Meshtastic Desert

Published: Jun 7, 2025 by Phil VK6DEV

It’s official, I live in a Meshtastic Desert!

Today, we took a drive down to Busselton for reasons other than communications and I decided to take along the Lilygo T-beam. I though I might be nice to check if there were any other mesh nodes in the south west.

I disconnected the node “DEV2” from the MQTT server and installed it on the dashboard of the car.

After drive about 40 minutes to and around Busselton, then back home again, I picked up exactly zero other nodes. About what I expected given the only south west nodes on the meshmap are mine.

Following our return home and feeding ourselves, I took the opportunity to head out to a local lookout in Bunbury. I left the 3D printer printing a case for the T-Beam and setup the same as i did this morning. After driving through Bunbury to the lookout and setting the T-Beam on a post for about 20 mins, I recieved zero stations again.

I returned home, a little deflated but with my expectations met. On returning home, I found the 3D print had failed and I had to start it again.

I have a few Meshtastic nodes on the way from China, so hopefully I can seed a few dvices in my community so we can have something working for any new Meshtastic noobs to connect to.