Wio Tracker 1110 Dev Kit for Meshtastic in the Wild: Transformational Festival Field Report from Ozora 24

Along the last decade I’ve had the possibility to host Lutòpia, a wearable & decorations LED/light workshop in Ozora Festival. While I’ve been teaching physical computing, Iot, wearable computing and interface design in many different schools and institutions in the years, this little workshop lasting 3-4 days is by far the most extravagant and bizarre teaching experience I hosted so far in my life.

This year, with the support of Seeed, I was able to add a Meshtastic playground to it, allowing users to play around 2 Wio Tracker 1110 Dev Kit for Meshtastic among others radio devices.

Along side the nodes we also brought a solar node with a 3dBi Antenna and a battery + panel enclosure: it did its job in better connecting all the nodes we witnessed in Ozora this year.

What is Meshtastic?

For those who are unfamiliar with Meshtastic, it’s an open-source initiative that harnesses affordable LoRa radios to establish a low-power, long-range, off-grid communication system, particularly beneficial in regions without reliable communication infrastructure. Driven entirely by the community, Meshtastic enables decentralized, encrypted communication without the need for a dedicated router or phone. It offers an impressive range, with records showing connectivity up to 254 kilometers, and excellent battery life, making it perfect for outdoor adventurers or emergency scenarios. Users can send and receive text messages within the mesh network, and optional GPS-based location services add to its functionality. Currently, Meshtastic officially supports devices with specific Micro Controller Units (MCUs), including EspressIf System ESP32, Nordic nRF52, and Raspberry PI RP2040 with official firmware.

Few outcomes from a teaching and user perspective

More people than I expected brought their devices in Ozora, this confirms the enthusiasm I’ve been recording on the socials and reddit about this concept of festival trackers. Here are some previous discussions on reddit yesterday and a month ago. We all stare at the Burning Man experiment to stress test this system.

The user experience of the mobile phone app is complex, and differs from iOS to Android. While I appreciate the possibility of customisation and I’m super interested to test sensors and actuators messages through this network (this is my next experiment), I saw many users lost in the first days of use (as me at the beginning)

I was amazed by the help of the Community. I love Ozora (I wouldn’t host this workshop there for more than 10 years if it was otherwise lol) but I was really surprised from the help of workshop participants: from fine-tuning the Antenna of the Solar node to the changing of the Antenna path on the Wio Tracker done by Hervig. A lot of pros and engineers love to dance!

Feel free to comment here, on youtube or on reddit for share your thoughts about this.

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