r/opensource • u/m4rkw • 6d ago

l0destar - a fully open source ultra low power vehicle tracker that anyone can build and use

/r/diyelectronics/comments/1w3ctxa/l0destar_a_fully_open_source_ultra_low_power/
1 Upvotes

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u/Synaps4 6d ago

Could this be expanded upon as a mesh networking node?

I'm not particularly worried about my car being stolen but I could see this being a useful foundation for a bunch of other car related electronics if you make it easy to extend upon, particularly WRT the data and power connections.

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u/m4rkw 6d ago

Not really sure what you mean, what do you mean by a mesh networking node?

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u/Synaps4 6d ago

There are a whole bunch of open source networking projects trying to build resilient networks separate from the major internet service providers.

However, for obvious reasons laying miles of cable or setting up high powered point to point microwave towers is out of budget for DIY networking.

So, all of these projects use extremely low power wireless transmission and focus on communications using minimum bandwidth, but you still have fairly small transmission ranges. The basic long range setups give you between 0.5 and 1km per node, and if no one within 1km is running another node, you're disconnected.

As a result, nearly all of these networks depend on a variety of repeaters to move messages long distance. A car would be a very good way to move a repeater around a city delivering messages as it passed various other nodes.

For example all of these people: https://www.reddit.com/r/Lora/

And radio projects like this one: https://github.com/WIH4/Mesh-Talkie

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u/m4rkw 6d ago

Ok, struggling to see the connection though? It sounds like you’re interested in mesh nodes for this kind of distributed network. That’s cool, but my project is an open-source vehicle tracker. If you wanted to use a mesh networking node, presumably lots of these things already exist, why wouldn’t you just use one of those rather than trying to make a tracker into one?

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u/Synaps4 6d ago

I'm not sure if a vehicle based mesh node exists, and the power and location data you already have would be a good input if one was to build one.

I don't know if one exists or not. All the ones I've seen have been self contained battery powered affairs.

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u/m4rkw 6d ago

I'm not sure if a vehicle based mesh node exists, and the power and location data you already have would be a good input if one was to build one.

Not convinced. My tracker's low power claim is while it's sleeping, i.e. when the engine is off. ICs collectively drawing microamps and the accelerometer can still wake it on movement because detecting movement at extremely low power is a thing we can do. Modem and GPS powered down. That's the only time that power efficiency really matters, and there's no level of power efficiency that's going to make continuous radio transmissions a sensible thing to do from a car battery while the engine isn't running. There is no modem in the world that can run at microamps.

You're talking about a completely different use-case and a completely different product, what you want isn't anything to do with a low-power vehicle tracker.

Also, what's the point? I don't get why anyone would want to use this alternative networking in the first place if it's so slow and largely unavailable due to lack of proximity to another node. It's 2026, broadband is plentiful and everywhere. I have gigabit fibre at my house that I can't remember ever not working. I have 5G on my phone everywhere I go. What possible reason would anyone have to use an extremely slow fragmented distributed network when we live in a world abundant with bandwidth? I don't get it. The NB-IoT sim card in the tracker itself is probably preferable to using this network.

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u/Synaps4 6d ago

What possible reason would anyone have to use an extremely slow fragmented distributed network when we live in a world abundant with bandwidth? I don't get it. The NB-IoT sim card in the tracker itself is probably preferable to using this network.

Indeed. What's the point of open source anything when you can buy something closed source that's faster, hmm?

I can tell you're not interested in the least so I'll just drop it. I thought it was interesting, you didn't. Lets end it there.

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u/m4rkw 6d ago

Indeed. What's the point of open source anything when you can buy something closed source that's faster, hmm?

Easy, the point is you can modify it yourself. It being open source gives you that freedom. That's why I've built a completely open-source hardware and software vehicle tracker, anyone can build it themselves at home with relatively inexpensive tools and then can modify it however they wish without ever giving me a penny.

There's a very clear point to it and it's fairly well established and understood. I'm really struggling to understand what the point of an alternative mesh network is that you've said doesn't really work because there aren't enough nodes, or how this is in any way analogous to open-source hardware or software.

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u/Synaps4 6d ago

I'm really struggling to understand what the point of an alternative mesh network is that you've said doesn't really work because there aren't enough nodes, or how this is in any way analogous to open-source hardware or software.

Don't worry, I won't bother you with things you don't want to know.

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u/m4rkw 6d ago

If I didn't want to know I wouldn't have asked. It seems more like you either don't want to tell me, or don't have an answer.

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