MeshCom vs VibeSDR Jr

MeshCom is a project to exchange text messages via LORA radio modules. The primary goal is to realize networked off-grid messaging with low power and low cost hardware. The technical approach is based on the use of LORA radio modules which transmit messages, positions, measured values, telecontrol and much more with low transmission power over long distances. MeshCom modules can be combined to form a mesh network, but can also be connected to a message network via MeshCom gateways, which are ideally connected via HAMNET. This enables MeshCom radio networks, which are not connected to each other via radio, to communicate with each other.

VibeSDR Jr is a complete software-defined radio receiver that runs on your Apple Watch. Not a remote control for a phone in your pocket — the watch makes its own connection, does its own decoding and plays its own audio. Leave the handset at home. Turn the Digital Crown to tune. The spectrum and waterfall run live on the wrist, in colour, at a frame rate you can actually read a band with. Press and hold for the menu, and everything else is a tap away. WHAT IT RECEIVES Jr is a client, so it needs a receiver to listen to — either one of your own on your network, or one of the thousands of public ones already out there. It speaks VibeServer, OpenWebRX, KiwiSDR and FM-DX Webserver, and it ships with a directory of public servers, so there is something to listen to within seconds of installing. VibeServer is your own receiver. It is built into the VibeSDR phone app and available free for macOS — plug in an RTL-SDR, an Airspy HF+ or an SDRplay RSP and it is yours. MODES AND DECODERS USB, LSB, AM, SAM, FM, NFM and wide FM in stereo, plus CW upper and lower. DAB, and an ADS-B view that plots the aircraft talking overhead. ON THE WRIST Bookmarks, synced with the VibeSDR phone app through iCloud. A band plan, so you know what you are looking at. Bandwidth, squelch, gain and the receiver's own hardware controls — including the LNA, IF gain and notches an SDRplay RSP actually has, rather than a dongle's single slider pretending to be them. Background audio, so it keeps playing when you drop your wrist. And a link meter that tells you the truth about the connection. VibeSDR Jr is open source under the GPLv3. The engine underneath it, VibeDSP, is our own — the same one that runs the phone app, so a waterfall you set up in one turns up looking the same on the other. Requires a Wi-Fi or cellular connection, and a receiver to connect to.