Mesh night at the Hackspace
Nottingham Hackspaces radio enthusiasts are meeting to reenergise the mesh nodes across the city.
Dry and cold with a maximum of 11 degrees today. No rain, and wind gusts up to 28 mph.
Tonight at Nottingham Hackspace, as well as the weekly tour, there will be the Radiospace meet-up. This is a monthly social that’s typically only open to members, but tonight is allowing guests to come along. The main attraction tonight is working on Meshtastic and Meshcore nodes.
These nodes allow sending and receiving messages using the public airwaves reserved mostly for hobby use. The "mesh" aspect of them is that the network messages are sent over is decentralised, with packets being forwarded from one node to the next, until it gets to its destination.
During 2025, the Meshtastic network around Nottingham grew quite quickly, especially after some excitement around it was generated by the Hackspace's Radiospace members. The hardware to get a node working is quite cheap: one can easily be purchased for less than £30, so there was little barrier to entry.
Over the following months, the nodes were less cared for, with many falling offline or not being upgraded to the latest version.
This meet-up aims to reignite the network by bringing past and new node owners together and getting them all up and running again. With more nodes online, the more stable the network becomes.
There is still a linger question though: what is the network for? That may be a hard question to answer, but it is still just a bit of fun.
Doors of the Hackspace are open to guests from just after 6pm.
Disclaimer: I am a Nottingham Hackspace Trustee.
