The idea of a distributed mesh communication and info system is interesting. And Meshtastic makes the basic idea easy and affordable. To me though it feels like it is a solution looking for a problem. It is interesting to play with and maybe useful for small sensor networks but it doesn’t really serve the need of a distributed off grid comms system.
I have envisioned local WiFi hotspots with a simple CMS and message app either web based or a phone app. Probably both. Then when needed anyone with a device could access a local nose and longer range connectivity could be done over LoRa for an event area or city. It seems simple and obvious enough but where is it? Maybe there is a system like that now but I haven’t run across it. Until I saw it on the animated series Pantheon. On the show it was called “Lilypad” and had small local deployed mesh nodes and presumably wifi to users
