When most radio enthusiasts start trying to pick up signals from satellites, they might put together a quick-and-dirty Yagi antenna and try to catch a repeater as is passes overhead, or they might grab a small unused dish from a satellite TV service and point it up at a weather satellite by hand to try to decode some of the data coming down. But [Cranktown City] had a different approach. He found an eight-foot dish online and built a massive articulating base station out of it as his first exploration into the world of satellites.
The first problem that needs to be solved with a dish of this size is its mounting location. This installation uses a large post and concrete foundation with a custom-fabricated metal base at the bottom. The metal base houses all of the electronics not just for receiving signals from the dish, but also for orienting it properly. That includes a large metal gear driven by a wheelchair motor to control its azimuth and a linear actuator to take care of its elevation. Getting the large dish onto the frame was its own ordeal, complicated by the fact that it’s not uniform in its shape and has to be mounted in a specific orientation.
With everything assembled, the circularly-polarized antenna installed, and the computers up and running, the dish is able to track satellites across the sky and download data from things like GOES weather satellites. [Cranktown City] also built in a system that detects wind and points the dish vertically when it goes above a certain speed. This level of effort is impressive, and absolutely not required to listen in on plenty of sattelite activity out in the sky, but this installation will certainly give [Cranktown City] a lot of mileage and possibly even work for some radio astronomy.
Frank X. Shaw addresses the media at Microsoft on May 18, 2025, in advance of the Build conference. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop)
It’s the end of an era at Microsoft: Frank X. Shaw, the executive who oversaw the tech giant’s communications for nearly three decades, first at an external agency and for the last 17 years as one of its senior leaders, is leaving at the end of the year.
Shaw, 64, said he’s not retiring, although he doesn’t have another job lined up. He plans to stop working for a while, do some of the things he hasn’t had time for, and then decide what’s next.
“I have had a ringside seat at some of the biggest leadership, technology, and business transformations that have ever taken place,” Shaw said, sharing the news of his departure (under embargo) in a phone call Thursday afternoon. “I just feel incredibly fortunate.”
He said he had been discussing his potential departure for some time with Takeshi Numoto, Microsoft’s chief marketing officer, looking for the right moment.
Microsoft has not announced a successor for his role as chief communications officer. In a LinkedIn post, Shaw said the company will consider internal and external candidates.
A statement from Shaw’s colleagues in corporate communications credited him for his many years shaping Microsoft’s “voice and reputation with intelligence, candor and wit. His leadership and contributions to the company are too extensive to list, as is the number of journalists who have, at one point or another, used his name in vain.”
A former Marine Corps public affairs officer, Shaw has worked with all three of Microsoft’s CEOs. He started on the agency side, at Waggener Edstrom — now known as We. Communications — when Bill Gates was still running the company.
He built his reputation defending and advocating for Microsoft through some of its hardest stretches: the antitrust years, the Windows Vista backlash, the scramble to replace Steve Ballmer as CEO, and the weekend in 2023 when OpenAI’s board fired Sam Altman.
As the company’s top communications executive, he has also told the story of Microsoft’s reinvention under CEO Satya Nadella, from the LinkedIn and Activision Blizzard deals to an AI push that has carried Azure past $100 billion in annual revenue.
Evolving with technology: Shaw has spent much of his career closely watching the tech landscape and moving Microsoft’s voice into new channels as they emerged.
“We’re always thinking about what is the art and science of communications,” Shaw told PRWeek. “How do we reach our audiences most effectively in a changing environment?” He called the arc from print to radio and TV to social media and newsletters a “constant evolution of influence.”
He turned the corporate blog into a place where the company argued its own case, writing “Microsoft by the numbers” himself in 2010 — a stat-by-stat comparison against Apple and Google that TechCrunch dubbed “fantastic passive-aggressive.”
He and his team experimented with different and risky methods of telling the company’s story, holding mass briefings under embargo and publishing documents known as the “Book of News” in advance of its major keynotes and conferences. The prospect of a reporter having to answer to “fxs” was no doubt a factor in ensuring the news (mostly) didn’t leak.
Shaw hired Steve Clayton out of a technical role at Microsoft in London, where he had been blogging about the company unofficially out of frustration with how it was perceived, and made him chief storyteller. In the middle of the AI boom, Clayton and Shaw embraced the analog undercurrents in popular culture and launched Signal, a quarterly Microsoft print magazine for business leaders.
Clayton was VP of communications strategy by the time he left in January to become chief communications officer at Cisco, making Shaw’s planned departure the second high-profile exit from Microsoft’s comms team in a year.
Adapting to AI: In recent years, Shaw made his own team a testing ground for AI, publishing what worked and what didn’t. In a 2023 post he described using Copilot in Teams to pull story ideas out of conversations with spokespeople and anticipate coverage after interviews, and asking the AI to “poke holes in a statement we’re making on a tricky topic.”
He called it his corporal, a reference to Napoleon, who was said to bring one to meetings and ask whether his generals’ war plans made sense to him. A survey of 80 people in Microsoft’s communications and marketing organization found 84% did not want to go back to working without it.
Shaw was also known to use AI as a sounding board when a story frustrated him, offering him an objective take before he called and let a particular reporter have it.
He announced his departure Friday morning in a message to Microsoft’s communications team (reminding them he’s still there for a few months yet) and his public post on LinkedIn.
“Thank you as well to all the reporters, editors, writers, influencers and analysts who have put up with me over this time, enduring my early and late night calls, my off the record ‘no comments,’ my bad story ideas and my extended commentary on headlines and positioning,” he wrote.
“You all have incredibly hard and valuable jobs,” he added, “and while I’ve not agreed with everything said about us 😊 I appreciate you anyway.”
Your messages travel through the mesh network, jumping from device to device, and might stay unencrypted. You need to understand how Meshtastic encryption works and how to set it up correctly, because a poorly configured mesh network can expose your communications to anyone with a compatible radio and basic technical knowledge.
In this article, we will explore the encryption options that Meshtastic provides for group communication and direct messages. Let’s get rolling!
Step #1: Setting Up Your Hardware with the Android Meshtastic App
In this demonstration, I will use the LilyGo T-Echo device and LilyGo T3 V1.6.1 (often labeled T-LoRa V2 1.6). However, you can use any other Metastatic-compatible device. Just make sure your device is running firmware version 2.5.0 or later to use the improved security features. When you connect the device to the Meshtastic app, the firmware version will be displayed.
Step #2: Configuring Pre-Shared Keys for Chat Channels
Chat Channels represent the primary method of group communication in Meshtastic networks. Each channel uses a Pre-Shared Key (PSK) that all participants must possess to participate in the conversation. The PSK serves as the encryption key (specifically AES256-CTR), while the channel is identified by a hash derived from both the PSK and the channel name. This means only devices with the correct PSK can decrypt messages sent on that channel, though it’s important to understand that the encrypted packets themselves are still broadcast over the radio and visible to anyone in range; they just can’t decrypt them without the PSK.
The default channel on a fresh Meshtastic installation (typically called “LongFast”) uses a well-known PSK (AQ==, which is simply a single null byte) that provides no real security whatsoever. Anyone with a Meshtastic device can receive and decrypt messages sent on the default channel, making it suitable only for public announcements or testing purposes. For any sensitive communications, you must configure custom channels with randomly generated PSKs that are shared only with trusted participants.
To create a secure channel, we need to open Settings and then the Channels section. At the bottom-right corner, you’ll see a plus sign, click on it, and you’ll see a screen like below.
Here, you need to specify a Channel name; in my case, it’ll be just “Secure”. Immediately after entering the name, the app will generate a random PSK automatically. That’s all, click Save.
You’ll be returned to the Channels settings, and click on Send. Now, the channel is ready, and the only thing we need to do is share this channel configuration with other participants who should have access. The easiest method is to generate a QR code that other users can scan with their Meshtastic apps to automatically configure the same channel settings, including the PSK.
To do so, change the tab to Conversations and click on the QR-Code icon; you’ll see a window like below.
Now, any messages you send on this channel will be encrypted with AES256 using that channel’s PSK, and only devices with the correct PSK will be able to decrypt and read them.
Remember: while your messages are encrypted, the radio transmissions are still broadcast publicly. Encryption prevents eavesdroppers from reading the content, but doesn’t hide the fact that communication is occurring.
Step #3: Public Key Cryptography for Direct Messages
Direct Messages in Meshtastic firmware version 2.5.0 and later utilize Public Key Cryptography (PKC) to provide authenticated and encrypted one-to-one communications between devices. Unlike channel communications, where all participants share the same password (PSK), Direct Messages use a more sophisticated system where each device has its own unique public and private key pair based on Curve25519 and Ed25519 cryptography.
When you send a Direct Message to another device, Meshtastic uses a hybrid encryption approach for efficiency:
A random AES session key is generated for that specific message
Your message is encrypted using that session key with AES
The session key itself is encrypted using Curve25519 key agreement with the recipient’s public key
The message is digitally signed using your Ed25519 private key
Source: https://meshtastic.org/
This ensures that only the recipient with the corresponding private key can decrypt the session key (and thus the message), providing confidentiality. The digital signature allows the recipient to verify that the message actually came from you and has not been tampered with in transit, providing authentication.
Important note: While the message content is encrypted, metadata such as sender ID, recipient ID, and timestamps remain visible to anyone monitoring the radio network. This is inherent to how mesh routing works.
The good news is that enabling Public Key Cryptography for Direct Messages requires almost no configuration on your part when using the Android app! In firmware version 2.5.0 and later, the device automatically generates its key pair when you first power it on with the updated firmware, and keys are automatically exchanged with other devices as needed through the mesh network.
Summary
In this article, we covered Pre-Shared Keys for securing group chat channels and Public Key Cryptography for protecting Direct Messages on your Meshtastic device. By implementing these encryption mechanisms, you can achieve decentralized communications where message content is protected from eavesdropping and tampering.
In our eventful time, the ability to communicate off-grid has become more valuable than ever. In telecommunications, “off-grid” means communicating without relying on traditional infrastructure, such as cell towers or Wi-Fi networks. It’s about staying connected (or at least able to send/receive messages) in places where that infrastructure doesn’t exist or has failed.
Whether you’re preparing for emergencies or want a decentralized communication network that doesn’t rely on cellular towers or internet infrastructure, Meshtastic is a great solution to check out.
In this article, we will explore what Meshtastic is and what it has to offer.
What is Meshtastic?
Meshtastic is a project that lets you use inexpensive LoRa-based transceivers as a long-range communication platform in areas with no existing infrastructure or unreliable communication infrastructure. Its core technology, LoRa, is a long-range radio protocol that’s available in most regions without requiring additional licensing or certification. The radios automatically relay received messages, forming a distributed mesh network that allows every member of a group to receive messages – even from the most distant participant. Depending on the settings used, a Meshtastic mesh can support up to around 80 device nodes (though generally more may be possible).
Meshtastic radios can be paired with a single phone so that your friends and family can send messages to your specific radio. Each device supports a connection from only one user at a time.
Among its notable features are a long communication range (with a record of 331 km), the ability to communicate without a phone, decentralized communication with no need for a single router, encrypted messaging, excellent battery life (depending on the device, though power efficiency is built into the software), and additional GPS-based location features (which can be turned off, or set to send a fake location) and more.
Key Purposes and Use Cases
These communication systems serve a few main purposes. First, they’re great for outdoor activities. For example, people use them while hiking, camping, backpacking, or off-roading. That’s because they let a group stay in touch over long distances, even without cell towers nearby.
On top of that, these systems matter a lot during emergencies. For instance, they can keep people connected during natural disasters, power outages, or other times when cell networks go down. In fact, this makes them a reliable backup when normal communication fails.
Finally, these systems also play a key role in search and rescue efforts. In these situations, staying connected can make all the difference.
Meshtastic Node Map
Additionally, they facilitate messaging in remote or restricted areas where connectivity is poor or internet access is limited. Community members and hobbyists use these systems to create local mesh networks for experimentation, conduct large-scale testing at events such as DEF CON, or establish backup communication systems for urban areas.
Ultimately, these universal communication systems enhance safety, build community connections, and ensure reliable communication in various challenging environments.
How Does Mashtastic Work?
Meshtastic operates on hardware such as ESP32-based boards (e.g., Heltec, LilyGO T-Beam) or pre-built nodes equipped with LoRa modules. These devices are programmed with Meshtastic firmware and function on unlicensed ISM radio bands, making them legal in most regions without the need for a ham radio license, although using higher power may require one in certain areas.
A LILYGO TTGO T-Beam running in client mode on battery power
Communication Process
Sending a Message: First, connect a Meshtastic device (called a “node”) to your phone. You can do this over Bluetooth. To do this, you’ll need a companion app. These are available for Android, iOS, the web, and desktop. Next, type your message in the app. Then, it gets sent to your node.
Broadcasting: After that, the node broadcasts the message over LoRa radio. The message is encrypted first, for safety. It’s worth noting that LoRa only works well for small amounts of data. So, it’s good for short text messages. However, it can’t handle voice or video.
Meshing and Relaying: Meanwhile, nearby nodes pick up the packet. Each node checks if the packet is new. This step matters, because nodes keep track of packets they’ve already seen. That way, they avoid sending duplicates. If the packet is new, though, the node rebroadcasts it. But first, it lowers a number called the “hop limit” by one. This limit is usually set to about 3. It exists so messages don’t loop forever. As a result, the message hops from node to node. Eventually, it either reaches its target or runs out of hops.
Receiving: Finally, the destination node gets the packet. Then, it decrypts the message using AES256 encryption, along with a shared channel key. After that, it sends the message to the connected app or phone, so you can read it. On top of that, nodes can also share their location. This way, everyone in the group can see where each other are on a map.
Differences Between LTE, 5G, and Meshtastic
Many of us depend on LTE and 5G networks daily, so it’s important to compare them with Meshtastic.
5–20+ km per hop (line-of-sight, terrain-dependent); extends via mesh
Nationwide/global where towers exist; indoor/outdoor
Similar to LTE but denser for high speeds; mmWave short-range
Data Speed
Very low: ~0.5–20 kbps (text-only, short messages)
5–100 Mbps typical (up to 300 Mbps peak)
100 Mbps–1+ Gbps typical (up to 10–20 Gbps theoretical)
Latency
Seconds to minutes (mesh hopping)
20–50 ms
1–10 ms (ultra-low for real-time apps)
Data Types
Text messages, GPS positions, basic telemetry
Voice, video, high-speed internet, apps
All LTE + AR/VR, IoT, autonomous vehicles
Power Consumption
Very low: Weeks/months on battery/solar
Moderate: Drains phone battery quickly
Higher (especially mmWave); improved efficiency in newer devices
Cost
Low one-time (devices + optional solar); no subscriptions
Monthly plan + device
Higher plans; premium for full speeds
Reliability in Outages
Excellent: Works off-grid, no single point of failure
Fails without power/towers (e.g., disasters)
Same as LTE; more vulnerable to congestion
Limitations
Text-only, slow, needs multiple nodes for range
Requires signal/subscription
Limited high-speed coverage; higher battery drain
These technologies serve different purposes: Meshtastic for resilient, infrastructure-independent communication in remote or emergency scenarios, versus LTE/5G for high-speed, everyday mobile internet and voice.
Summary
Meshtastic is a free and user-friendly tool that allows you to send messages without relying on the internet or mobile networks. It connects small, specialized devices to form a network, allowing communication over long distances. This makes it great for outdoor adventures, emergencies, or communication in remote areas.
Stay tuned as we continue to explore off-grid communication in future articles.
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