Hello. I'm new to the forums, as in just today. I live in Austin, Texas but grew up out West in San Angelo. Been hunting and fishing my whole life.

I started work for a new start up company Jan 1st this year. We offer some Mesh products. If you're not familiar, it's a small device you bluetooth pair your phone to and it allows you to text with someone else, assuming they have the same setup. It's a little like walkie talkies but works over 2-10miles depending on terrain. It's off grid and doesn't require your phone to have any cellular connection. My boss has been pushing me to think about applications. Hunting came to mind. I've spent a LOT of time in blinds, just sitting, waiting, getting up at 4am (bc my grandfather thought that's what was needed even though I NEVER saw a deer before 7am!). We tried walkie talkies several times, some would work ok-ish, some didn't at all. There are probably some amazing ones out there now...I haven't looked, gave up on them long ago. Thinking about this Mesh stuff made me think how great it would have been to just text back and forth with other hunters and base camp. I get to use my phone, I can set it on silent so it's not some loud ding. There's no frustrating scrambly static interference like walkie talkies and it would have worked great in Pearsall County where we had our lease...and no phone service.

We're just starting out. Right now, we're just selling other company's products but our hope is to promote the tech, build our own USA MANUFACTURED devices AND offer services that people would actually care about. That's why I come here today. I'm hoping to start a discussion about it all. I want to know what people think, if they've ever used stuff like this, and if so, what was good/bad or would be cool to have features. I appreciate any feedback - Fritz

first off, welcome to the forum!!!

sounds like interesting technology that could come in handy for a variety of locations where cell service is minimal to non-existent. I am curious about the price point something of this nature would go for?

you mean like:

goTenna Mesh
Beartooth
Fogo
sonnet
orbi

I own several of the goTennas and have not been impressed at all.

Thank you. I appreciate the kind welcome. Our price points are around $100.

Yep, but we've found that the out of box experience isn't great. Most of the stuff we've been working with is a bit finicky to get set up. And even once it's working, uses are pretty limited. This is why I wanted to engage the community to see what we SHOULD be doing instead. We're not just middlemen hawking other people's stuff, we actually want to make a product that serves the community and is easy to use, has some purpose. Otherwise, what's the point?

Range? Connectivity? Reliability? Ease of use?

Please, this is the kind of feedback I am really looking for. What rubs you the wrong way on the goTennas?

fair enough. I’m inreach guy. You would have to provide a better and more cost efficient service for me to change.

I realize Im not your primary target customer, but thats what you are up against, that and mobile star link.

Good luck, be cool to see 4-5 mile range legit mesh service

So far, its hard to beat InReach for what I need. I've found that in any kind of terrain other than pancake flat scrub country, its hard to get a Walkie Talkie to reach more than about a mile. InReach, even though its text, is much more reliable, and I can text anywhere in the world with it.



Funny you mentioned the 4 am thing.....I was talking about that the other day in a conversation about hunting trips with the older generation. Never understood the reasoning behind waking up at 4 or 4:30 to get up, drink 2 pots of coffee and eat a greasy bacon/egg breakfast when it didn't get daylight until 6:45. Another one I never got was getting in the blind an hour before daylight just because.


people do funny things

I am way the @#$@ off grid pretty regularly. I use a SpotX in those circumstances. Going off grid tomorrow ice fishing.. Will be solo but par for the course. Never failed me yet and +/- $20/month. Keeps my wife happy.

To the original poster...... so what is the company ? Is there a web site we can look at ? My use case is more about hiking and backpacking in the backcountry than hunting and keeping separate groups in contact. I haven't had a case where when hunting in Texas we couldn't use a FRS walkie talkie or cell phone. You're asking about user community requirements for range, connectivity, reliability, and ease of use. My semi-humorous answer to those is global, permanent, 100%, and "my grandmother can use it". What can your product do realistically ? Tell us about it.

You say its a "mesh" product. Mesh usually means that your range is defined by how many nodes you can string together so that connectivity can hop across nodes to reach distances that are farther than a radio would otherwise reach. Is that how your product works ? In my use case, there would just be two nodes and the radio range of one hop is most important. Assuming this is a terrestrial radio and not a satellite signal.

Worked on a similar project in the 80s using pagers for ski slope comms. Problem is always landscape bandwith and xmit power - plus battery longevity. Good luck. Motorola pretty much invented cell phones for their Schaumburg plant comms.

I get it. We're exploring the existing ecosystem of products and trying to find pain points to fix. Ideally, at some pt we'll get to a reliable, easy to use, no subscription device. We're also working to build software apps around the hardware. 4-5 mile range would be great. We did some testing on Friday in a densely populated area just North of Austin and got about 1.5 miles of range. Then we popped up an autonomous UAV with mesh repeater and increased range to about 3 miles beyond line of site. UAV not terribly practical for most ppl but we're experimenting...

It's definitely hard to compete with satellite comms for sure. Mesh technology wouldn't likely be ever to work in the same way with the same level of coverage. And even though the two are vastly different, they are being used in similar ways. I understand what you're saying.

Great to hear you had a similar experience with those early mornings...as in misery loves company. As a young person, I thought it was all bunk.

A adjacent topic: My folks use to tell me the deer could hear you coming a mile away. I didn't believe that. After all, I'd spent a LOT of time in a blind being quiet (or at times not to see what would happen). One day, we were all sitting at the edge of 30 acres w/ deer at 300 yards talking in barely audible whispers. Irritated, I started speaking normally and promptly got chastised.

I started arguing that the deer relied much more on smell than anything. Not sure if that's 100% true but it had been my experience. I was tired of being told how things were. I jumped up and with my arms waiving over my head, I tore off running towards the deer, screaming at the top of my lungs the whole way. The first 100 yards or so, they didn't even lift their heads up. At about half way, they all stopped and looked at me. And for maybe another 30 or so yards didn't move. Again, I'm screaming, waiving my arms above my head, and running directly at them! Finally, they took off. I walked back to my folks triumphantly, having proved my point, only to be once again chastised for "running off the dear". Sometimes, you just can't win. I made my point though!

Company is SpecFive LLC. specfive.com

To answer your questions frankly: global connectivity relegates you to satellite solutions only. That's not us. The other stuff is what we're working on though, but seems moot given the first requirement.

Right now, we're seeing a mile to mile and half range in densely populated urban areas with the product we call S5 Trekker.

Re: Mesh - yes, you are exactly right. Minimum node count is 2, one for you and one for whoever is receiving your messages. You both tether the Trekker to your phone and use the Meshtastic app to communicate back and forth. And yes, that distance is quite limited compared to satellite.

We knew going in, just from our own playing with the current devices that range would be an issue. Like I said in some other post, we're a group of engineers. We want to know what people like and don't and we have a sincere desire to try to fix the issues. But I don't have solutions today. It'll take time, but the feedback so far has been very validating.

Very cool fact about Motorola, I didn't know that. I carried my StarTAC around for about a decade, rebuilt it twice from parts from other phones purchased on eBay.

You are absolutely right about the three points of the problem triangle: terrain, bandwidth, and power. You can increase value of one with cost from the others.

So Spec5 is a consulting/contract engg co.

Yes, we're supplementing our income right now by hiring out our engineering talent. We've got Mechanical, Electrical, and Manufacturing engineers. We're pretty great at fast prototyping and manufacturing mature products with our domestic and international partners. We've worked in Military applications, Renewables, Oil and Gas, Aerospace, and even Visual AI applications. Bit of a mixed bag of tricks...

Biggest problem in radio comms of any type is angle of radiation from antenna. You are on the ground, most transmitted energy goes UP at 30-45 degree. Inverted V antenna is a simple solution. Even patch antenna have this problem although to lesser extent.

I get in the blind an hour early in order to allow the woods to settle down after the shattering of the silence by opening gates, UTV’s, flashlights, walking thru the leaves & getting settled in the blind.

This chinese POS would make a pretty good radio for the woods. Just one thing, this rig is very popular with the ham radio
community, and some hams use this rig near cities or rural area where ham repeaters are. Be carefull not to transmitt on these
freqs, because they get a little testy when you interferre with hams. But being out in the middle of BFE, i would not sweat it.
Some of the older chinese radios you can transmitt every where with them. Not sure about the new ones today. They are cheap on
Amazon and other sites. Those FRS, or others or ok, but wont have the range of this bow wow radio.
Retevis makes a pretty good cheap radio for general use, might check into those....

All so carry extra batteries, they never worry about having backup power.


Central TX radio operator.....

Maxxon Handhelds and a repeater are getting 20-25 mile range in west texas pretty easy, 200 per radio, 750 for the repeater, repeater is solar, lives in an igloo cooler inside 3 cattle panel triangle, with batteries and a fan...

Hunting Alert; not sure where you guys hunt, but in Texas you can shoot 30 minutes before sunrise. Given, these deer are not pen raised and come to feeders regularly all the time during the day, hunters or not. I’ve shot many deer 1 minute after legal and watch many bucks 1 hour before; never to be seen again. And, you make one sound, especially metal to metal…and you’re outta luck. Like Reloader said. Communication would be great. On another point, the light omitted by a phone or whatever in the dark, flashing on your blind windows, and ole mossback is gone again.