MeshCore Deployment Lags in Silicon Valley

For a region that’s home to Silicon Valley innovation, it’s surprising and downright embarrassing how far behind the San Francisco Bay Area has fallen in MeshCore deployment and adoption. Across the Pacific Northwest, from Portland to Vancouver, operators are building resilient MeshCore networks that tie communities together with long-range, reliable, off-grid communications. Yet here, in the very birthplace of so much wireless technology, MeshCore nodes are practically non-existent and that is why I am starting a renewed effort to get this amazing technology off the ground and on the air in San Jose and points north.

A New Repeater in Willow Glen—and a Push Toward Coordination

I’ve recently brought a low-level MeshCore repeater online in Willow Glen, operating on the new USA/Canada Recommended channel settings: 910.525 MHz, 62.5 kHz bandwidth, spreading factor 7, coding rate 5.

These values aren’t arbitrary. They’re the North American coordination standard—a shared configuration that ensures interoperability between regions and avoids fragmentation of the mesh. If we want a true regional or even someday a coast-to-coast network where every node can talk to every other node, these are the settings that will make it possible. Right now, I see a few MeshCore nodes in the area, but their radio configurations are all over the place. We’ll never get a mesh off the ground that way.

That’s why I am working hard to grow participation here and recruit new operators who want to help build a powerful wide-area mesh network. I hope I can get folks interested in becoming part of something big—a connected, resilient network that doesn’t depend on the Internet or cellular infrastructure. If you have existing Meshcore equipment, please switch to the North America coordinated settings.

MeshCore Repeater Deployment

Meshtastic has done a lot to popularize the idea of mesh networking, but MeshCore is the next step forward. It was built with scalability and reliability in mind—two things that start to crumble when networks get crowded under Meshtastic’s flood-broadcast model. MeshCore’s better foundational model and incredibly talented core development team is why I have committed to Meshcore and actively participate in the development, testing, and promotion of this amazing product.

With MeshCore, repeaters are vital, providing network stability and expanding reach not only across mountaintops but deep into our neighborhoods. A well-placed MeshCore repeater can act as a regional hub, a backbone that keeps the network alive even when individual nodes come and go. A repeater at your home, in the highest elevation possible, and with a good, clear view of the horizon, will become the MeshCore gateway for your personal devices and provide a solid, reliable connection for a few of your neighbors as well.

So if you’ve got access to a high location—a hilltop, a building rooftop, a tall tower, even a second-story balcony with a good view of the horizon—you can make a huge difference. Setting up a MeshCore repeater there creates the foundation the rest of the network will rely on.

MeshCore Deployment in the Bay Area

Plans are already underway to deploy at least one high-level MeshCore repeater in the Bay Area in the coming weeks, using the same USA/Canada Recommended frequency plan. This will be the cornerstone of the area’s MeshCore network—but it can’t stop there. We need local nodes, we need low-level repeaters filling in the valleys and urban shadows, and we need curious, motivated makers and operators to join the experiment and push it forward. I’m calling on all my ham friends to build a repeater and get it as high in the sky as you can. If you have access to actual high-level infrastructure and would like to deploy a MeshCore repeater but don’t know where to begin, please contact me.

The beauty of MeshCore is that it doesn’t require permission, a carrier, or an expensive monthly plan. It just requires participation, and the more participation we get, the better it becomes.

Getting Started with MeshCore

If you already own a Meshtastic device that you’ve grown bored with or that just hasn’t lived up to expectations, you’re in luck—it can easily be re-purposed for MeshCore. Most Meshtastic-compatible boards, including Heltec V3 and V4 and LilyGo LoRa32 models, ESP32-based T-Beams, and similar LoRa hardware, can be flashed directly from your web browser using the MeshCore Web Flasher at meshcore.co.uk.

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