Photo/Audio in the future of Meshtastic?

[voidbrain]

The advent of Reticulum and MeshChat has showed up that it is possible to send photos and audio via LoRa, even using hardware already designed for Meshtastic (such as various Lilygo and Heltec devices) without the need to add new Hardware such microphones and speakers, simply by using the app.

In an emergency situation, such as during a trekking, being able to send a photo of an injury or a short message to tell a geographic reference can save lives and is far easier than a writing a text message.

Are these features planned in Meshtastic's future?

[dm5tt]

How do you want to fit audio and video into the extremely strict ISM time limits? Robust LoRa is slow. We are taking about bits per second here.

If you switch to fast LoRa modes you loose a lot of sensitivity/robustness - so that classic SSB/FM radio almost becomes attractive again.

[voidbrain]

Honestly, I worry about emergency situations, not technical limitations.

Does Reticulum send audio and photos? Yes.
Does Reticulum have equiparable range as Meshtastic? Yes, it is based on same hardware.
On an emergency, is Reticulum more useful? Yes.

"I'm injured in a leg but I don't know if it's broken. But I can't send you a photo because i'd loose a lot of robustness". Beach please.

[thebentern]

We operate on a shared spectrum. Many of the regional meshes are comprised of hundreds (even thousands) of individual nodes. Sending high bandwidth payloads that completely saturate and monopolize airtime for minutes at a time is unfair to other users. It's certainly fun as an experimental use of the technology, but IMO it should be done away from the public channels and only on high bandwidth ones like SHORT_FAST / TURBO. Doing this on LONG_FAST is not going to be a good time for anyone involved.

As to your example, I'm not sure that sending a photo is the best example of usage during an emergency. Typically text and PLI are the best approach there, and they are much more likely to deliver. Larger payloads become less reliable and even more so when they have to be chunked into many packets for delivery.

[mitchconnermeow]

Honestly, I worry about emergency situations, not technical limitations.

Does Reticulum send audio and photos? Yes. Does Reticulum have equiparable range as Meshtastic? Yes, it is based on same hardware. On an emergency, is Reticulum more useful? Yes.

"I'm injured in a leg but I don't know if it's broken. But I can't send you a photo because i'd loose a lot of robustness". Beach please.

Why not just use Reticulum then? Seems like you want to change an entire project and compromise the under lying use case for meshtastic and everyone else just to support a feature that is already solved by a project you're already familiar with; Reticulum. Seems like a no brainer. Not to mention, even if they did plan to add support for audio / image in the future, are you going to hold off on breaking your leg until they do support it? I just don't understand why you wouldn't simply use the solution that already exists for your use case.

[RichieFrame]

While you CAN send voice/audio over Reticulum networks based on LoRa hardware, that does not mean you should. The bandwidth limitations are still in place, so sending a point to point message containing a small, say 1 megapixel image of an injury (120KB), just big enough to show details, with only 1 hop in between could take 40 mins at 100% airtime, in EU where there are airtime limits that would go to over 6 hours...

If you had to send a picture of an injury in an emergency, would a 6 hour wait time be useful? would the battery drain to 0 before it can even complete? Remember, in general use, you are not close to 10% airtime, 3 days of battery at 1% airtime is as low as 43 minutes at 100% airtime. And on a mesh network, if there are other nodes, your bandwidth will drop even more because of retransmissions from other nodes blocking airtime, it may take DAYS to send an image that looks like it was taken by a 20 year old cell phone... good luck with that.