I don't know what the shipping would be, they're not gonna get well, it says free shipping right here, Okay, free shipping between June thirtieth and July sixth, So this is a special they're running. I'm recording this video ten days before June thirtieth, so i'll see. I'll do my best to post this in time, but if not, then it might be closer to the
sixty four dollars price here. So sixty four dollars here is the normal price, sixty seven here, and then sixty one, and they've got two or three different versions here on the Amazon Store, so that's what that is. So you're looking at you're looking at about sixty to sixty five dollars for the t Echo, and that's number one on the list today. The second one he lists is the
T Beam. Now the T Beam device. Again, these are not in any specific quarder, but the T Beam device was actually the first ever mess Tastic device that I got. This is the one here that I have in this Spec five case. I did a video about this that'll post at some point in time. I don't know if before after the video you're watching right now. But the T Beam is nice because it comes with an onboard GPS and it's a little bit cheaper. You do have to solder this screen onto it, this screen that you
see in the picture right here. It does not come with the screen. You can buy the board by itself. You buy the screen separately, and then you have to solder them together. So those of you who are reluctant about soldering, you may not like this one, or you may just want to buy one that's fully assembled, if you could find that. I like the T Beam because it does already have a port on it for an external antenna, so you can unscrew this contenna you see on it right now, and you can put a larger,
longer Intenta on it. You can put a mag mount Intendna on your vehicle and connect it here. So it's got a couple other options to that. It says it's ready to go with a battery holder, reasonable prize, GPS,
WI FI, newer loada chip, Loda. I wonder if he means lorda chip, why user base, SMA connector Yes, CON's battery not included, no case included, little large esp hungry power consumption, no upgradeability, customizability, okay, And then he's got these different versions of the Tea Beam right here, so I would pretty much agree with that list. This was the first device that I ever had, and it is
power hungry. It uses the battery a little bit faster than my Heltech device, which we're going to talk about here in a second. I've not compared it to the to the t Echo device yet, so maybe that's another video I'll do in the future. But unlike the Helltech it has GPS. So you've got the meshtastic Laura radio running on nine hundred and fifty megahertz and you've got the GPS radio running for the t Beam device, so that may be one reason why it is more power hungry.
Now he has the price listed from Ali Express right here is thirty five to ninety eight. I'm gonna click on that and see how accurate and update eight that is, so four dollars less. Again, you can only buy one, no, it'll let you buy multiples one, okay, So the sales not running on this one right here, So thirty five dollars free shipping for that one week from Ali Express. If we go over here to Rockland, it's about forty four dollars seventy one in the US warehouse as at
the time of this recording. Right here, No with OLED Oh that comes with a display. Okay, then with o lead display soldered, so these guys will put it on for you. Okay. I've shared the link to this in the description blow of course. And then over here on my Amazon store, I've got the this listed. It does not come let's see soldered. Oh yeah, this one actually does also come. The one that I bought from Amazon
did not come with the screen. So this one here I found later on thirty seven to fifty on Amazon. This is going to be the better buye right now, because this is Amazon. If you're in the United States, Amazon returns are easy, and then you can also get an extended antenna for it and get yourself an eighteen six fifty battery hopefully like a Samsung or Panasonic version, but about thirty seven, just under thirty five to forty bucks for that one T beam. That's the one I
have running in my truck right now. Again, it does have GPS. I really like that one, so good. Good second choice on the list here. The third win he has is this wise block Meshtastic starter kit official price at the alle Express store is twenty four to ninety nine. I'm gonna click on that. Oh and he's got Okay, so there's all these different modules you can get here. So board and module one is twenty four to ninety nine, so you get all the different stuff here. That kind
of thing. This board is actually inside that. This is what the board is. That's actually inside of the rack Wireless kit, the one that I bought from Garth on Etsy that I did a video about a while back, with the waterproof enclosure and solar panel on top of it. So these are pretty popular again. Ali Express has enlisted for twenty four to ninety nine for the base model. Okay, that one's fine. Over here at Rockland they got them listed for thirty seven ninety seven. Comes uh, what has
several options for add ons. You have to compare the base model to see if that's the same thing. But after doing a couple of Meshtastic videos, I actually got an email from Rackwireless dot com themselves. They're the ones who make this. They've got this basic starter kit for twenty nine to ninety nine. So they say send me a link to their store and they offer you, guys, my viewers, a three percent discount with the coupon code
of mesh Tastic dash Ham Radio two. So you can get three percent off of this starter kit here or anything else on this website. I'll leave a link in the description blow. Okay, so this one's This one at Rockland is a little bit more, but it might include more stuff too. I'm not going through and doing a deep diving all these kids. This is the basic starter kit here. You have to choose what you want over here, and then this one here on Ali expresses about the
same price. So if you good option to not have to shop on Ali Express, get it from rock Wireless, use my coupon code and get a better discount going that way. Anyway, So before we get to the fourth one, I want to tell you about pcbway dot Com. Pcbwa dot com is sponsoring this video today. You can find their link at the description blow. They do professional board printing, circuit board printing, C and C machine printing, professional grade
three D printing. If you want to get a case printed for any of your mesh Tastic devices, you can upload the s TL files or other files two. Pcbway dot Com you can choose which element, which type of element you want the case made from. So they've got several options available and you can choose whichever one you want to choose whatever color you want to very easy
to get stuff done. Head over to pcbway dot com and if you place an order with them, be sure to thank them for sponsoring him Radio two point zero. All right. Fourth and final device is this Heltech V three. Now, this one is probably the easiest one to use, with the exception of the fact that it doesn't come with its own battery. Okay, it comes with the screenslottered on.
It comes with this little jumper right here. It comes with this antenna that you see, and a lot of places you can buy it with that little case that that little itty bitty white and blue case that it comes with. But the problem is that case won't hold a battery. So if you click on Ali Express, they actually have them for eleven fifty right now. Okay, that link at the previous page says twenty one dollars. It's actually eleven fifty right now, and this goes through July seventh.
It's a different sale, but again you cannot order more than one. I was gonna go through and order like ten of these and put them in mystery boxes. But I can't. I can't, and we'll levey. This is the case that sometimes they come with. So yeah, you can get them for a dirt cheap price from Alley Express right now, free shipping, I guess, but you can only order one, so it kind of makes it maybe not worth it. I don't know. I don't know. We'll see.
But the good thing about these is there are plenty of options for battery or three D printed case or antennas for them. If you don't want to go over to Alley Express, I suggest going over here. This is my mesh Tastic Devices in Acessory store on Amazon, okay, and I have this kit right here, which this is for two of them. You get two of them with the riser cards, with the battery cable and the Helltech case. Okay. But you know, like on Amazon, you scroll down, it
offers you more suggestions whatnot. So you can get one of these for like twenty three dollars right now. Twenty three dollars. It's got a seven percent coupon off on it right now. It comes with all of this stuff, and then you have to put your own case and battery in it. And over here on my Amazon store, I've got these what to calls pillow batteries, these life po four pillow batteries. I've got one of those here
I'll show you in a second. And then of course some of these you can put an eighteen six fifty in also, And I got the eighteen six fifty batteries right there. So if we want to go over here and look at the overhead, all of these right here, this one, this one, and this one. These three are all hell tech boards inside of different cases. I've got a video that I recorded about this geolink case. There's an eighteen six fifty in here. That will be a
video on the channel that you'll probably see before this video. Here, this guy, this is a case that Josh printed for me at Ham Benson when we all got together and started tinkering around with mesh tastic at a big ham Fest. And of course it's got the larger larger Intenta on it, which you can you can add this to the This case comes with the antenna port you can add to it.
This one does too, And of course this is another one that I think Mike printed me this one, and you can add another intent of that if you want to. But these are great because you can see the screen on them. They've got internal batteries. These two have the pillow batteries in them, which is this guy right here, and this one has an eighteen six fifty, so this case is a little bit larger. These do not have GPS.
You don't have to worry about that. These batteries three thousand, these three thousand million empower pillow batteries last longer than the eighteen six fifty battery that I have in here. But the eighteen six fifty battery that's in here is a knockoff brand. It has false advertising on the label on it, so it doesn't it doesn't do much for that. The best battery to get is going to be one of these Samsung, these green batteries here, so I'm told.
So I'm told these Samsung slash Panasonic batteries are much better one hundred percent authentic Samsung twenty five or three dot seven volt rechargeable for that. So if you want eighteen six fifty, that's it. But those are the four main devices. Now. The rack wireless device is the one that I did the video on it comes to the enclosure. You can get those on Etsy. Check out my video. I'll link it up here somewhere where you can go watch that again. I've got two or three other devices
that I have picked up. One of them I don't have yet, it's on its way to me. One of them's inside, and then this one here, and you're gonna see that in another video. So I'm not hiding it from you. I'm just not showing it to you quite yet. This one right here is great. This is called a T deck and it's pretty cool because it looks like a BlackBerry smartphone. Okay, so Bill WK zero whw hem Rito tectonics. Bill, he three D printed this case for me.
He had one of these at the More Expo and he was walking around with it and he actually met two or three guys at that show that were on Meshtastic beaconing. So we met up with some Meshtastic guys at the More Expo an overlanding show. Very cool. This is the one that Bill had. You can have this. There's a connection on the back here to string an intent or a string an external intenda out of here. So I haven't put this together yet. This is gonna be another video where I put this together. I'm not
sure exactly what battery you put back here. I think it's an eighteen six fifty. But you take this case apart that he made for me with these two screws here, and that snaps apart. This sits in the top and there's a battery that sits underneath it. It charges over here down at the bottom. Has got a USB C charger right there. So that's another But the cool thing
about this one is you can type on it. You can type your messages on it, and you don't have to interface it to your smartphone the way you do these other guys. These guys act as radios, but you have to run the smartphone out this one right here, you can pull up the chat, you can type directly, send and receive messages directly from this device. So it's an all in one device. Don't even have to have the chat. Bill says it runs the battery down a lot faster than these other guys do because of the
larger screen and the more features it has. But that is the bonus feature that I was going to tell you guys about today. So what other devices in Mesh Tastic have you used and what would you suggest? Honestly, people who are starting to ask me what should I get first, I usually tell them to go get the Helltech V three first. It's the easiest one to put together. You've got plenty of options for three D printed cases. This Geli case that we did a video about a
while back. I just bought this case on eBay Okay, So if you search eBay or Amazon or ali Express or bangood or any of these sites for Helltech V three meshtastic cases, you can find all kinds of shape, sizes, and colors. You can do that for the T Beam. Also the Spec five case for the T Beam here, that's one of the better cases. That's probably the best design case I've ever seen, actually, But that's for the
T Beam. It does take an eighteen six fifty battery and it has GPS in it, where the Helltech does not. So the Helltech or the t Beam those are the first two and the T Beam. Have to make sure you get one with a screen already salted on. When I bought these, I didn't have that option, but it was probably a year and a half ago when I got these. I usually tell people to start with that hell Tech V three and kind of go from there. And as you can see, my collection has expanded and
I didn't even really plan that. So but tell me what your favorite Meshtastic device is. I'll put a link of everything we talked about in the description blow, including the coupons. So hope to see you out there on Meshtastic. Mine's running in the truck all the time, so when I'm driving around North Texas, it's running. When I'm out in Utah for the ham con Zion and for our Yellowstone trip during the month of July, and at Field Day in June, my Meshtastic was running the whole time.
So hopefully I'll see you out there on Meshtastik seventy three. You'll have a good win today.