{ "version": "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1", "title": "OLPC on Vladimir Campos", "icon": "https://avatars.micro.blog/avatars/2025/29/112599.jpg", "home_page_url": "https://vladcampos.com/", "feed_url": "https://vladcampos.com/feed.json", "items": [ { "id": "http://vladcampos.micro.blog/2026/04/21/why-im-building-a-decentralized.html", "title": "Why I’m building a decentralized communication fallback.", "content_html": "

I’ve been dreaming about a global mesh network since the 2000s, and I just came across two that are actually working: Meshtastic and MeshCore. It’s finally time to have some fun.

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I first learned about mesh networks many years ago, in the 2000s, when I read an article about the OLPC program. As Wikipedia puts it, “One Laptop per Child (OLPC) was a non-profit initiative that operated from 2005 to 2014 with the goal of transforming education for children around the world by creating and distributing educational devices for the developing world, and by creating software and content for those devices”.

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To understand why I found mesh revolutionary back then, I invite you to travel with me to the world’s reality at that time. We are talking about a moment when the Internet was clearly going to change everything, but it was slow, expensive, and far from as ubiquitous as it is today. When you read my explanation below, you’ll understand how this type of network had the potential to bring communication to isolated areas where the OLPC computer was intended to be used.

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In parallel, another revolution was also happening. Mobile phone technologies were converging toward the GSM standard most of the world uses today. I knew a lot about that type of network because I was working in the telecommunications sector during that transformation.

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After all these years, one detail remains the same: telecommunication networks are centralized. If you text a person standing right in front of you, the words travel a very long distance. First, they leave Person A’s phone and go to the nearest cell tower. From there, they travel to a central location, probably via fiber optic cables. There, the carrier system checks many details — including your payment status — to see if that message is allowed to be delivered. Then it has to find where the recipient is in the network and send the message to their nearest cell tower. Finally, it travels to Person B’s phone over the air.

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Please keep in mind that this is an oversimplification, but what is important to understand is how dependent on a centralized system all our modern communication is.

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If you are using an app like Signal, that message has to travel all the way to Signal’s servers before coming back. In a way, it’s a double centralization.

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A mesh network works in a completely different way. Each device can be used as a transfer point. If Person A and B are in front of each other, the message simply moves from device A to B over the air. That’s it. If they are far apart, the communication hops from one device to another in the network until it finds the destination. There is no central point; every device helps transport the message.

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If you are a fan of The Expanse, this is essentially how they communicate. A ship’s computer finds the most efficient route through the existing cloud of satellites, orbital stations, and even other ships that have agreed to act as nodes, and sends the message hopping from one point to another until it reaches its destination.

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Now, instead of spaceships, imagine a lot of OLPC computers creating a network even without all of them being connected to the Internet. It was revolutionary back then, and it still is today.

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Community Working Together

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However, the only way a network like this can work is if there are enough nodes to pass the message along. Depending on how you count, there are between 6 and 9 billion mobile phones in use today. They were not built to work as mesh devices, but I’m certain that number would be enough to build a quite reliable mesh network.

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Imagine for a second you could reach anyone for free, with no central entity controlling your communication. It’s one of those inertial things that drive me crazy when I think about it for too long. It feels like we are doing what we are doing today just because this is what we have been doing since forever.

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It’s a chicken-and-egg situation that I’ve been thinking about for years, ever since that OLPC article. And then, YouTube showed me this video and I couldn’t believe my eyes. There’s a pretty large mesh network called Meshtastic that is already covering many parts of the world and a huge part of Europe.

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How Does It Work?

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Here’s the catch: our phones are not built to work as mesh devices. The people behind Meshtastic solved that with a small radio that pairs to our phones via Bluetooth. You use the phone’s screen and keyboard to interact with messages, while the radio handles the receiving and delivering.

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All this was already so cool that it took me just a few hours to order two kits to try it. But I kept reading the official documentation, browsing articles, and watching videos until I found out about another mesh network called MeshCore. Two mesh networks? That’s too good to be true.

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They are technically incompatible, but most devices can be set to use either one. You can try both and use the one that works best in your region. Moreover, some of the radios are so cheap that nothing stops you from using both.

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Just Text

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Let’s set expectations: we are talking about exchanging text messages. They can be public or encrypted direct messages, but only text. There is no voice, images, or anything fancy. And to be honest, I like that.

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Why?

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When I first posted about Meshtastic, people asked about my plan or use case.

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Guess what crossed my mind many times during the full-day blackout in Portugal and Spain that happened almost a year ago? Everything stopped working, including mobile phones. Imagine if I had a Meshtastic or MeshCore device with me.

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Apart from a fallback for that extreme scenario, I plan to use it when hiking and during my car trips around Europe. But above all, a mesh network is only as good as the number of people using it. I’ll be happy even if I’m just an additional node in the network helping other people’s messages reach their destinations.

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Not to mention that this is probably the most Digital Caveman tech project I could be working on.

\n", "date_published": "2026-04-21T18:43:38+01:00", "url": "https://vladcampos.com/2026/04/21/why-im-building-a-decentralized.html", "tags": ["The-Expanse","EN","DCM","Meshtastic","Mesh","MeshCore","OLPC"] } ] }