#1178 Thank you, and an idea for BeeBEEP 6: LoRa radios as another road

[Anonymous]

Hello Marco,

I am writing here because I could not find an email address for you, and I hope this is not the wrong place. If it is, please forgive me.

First of all, thank you. I searched for a long time for a LAN messenger, and BeeBEEP was the most stable and the one maintained for the longest time. Looking after a program for so many years, and now rewriting it from scratch, is a very large effort, and I truly value it. I also read "Claude and me", and I am glad to see how that partnership is making BeeBEEP 6 possible. I am looking forward to using it.

Your posts about Bluetooth, the relay and the phone made me feel that BeeBEEP is going beyond the LAN, toward what is called off-grid messaging. I am not an expert, and I do not know whether the following fits your plans, so please take it only as a humble suggestion.

Bluetooth: bitchat (GitHub user jackjackbits) chats over a Bluetooth mesh, with no server and no account. Each phone repeats packets for the others, with a hop limit and duplicate removal, and private messages are end-to-end encrypted. Your relay seems to follow a similar idea, so its whitepaper may be useful.

LoRa: It is a long-range, low-power radio that sends only a few bytes at a time, so it suits short text, not files. MeshCore and Meshtastic are two open-source firmwares that build mesh networks of LoRa radios, with no internet. In Meshtastic, every node repeats what it hears, up to a hop limit. In MeshCore, only dedicated repeaters repeat, and messages can follow a learned path. Depending on the model, the radios connect to a phone or computer by Bluetooth, USB or Wi-Fi. So BeeBEEP could be the interface, and the radio just another road for sealed messages.

LoRaWAN: is built for a different job: connecting small battery-powered sensors, such as a soil-moisture probe or a water meter, to the internet. Each sensor talks directly to a gateway, a box that turns the radio signal into internet traffic and hands it to a network server. It is a star-shaped network that needs that infrastructure, the sensors do not repeat each other's messages, and it is not made for people chatting. MeshCore and Meshtastic work the other way round: the radios talk to each other, repeat messages for each other and need no gateway or server. All of them use the LoRa radio, but LoRaWAN is not the protocol of the other two.

Why it might matter: I think these ideas could help people who value privacy and who need to talk when the usual networks are not there: a failure of the office network, a building with no Wi-Fi, a farm or a warehouse far from the main site, a trip with no signal. BeeBEEP already promises messages with no server, no account and nothing that can be switched off. A radio road would carry that same promise beyond the walls of the LAN. And since BeeBEEP already seals messages end to end, the radio would carry only sealed envelopes. For many people, being able to communicate without depending on a company or on a signal is a daily need, and it is part of what it means to value privacy.

Sources:

• bitchat whitepaper: https://github.com/permissionlesstech/bitchat/blob/main/WHITEPAPER.md
• Meshtastic: https://meshtastic.org/docs/overview/mesh-algo/
• MeshCore: https://github.com/meshcore-dev/MeshCore
• LoRa Semtech: https://www.semtech.com/lora
• LoRaWAN: https://lora-alliance.org/about-lorawan/

Thank you again for the work, for building something that respects people's privacy, and for your time.

MauroAber

[Marco Mastroddi]

Hello Mauro,

Thank you for your kind words, and for a suggestion so carefully thought through. This is exactly the right place to write.

You read the direction correctly. I studied bitchat's whitepaper and its source when I designed the Bluetooth side of BeeBEEP 6. A good part of the mesh you describe (hop limit, duplicate removal, store-and-forward, sealed private messages) is already part of how I think about it.

LoRa is new to the plans, and your message put it there. I now have a written plan: BeeBEEP would be the interface to a Meshtastic or MeshCore radio, and the radio just another road for short, sealed messages, as you put it. You are also right about LoRaWAN: it is a different job, and it stays out.

One part of your idea touches BeeBEEP's history. In the USA, radio amateurs used the old BeeBEEP to share information during wildfires. That is why version 5 could turn encryption off: amateur radio traffic there may not be encrypted. So the radio road will have two lanes: sealed envelopes on the free bands, and messages in clear but signed, with the callsign, for licensed operators.

I must be honest about timing: this comes after the first release of BeeBEEP 6, which still has a lot of work ahead. But your message changed how I am designing the parts that come before it, so that a radio can fit in later without rewriting them.

Thank you again and ciao from Rome!

[Anonymous]