It’s very meshie out there! Any chance we can work together?

Decentralization
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Question for the goTenna team. Has anyone reached out to you in an attempt to standardize on a communication protocol? It would be great if we could get several (or any) mesh platforms to communicate. There are a lot of new players / startups in the works at varying degrees of development and a number of other devices on the market. (Sonnet, Beartooth, GoHeart, Firechat, Bivystick, InReach, Spot, Somewear). I realize this is a very difficult task. I’m not sure if this is easier to do on the hardware side or software side? Maybe a persons phone could bridge the gap between two systems? Like goTenna linked to the phone via Bluetooth and also linked to another device (say Sonnet) via WiFi or inReach via Bluetooth

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Anyone could use the SDK to create a bridge. I connected a GT to both email and a Spreadsheet.

I would like to work on a WiFi bridge using DDWRT when the USB SDK arrives.

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I have a strong feeling that this ecosystem is a lot like VHS vs Betamax, HDDVD vs BluRay, and in the end someone will have to win out. I’ve not yet heard a valid business justification to create a two-way mesh device bridge, which is certainly a daunting task since every device intentionally obfuscates their protocols and message structure to inhibit interoperability so they can stay competitive. I think it would be trivial to make a smartphone app that connects to multiple devices and translates between them all, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s explicitly banned in their respective ToS, but who reads those anyway…

Even in the ham radio and two-way radio world, you have competitive standards…P25, DMR, Trbo, Tetra; D-Star and YSF, among others. These too are a massive challenge to interoperate because manufactures have chosen not to standardize and there is a surprisingly low number of people interested in buy into this idea, causing prices to balloon.

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n0ssc

All great points and very true about all of the Ham radio systems. I think the key to winning is getting just two systems to talk. That would be a huge selling point with all of the new mesh systems hitting the market.