This is absolutely incredible, very useful! I will definitely give it a try; looks like a fantastic way to greatly expand the capabilities of existing meshtastic networks
Agreed. Ive been thinking about adding another layer on top of Meshtastic for a while now. I was going down the MQTT rabbit hole but that is turning out to be a problem due to internet linked nodes. Serial communication is KISS and makes integration into a cheap controller simple. I would like to see if this can be used to relay messages through other RF modes such as JS8Call or the APRS network.
why not bring back Gnutella P2P type networks over meshtastic ? ;-) ok, so that's actually what i'm doing, though it won't be meshtastic compatible. It will be a kind of mesh network that uses Lora and some hardware tweaks. Such as point to point packet forwarding and and the use of Dual RF modules to double the data rate of the Lora mesh network
Dude. We’ve been working on the same thing. My twist: the bbs is also connected to a Packet node that runs on 2m/20cm, with the option to go digital on HF for long distance hops.
just not to the Urgent channel haha I’d hate to be forced to be subscribed to weather updates when I already have them on my phone - but would love to have a way to access if that service was disrupted.
1. This is awesome! 2. This will easily congest the frequencies in the EU as there is a channel utilization capping here (0.1%/1%/10% duty cycle) - the messages your BBS sends are quite long - if you'd shorten the texts that would be a great option for countries with limited frequency usage!
It looks like this has absolutely massive potential for expansion. A phone app plugin to handle the commandline stuff, and locally sync the BBS/mail so a user could treat it just like any other BBS or mail app would be rad. And it looks like you could already implement this as a local webserver by taking an off the shelf BBS and hooking it to one of your BBS nodes, give everyone on your wifi a nice clean interface to browse.
I was so excited when I saw this video, BBS, my first love, and lovely hardware. Added support for docker and made a PR. Proudly running this on an Orange Pi 3 LTS. Great work and video!
Yes! Thanks I hope they accept the PR for docker I would love to see some old BBS games brought back too. Adding games will keep users engaged returning to the service over time I really enjoyed the old trade wars 2002 and there was a dnd game that was great too but I don't recall the name of it off hand
I ran a BBS on an Amiga 500 with no hard drive and 2 floppies back in 1989-91. The capabilities to pass mail through to another bbs and around is frankly powerful. This is really cool stuff.
Ok, now do MUD support..... lol Or at least Zork.... But in all seriousness, great work! It'll be cool to have both a meshtastic and an APRS BBS running in the shack
This is a great way to get a massive amount of use for a whole area with only one node. Put it near a park, library, community center, grocery store... someplace people go periodically. You can rotate people through the coverage area instead of having to cover everywhere people are. To that end, I'd suggest adding the ability to opt into having the bbs node automatically push your new mail messages whenever your node is seen. I guess you'd need to keep track of whether the messages have been read or not, which should be pretty simple since they're unique to each user. It would be nice to be able to subscribe to a board as well, and have new posts automatically pushed to your device. I suppose you'd need to keep track of subscribers to each board and who has read each post.
thanks for the great BBS. as a non linux specialist i had it running on a raspberry on 10 minutes. tha documenatation is great and easy to understand. functionality is so cool...
Awesome project. Gonna bring it up at the radio club meeting next month. A month ago we put a router node up on the radio tower our club's repeater is on. It covers the whole county. This will be an awesome addition to the mesh network. Thanks for sharing.
This looks great. I'll have to try it. I ran the Looney Bin BBS back in the 90's. It got me into Ham Radio, and eventually to MT. Keep up the great work!
13:00 the channel URL to my knowledge always shares *all* channels including encrypted ones from the device at once - I suggest to check that! You can confirm this by scanning the QR code on a fresh Meshtastic device and you'll see that *all* channels from the device are shared at once including encryption keys obviously
Great , a BBS brings memory back to the first BBS i used from a C64 almost 40 years ago ! On point I like to state for navigation. Probably it would be easy to remember if entering 0 always brings you back to the previous menu or prompt.
Woah dude this is amazing! I hadn't thought of a BBS for Meshtastic, but this is the perfect application for it. This is really impressive stuff man. Are you a developer by day? I'll definitely check this out. This needs to catch on ASAP.
Looks great, keep up the good work on it! I'd like the idea of combining commands if that wasn't too difficult to implement, like M0 for "Mail --> Read" or M1 for "Mail --> Send", etc.
Wow! This is a dropbox basically? You can both drop bulletins for everyone, and individual messages for individuals? This is perfect! I want to have a drop box in a drop box. Basically, a plastic ammo can with a meshtastic node that can work as a drop box. This looks like it's finally what I'm looking for! Frequently, I end up going out of range as I go looking for a camping spot, or end up on the other side of a single large ridge line. With this, I can connect about a mile away to the drop box, and drop coordinates for a spot that I found, so friends showing up later know where to find me! How neat is this?!
How about adding an ollama option / offline GPT to converse with and give "internet like" information in a grid down situation - would need a beefier server though although I have PrivateGPT working at meshtastic speeds (slow but functional) on a pi5 :) - great video and it's on my list to try!
That has crossed my mind. The hard part is the needing a beefier system like you mentioned - when it comes to remote solar nodes at least.. may be doable for PoE though
@@The_Comms_Channel Power was my issue for solar nodes. One thing I was wondering on the power front but as I understand it, it isn't currently possible... is whether the python code could be run on a Pico as microPython with the Pico waveshare LoRa module - but as I understand it, the meshtastic firmware and a micropython application cannot co-exist - even if there was the memory space to implement. That would be a great lower power compact option though.
Very cool! I was just thinking about interfacing with Meshtastic! We should definitely use this on the default LongFast setup, but we’ll need to figure out how to keep multiple BBSs from operating on the same channel.
Not sure if you've ever used the linux GNU CLI "mail" program, often packaged with mailutils and sendmail. But it seems like you have a similar UI! It by default opens the first mail when entering the mail menu. Could probably do a similar thing and reduce packet volume. :) Also just want to say this is awesome, more meshtastic features!! very cool, just what we needed
Dude,…. I”m a minute in….. You are such a Baller class Nerd! Really Impressed-no idea if I will ever use it, but as a General Class licensee, this hits me in the feels. Mad Respect. Wonder though how far things can be pushed before the feds start worrying about not controlling meshtastic being used on LORA frequencies… I was watching a video here recently about some university that was ringing the alarm bells about Mestastic essentially because it couldn’t be monitored/subverted. How can I contribute without sending money thru YT/Google’s hands?
One possible improvement is "dialing" your option in one message. e.g. sending "B31" in one message to immediately be sent to the Post Urgent dialogue.
Awesome! I use to run a dialup BBS back in the day. I wonder if some of the software can be copied/ported over. Now I need to go on a hunt in my data archives.
Oh it brings back memories to my days running an Opus BBS on FIDO net at 2400 baud. This is great! We should create a Docker image for ease of installation etc.
What about a way to store waypoints from the map? If you missed it, you have to wait for someone with it to resend it for you. If they're stored on the BBS, they can be categorized as required and easily fetchable. If categories can be arbitrarily defined, we could have it dump the whole category at once. LBGT friendly businesses, fishing spots, good campsites in state forests, etc.
BBS seems to work great when started manually, but after enabling the service and rebooting, even though the service starts, the BBS does not respond to input. Any thoughts?
Got this working on a Raspberry Pi Zero - two different devices. One seems pretty stable; the other get a "Unexpected OSError" and connection resets. Probably something wrong with the latter installation since I copied the SD card from the working Pi. GREAT implementation of TCP connection - allows remote connection and avoids funky USB connections in Linux. Have used it with the iPhone app with no issues but haven't yet gotten it to work with the web interface or the CLI console syntax. But it's a great starting point and FINALLY moves past the concept of Meshtastic simply being a tool for texting using phones. Hams aren't excited about that type of stuff.
What do you think about saving a bit of time with sending a batch message? Like "B 1 2 1" and now its ready to get the title of the bulletin in the next message or could just write it in the same message so long it isnt too long message. So the servers are using internet to sync?
I was thinking of the batch send as well. Once you get to know the menus, it would get tedious to send "B", then wait. Send "1", then wait. Send "2", then wait. When you could just send the batch and only send once.
Reminds me of the real old days, this is pretty awesome, it's like watching the dawn of the internet, except that with a mesh network, we own the infrastructure
Awesome stuff! This is getting closer to the model of NOSTR which I could really see meshtastic evolving towards as a decentralized system of relays. Maybe an integration is ahead?
First of all, this is exactly the system i wanted for meshtastic. Would this support multiple Meshtastic nodes on one BBS? In like the idea of having this reachable from longfast and medium fast to uses with different channel settings to check the same bbs
I set this up without any major issues. The only thing I had to figure out was that the BBS node must include 'BBS' in its name; otherwise, it will return a message indicating an unknown user after attempting to send a direct message.
Great idea indeed. Questions. Does this also work over MQTT? What are the memory limits for the board, is it based on the amountnof space left on your raspberry pi's SD card, or is there a way of limiting messages on the boards software. I can see with a lot of messages coming in at once then the node sending these off to other BBS nodes the airwaves could get over loaded. Maybe impliment a seperate longfast channel allocation for BBS traffic even.
Amazing! I'm going to try running this on my Linux laptop with my router/client on my roof. I've still to try it, but will this work with something standalone like the T-deck? I'm thinking not. Hm... got it all installed an running, but the BBS isn't acknowledging my messages sent to it. I've left an 'issue' on github.
I am curious what the usefulness of being able to view txt documents that are preloaded with pause breaks to accommodate the limitations of the TX length would be.
very nice. kudos on the hard work. Just installed it on a node I have here and a Pi/0 - feedback: it would be nice to be able to delete BBS. Another use I see for it is for txt testing, having something that is answering you and not just sending seq# is great. especially in places without many nodes online
@@zazugee only for the client interface, not for transmission. It shouldn't impact the core functionality simply provide a more robust UI instead of the meshtastic android app. Could be more useful for BBS admins to use and easier to manage than the ASCII interface.
I have this running on a RPi3 with Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS server image. Very cool. the node is 7c0c near Placentia CA. One question, from my other node I can DM 7c0c and leave an email for 7c0c(the node connected to the BBS software) but I cannot see how to have 7c0c DM itself to connect to the BBS to get the mail I sent it. Is there a way to do that? Thanks for making the software available.
What kind of updates have you done to this? Because having a fido-like store and forward on these BBS hubs allows for... so many things when it comes t ooff grid COMMUNITIES rather than just randos that filter in and about. So far my biggest complaint is largely 'how do we get non technical peopel to use this?' Other than that? Looks pretty solid.
This is really amazing! I do have one question though. In the scenario shown on the map at 4:40, wouldn't Bob and Joe have to be directly next to BBS1 and BBS3 respectively to have this communication? Since Meshtastic connects to a device using Bluetooth, if Bob and Joe were out of range of the bluetooth --- which isn't very far --- wouldn't it not work? Or is this assuming Bob and Joe had a normal Meshtastic node within range, and use that to communicate with the BBS nodes? Also, do the BBS nodes require storage? If you are sending and storing bulletins and mail, where is that data being stored?
The BBS nodes in the scenario are nodes on top of mountains. Bob would be sending a direct message to BBS1 from his personal node to send the email. Joe would send a direct message to BBS3 to get his email. The BBS isn't running on the LoRa devices themselves. It runs on a computer like a Raspberry Pi and the data is stored in a database on the computer.
It might be nice to allow composite messages, like "m 0" to access mail and list it. Or even add an uncommon delimiter so you could do something like "m 1 Joe \\Test message\\This is a test message for UA-cam!\\END" to create and send a message all it one go.
@thecommschannel Very cool Idea with the BBS! An a side note, where you able to connect to a Meshtastic client with Bluetooth from the Clockwork uconsole??
Installed and working across home network! Awesome job. Any instructions on the new menu structure? SM,1,2 guessing 1 is the meshtastic short name? 2 the message?
Sweet! Thanks! Those are quick commands. You can select the Quick Command option from the main menu to see info on each one Send Mail Quick Command format: SM,,{short_name},,{subject},,{message}
This is really cool. I know it kind of goes against the purpose of meshtastic, but I do think it would be cool to be running to service on the same python that was a discord bot. And anyone who had a private message open with said discord bot could relay messages to BBS users.
Old school Doors from the BBS of old days, and if we could link this to A.25 Packet BBS that would be amazing and open up a host of other options. Thank you for what you have done.
The idea is good, but kind of a clumsy elaborate way to get store and forward functionality? Am I missing something is the BBS to have an apocalypse ready bulletin board? For peace time, a separate program, connected to a node, to store undelivered messages seen on the network and resend when the receiver shows up, would be a better way. Those "hubs" could then share lists over the net, so we'd have global store and forward, that would also work seamlessly with MQTT.
@@The_Comms_Channel Yes I figured it out, what the idea is here, I misunderstood the purpose of what this is. I'm still hoping we'll one day get a seamless store & forward, that doesn't require user action, that works both locally and possibly over MQTT.
I use wisblocks and if my phone client is not connected to the radio they store all received messages and once I reconnect I get them along with correct date/time stamps
Stood one of these up this weekend for my solar node in Edmonds WA (north of Seattle). Is anyone keeping a list of sync nodes? I'd love to see a wide network get going. As an old sysop from the modem days, I love this stuff!! Count me in as a Beta/Alpha tester.
It occurred to me that maybe AI will enable some advanced forms of encoding, like instead of your normal compression, bc of the low bitrate of LoRa we can use some code words that get interpreted by AI to reconstruct data like images and videos
There are already many BBS softwares available. It would be more interresting to be able to make a bridge between them and Meshtastic, most likely by using a tunnel between Telnet BBSes and Meshtastic.
This is absolutely incredible, very useful! I will definitely give it a try; looks like a fantastic way to greatly expand the capabilities of existing meshtastic networks
Ayyy fancy seeing you here!
Agreed. Ive been thinking about adding another layer on top of Meshtastic for a while now. I was going down the MQTT rabbit hole but that is turning out to be a problem due to internet linked nodes. Serial communication is KISS and makes integration into a cheap controller simple. I would like to see if this can be used to relay messages through other RF modes such as JS8Call or the APRS network.
good to see you here S2!
this guys like you only for meshtastic. AWESOME!
The man himself! Thanks for turning me on to meshtastic S2.
Agreed and with APRS/Packet integration will be even better!
That's the coolest thing I've seen since Xavian BBS came out on the Commodore 64.
But seriously, kudos to the designer (s)
Fidonet isn't dead. Absolutely love this project! Bring back WWIV and Tradewars 2002 ;-)
Any hints for finding the still-alive parts of Fidonet? Every time I’ve looked, all I can find is information about long-decommissioned nodes.
why not bring back Gnutella P2P type networks over meshtastic ? ;-)
ok, so that's actually what i'm doing, though it won't be meshtastic compatible. It will be a kind of mesh network that uses Lora and some hardware tweaks. Such as point to point packet forwarding and and the use of Dual RF modules to double the data rate of the Lora mesh network
Lost 2 GFriends due to my fascination with early BBS. This BBS app really opens up the comms for MT. Thanks!
Dude. We’ve been working on the same thing. My twist: the bbs is also connected to a Packet node that runs on 2m/20cm, with the option to go digital on HF for long distance hops.
do you have link please? Would be interested too. thanks
Have you thought about JS8CALL?
I would LOVE to have more information on your project if you decide to release it to the public.
@@flybygaming7982 the basis is TARPN... look it up. It requires you to have a Technician License
Link?
How about an automatic download of weather forecasts. And a urgent push of watches and warnings? News headlines?
just not to the Urgent channel haha I’d hate to be forced to be subscribed to weather updates when I already have them on my phone - but would love to have a way to access if that service was disrupted.
Adding a dedicated Weather bulletin with emergency updates is a fantastic idea!
1. This is awesome!
2. This will easily congest the frequencies in the EU as there is a channel utilization capping here (0.1%/1%/10% duty cycle) - the messages your BBS sends are quite long - if you'd shorten the texts that would be a great option for countries with limited frequency usage!
Thanks!
Hmmm.. forgot about the EU limits. I'll have to think on how to overcome that. Thanks for the suggestion!
@@The_Comms_Channel If you arent already doing this, compressing the messages between the nodes seems like an easy way to take a little off the top.
Looks like a great way to keep contact with people who don't stay on the mesh 100% of the time. Really great work.
Thanks! This is slick, cant wait to get some Pi's added to my repeater nodes.
As a GenX user of BBSs before the internet was a thing, this warms my heart and something I am VERY interested in!!!
Please add a "reply" function to the mailbox to allow direct reply after reading a message from the mailbox.
It looks like this has absolutely massive potential for expansion. A phone app plugin to handle the commandline stuff, and locally sync the BBS/mail so a user could treat it just like any other BBS or mail app would be rad. And it looks like you could already implement this as a local webserver by taking an off the shelf BBS and hooking it to one of your BBS nodes, give everyone on your wifi a nice clean interface to browse.
I was so excited when I saw this video, BBS, my first love, and lovely hardware. Added support for docker and made a PR. Proudly running this on an Orange Pi 3 LTS. Great work and video!
Yes! Thanks I hope they accept the PR for docker
I would love to see some old BBS games brought back too. Adding games will keep users engaged returning to the service over time
I really enjoyed the old trade wars 2002 and there was a dnd game that was great too but I don't recall the name of it off hand
I ran a BBS on an Amiga 500 with no hard drive and 2 floppies back in 1989-91. The capabilities to pass mail through to another bbs and around is frankly powerful. This is really cool stuff.
Ok, now do MUD support..... lol
Or at least Zork....
But in all seriousness, great work!
It'll be cool to have both a meshtastic and an APRS BBS running in the shack
MUD and zork would be great!
This is a great way to get a massive amount of use for a whole area with only one node. Put it near a park, library, community center, grocery store... someplace people go periodically. You can rotate people through the coverage area instead of having to cover everywhere people are. To that end, I'd suggest adding the ability to opt into having the bbs node automatically push your new mail messages whenever your node is seen. I guess you'd need to keep track of whether the messages have been read or not, which should be pretty simple since they're unique to each user. It would be nice to be able to subscribe to a board as well, and have new posts automatically pushed to your device. I suppose you'd need to keep track of subscribers to each board and who has read each post.
thanks for the great BBS. as a non linux specialist i had it running on a raspberry on 10 minutes. tha documenatation is great and easy to understand. functionality is so cool...
Good to hear! My goal was to make this as easy as possible!
Awesome project. Gonna bring it up at the radio club meeting next month. A month ago we put a router node up on the radio tower our club's repeater is on. It covers the whole county. This will be an awesome addition to the mesh network. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks! That sounds like a great spot for a BBS node!
I just got into meshtastic because of your videos and THIS IS SO AWESOME
Awesome work and awesome job. It almost reminds me of the late 80s/90s BBS boards. Which were all done n ascii.
👍
Awesome extension to Meshtastic functionality! It just gets better!
I was talking about such a system to a friend yesterday and today I wake up to this great video. Can't wait to give it a try !
Thanks for sharing your work with us, very much appreciated.
Thanks!
Thank you so much for the support!
Awesome project. How about making 0 always be exit, so that it doesn't change from menu to menu.
Nice. I used to run a BBS in 1994/1995. Search Light BBS.
Thanks!
Thank you so much for the support!
This looks great. I'll have to try it. I ran the Looney Bin BBS back in the 90's. It got me into Ham Radio, and eventually to MT. Keep up the great work!
This is amazing. What a happy surprise to see on my youtube feed today. Nice work.
13:00 the channel URL to my knowledge always shares *all* channels including encrypted ones from the device at once - I suggest to check that! You can confirm this by scanning the QR code on a fresh Meshtastic device and you'll see that *all* channels from the device are shared at once including encryption keys obviously
I believe that is true. Will probably have to use the web client to generate a URL with the channels you want to share
This is AWESOME! Just started dabbling in Meshtastic. Can’t wait to see setup videos for this!
Game-changer for neighborhood comms!
I dig your intros and outros too. 👍
Amazing project. Need more stuff like this.
Very cool! This will greatly increase the utility of Meshtastic!
The storm footage was great, too. Thank you for the video.
Congrats, Dude! I'll starting in the Lora this year. Thanks for help us.
Sweet! Sure thing! I'm glad the videos have been helpful!
Incredible! Thanks for sharing your work!
Great , a BBS brings memory back to the first BBS i used from a C64 almost 40 years ago ! On point I like to state for navigation. Probably it would be easy to remember if entering 0 always brings you back to the previous menu or prompt.
I got it working with your docker. Thank you. I will be having a very fun weekend.
Sure thing! Hope you enjoy it!
Woah dude this is amazing! I hadn't thought of a BBS for Meshtastic, but this is the perfect application for it. This is really impressive stuff man. Are you a developer by day? I'll definitely check this out. This needs to catch on ASAP.
BBS = bulletin board system, for those not alive in the 1980s 😂
No way! Typical programmer, won't explain the TLAs for us
That's Three Letter Acronyms
Looks great, keep up the good work on it! I'd like the idea of combining commands if that wasn't too difficult to implement, like M0 for "Mail --> Read" or M1 for "Mail --> Send", etc.
this is great! really important capability for disaster coms.
Wow! This is a dropbox basically? You can both drop bulletins for everyone, and individual messages for individuals? This is perfect!
I want to have a drop box in a drop box. Basically, a plastic ammo can with a meshtastic node that can work as a drop box. This looks like it's finally what I'm looking for!
Frequently, I end up going out of range as I go looking for a camping spot, or end up on the other side of a single large ridge line. With this, I can connect about a mile away to the drop box, and drop coordinates for a spot that I found, so friends showing up later know where to find me! How neat is this?!
I am jazzed! Nice work! I am still weeks out from having time to build out something but I will get there.
I can't stop watching this channel :)
Glad you're enjoying it! We're just getting started!
How about adding an ollama option / offline GPT to converse with and give "internet like" information in a grid down situation - would need a beefier server though although I have PrivateGPT working at meshtastic speeds (slow but functional) on a pi5 :) - great video and it's on my list to try!
That has crossed my mind. The hard part is the needing a beefier system like you mentioned - when it comes to remote solar nodes at least.. may be doable for PoE though
@@The_Comms_Channel Power was my issue for solar nodes. One thing I was wondering on the power front but as I understand it, it isn't currently possible... is whether the python code could be run on a Pico as microPython with the Pico waveshare LoRa module - but as I understand it, the meshtastic firmware and a micropython application cannot co-exist - even if there was the memory space to implement. That would be a great lower power compact option though.
Very cool! I was just thinking about interfacing with Meshtastic! We should definitely use this on the default LongFast setup, but we’ll need to figure out how to keep multiple BBSs from operating on the same channel.
Not sure if you've ever used the linux GNU CLI "mail" program, often packaged with mailutils and sendmail. But it seems like you have a similar UI! It by default opens the first mail when entering the mail menu. Could probably do a similar thing and reduce packet volume. :)
Also just want to say this is awesome, more meshtastic features!! very cool, just what we needed
Fantastic, and hmmm aprs...thats interesting. What a great twist from APRS Thursday
What is aprs thursday? I know aprs.
Dude,…. I”m a minute in….. You are such a Baller class Nerd! Really Impressed-no idea if I will ever use it, but as a General Class licensee, this hits me in the feels. Mad Respect.
Wonder though how far things can be pushed before the feds start worrying about not controlling meshtastic being used on LORA frequencies… I was watching a video here recently about some university that was ringing the alarm bells about Mestastic essentially because it couldn’t be monitored/subverted. How can I contribute without sending money thru YT/Google’s hands?
Ahh, coffee link in the description-my wife interrupted me so I had to start the video over..
Reminded me that I forgot to add it. It's up there now. Appreciate it!
One possible improvement is "dialing" your option in one message. e.g. sending "B31" in one message to immediately be sent to the Post Urgent dialogue.
I love this, and thank you for all your efforts :) FYI, there's no exit option, after you enter Stats -> Node Numbers.
Sure thing! I'll add that in the menu clean up. You can send "EXIT" in any menu to get out of it for now
@@The_Comms_Channel Wonderful, thank you again :)
Nice, used to run a number of BBS back in the day (RBBS-PC, RemoteAccess, TBBS). Was 2:263/151 on Fidonet for quite a while.
Awesome! I use to run a dialup BBS back in the day. I wonder if some of the software can be copied/ported over. Now I need to go on a hunt in my data archives.
Oh it brings back memories to my days running an Opus BBS on FIDO net at 2400 baud. This is great! We should create a Docker image for ease of installation etc.
This is a really neat looking project. Definitely going to give it a try soon.
What about a way to store waypoints from the map? If you missed it, you have to wait for someone with it to resend it for you. If they're stored on the BBS, they can be categorized as required and easily fetchable. If categories can be arbitrarily defined, we could have it dump the whole category at once. LBGT friendly businesses, fishing spots, good campsites in state forests, etc.
I'm right over the mountain from you in Franklin, have several nodes in place, would love to link to you over from here.
@@carltonsiple1876 that would be great. I know East TN and Middle TN are slowly working their way towards each other.
BBS seems to work great when started manually, but after enabling the service and rebooting, even though the service starts, the BBS does not respond to input. Any thoughts?
Got this working on a Raspberry Pi Zero - two different devices. One seems pretty stable; the other get a "Unexpected OSError" and connection resets. Probably something wrong with the latter installation since I copied the SD card from the working Pi. GREAT implementation of TCP connection - allows remote connection and avoids funky USB connections in Linux. Have used it with the iPhone app with no issues but haven't yet gotten it to work with the web interface or the CLI console syntax. But it's a great starting point and FINALLY moves past the concept of Meshtastic simply being a tool for texting using phones. Hams aren't excited about that type of stuff.
What do you think about saving a bit of time with sending a batch message? Like "B 1 2 1" and now its ready to get the title of the bulletin in the next message or could just write it in the same message so long it isnt too long message.
So the servers are using internet to sync?
I was thinking of the batch send as well. Once you get to know the menus, it would get tedious to send "B", then wait. Send "1", then wait. Send "2", then wait. When you could just send the batch and only send once.
Great idea!
The sync happens over Meshtastic. No Internet required.
Reminds me of the real old days, this is pretty awesome, it's like watching the dawn of the internet, except that with a mesh network, we own the infrastructure
New subscriber here...Awesome video and I am looking forward to joining the meshtatic network!!!
Welcome aboard! Thanks for subscribing!!
Awesome stuff!
This is getting closer to the model of NOSTR which I could really see meshtastic evolving towards as a decentralized system of relays.
Maybe an integration is ahead?
Wow! Your channel is really growing quickly.
It is!
Man this is soo cool! I can’t wait to install and play with it.
This is super cool, thank you!!
Sure thing! Thanks for watching!
Cloned it last night and got a copy running! Very cool
Great Work! better then Store and Forward.
First of all, this is exactly the system i wanted for meshtastic. Would this support multiple Meshtastic nodes on one BBS? In like the idea of having this reachable from longfast and medium fast to uses with different channel settings to check the same bbs
I can’t wait to build one of these!
You'll enjoy it!
Meshtastic is on my list for this year... This project may have just pushed it to the top.
I set this up without any major issues. The only thing I had to figure out was that the BBS node must include 'BBS' in its name; otherwise, it will return a message indicating an unknown user after attempting to send a direct message.
Great idea indeed. Questions. Does this also work over MQTT? What are the memory limits for the board, is it based on the amountnof space left on your raspberry pi's SD card, or is there a way of limiting messages on the boards software. I can see with a lot of messages coming in at once then the node sending these off to other BBS nodes the airwaves could get over loaded. Maybe impliment a seperate longfast channel allocation for BBS traffic even.
Amazing! I'm going to try running this on my Linux laptop with my router/client on my roof. I've still to try it, but will this work with something standalone like the T-deck? I'm thinking not.
Hm... got it all installed an running, but the BBS isn't acknowledging my messages sent to it. I've left an 'issue' on github.
Amazing stuff
I am curious what the usefulness of being able to view txt documents that are preloaded with pause breaks to accommodate the limitations of the TX length would be.
very nice. kudos on the hard work. Just installed it on a node I have here and a Pi/0 - feedback: it would be nice to be able to delete BBS.
Another use I see for it is for txt testing, having something that is answering you and not just sending seq# is great. especially in places without many nodes online
Very cool, what would prevent this from having a standard web UI and being interfaced via a browser instead of meshtastic client?
That should be doable!
The bandwidth?
Bandwidth
Html isnt super light weight
@@zazugee only for the client interface, not for transmission. It shouldn't impact the core functionality simply provide a more robust UI instead of the meshtastic android app. Could be more useful for BBS admins to use and easier to manage than the ASCII interface.
I couldn't agree more, AWESOME!
Amazing! Looking forward to try it!
What a great idea!!! Great job and keep up the great work
I have this running on a RPi3 with Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS server image. Very cool. the node is 7c0c near Placentia CA. One question, from my other node I can DM 7c0c and leave an email for 7c0c(the node connected to the BBS software) but I cannot see how to have 7c0c DM itself to connect to the BBS to get the mail I sent it. Is there a way to do that? Thanks for making the software available.
What kind of updates have you done to this? Because having a fido-like store and forward on these BBS hubs allows for... so many things when it comes t ooff grid COMMUNITIES rather than just randos that filter in and about. So far my biggest complaint is largely 'how do we get non technical peopel to use this?' Other than that? Looks pretty solid.
How'd you get meshtastic on the uconsole? I've got mine in and this looks interesting!
This is really amazing! I do have one question though. In the scenario shown on the map at 4:40, wouldn't Bob and Joe have to be directly next to BBS1 and BBS3 respectively to have this communication? Since Meshtastic connects to a device using Bluetooth, if Bob and Joe were out of range of the bluetooth --- which isn't very far --- wouldn't it not work? Or is this assuming Bob and Joe had a normal Meshtastic node within range, and use that to communicate with the BBS nodes? Also, do the BBS nodes require storage? If you are sending and storing bulletins and mail, where is that data being stored?
The BBS nodes in the scenario are nodes on top of mountains. Bob would be sending a direct message to BBS1 from his personal node to send the email. Joe would send a direct message to BBS3 to get his email. The BBS isn't running on the LoRa devices themselves. It runs on a computer like a Raspberry Pi and the data is stored in a database on the computer.
It might be nice to allow composite messages, like "m 0" to access mail and list it. Or even add an uncommon delimiter so you could do something like "m 1 Joe \\Test message\\This is a test message for UA-cam!\\END" to create and send a message all it one go.
This is a must, especially for duty cycle limited locations, or when using the longer ranger (slower) lora settings.
@thecommschannel Very cool Idea with the BBS! An a side note, where you able to connect to a Meshtastic client with Bluetooth from the Clockwork uconsole??
Thanks! Just got the uconsole in and not tried that yet actually. I'll give it a try
Installed and working across home network! Awesome job. Any instructions on the new menu structure? SM,1,2 guessing 1 is the meshtastic short name? 2 the message?
Sweet! Thanks! Those are quick commands. You can select the Quick Command option from the main menu to see info on each one
Send Mail Quick Command format:
SM,,{short_name},,{subject},,{message}
this is really, really, really cool. Any concerns with bogging down a large mesh network with this service?
Nice extension... Will have a look at it very soon!
Where can I get that clockwork device?
www.clockworkpi.com/
The wait is REALLY long though. Took 10 months to get mine. Hopefully the turnaround time gets better.
This is really cool. I know it kind of goes against the purpose of meshtastic, but I do think it would be cool to be running to service on the same python that was a discord bot. And anyone who had a private message open with said discord bot could relay messages to BBS users.
Really interesting, thanks !
Old school Doors from the BBS of old days, and if we could link this to A.25 Packet BBS that would be amazing and open up a host of other options.
Thank you for what you have done.
The idea is good, but kind of a clumsy elaborate way to get store and forward functionality? Am I missing something is the BBS to have an apocalypse ready bulletin board? For peace time, a separate program, connected to a node, to store undelivered messages seen on the network and resend when the receiver shows up, would be a better way. Those "hubs" could then share lists over the net, so we'd have global store and forward, that would also work seamlessly with MQTT.
I keep all of my radio comms completely off-grid and avoid internet linked systems
@@The_Comms_Channel Yes I figured it out, what the idea is here, I misunderstood the purpose of what this is. I'm still hoping we'll one day get a seamless store & forward, that doesn't require user action, that works both locally and possibly over MQTT.
I use wisblocks and if my phone client is not connected to the radio they store all received messages and once I reconnect I get them along with correct date/time stamps
I realize not quite the same as store and forward, but its better than throwing away all traffic if a client is there
Stood one of these up this weekend for my solar node in Edmonds WA (north of Seattle). Is anyone keeping a list of sync nodes? I'd love to see a wide network get going. As an old sysop from the modem days, I love this stuff!! Count me in as a Beta/Alpha tester.
Not aware of a list, but we should make one!
Nice works! Now when can we expect LORD or Trade Wars to be ported to this? ;)
YES! LORD! I forgot the name of it, that's it!
I enjoyed both of those old BBS games!!
my grandma loved playing LORD, if she were still alive she would be absolutely loving this meshtastic update
It occurred to me that maybe AI will enable some advanced forms of encoding, like instead of your normal compression, bc of the low bitrate of LoRa we can use some code words that get interpreted by AI to reconstruct data like images and videos
It's not useful for such small amounts of data
That concept reminds me of something similar to RIPTerm (Remote Imaging Protocol) that was used back in the day.
There are already many BBS softwares available. It would be more interresting to be able to make a bridge between them and Meshtastic, most likely by using a tunnel between Telnet BBSes and Meshtastic.
I was wondering the same. Why reinvent the wheel by writing a custom BBS if you can make an existing BBS work via Meshtastic?. I’m missing something.