Off-grid enthusiasts have been utilizing the Meshtastic radio network for decentralized communications that is not reliant on other infrastructure. This is extremely powerful in cases where cellular towers are not prevalent, or even in areas where cellular towers do exist but are often overloaded due to the sheer number of users.
This project creates an integration between this existing Meshtastic network and SMS, commonly known as text messaging. This allows these users to communicate with non-Meshtastic users by way of an internet gateway device.
The gateway device consists of a Meshtastic radio connected to a computer by a local area network. That computer then runs a Docker container which facilitates a SocketIO connection to a hub server. This design allows for a number of gateways to connect back to a central hub.
To allow for minimal downtime and high availability (HA), the hub server is running as discrete Node.js microservices (currently six) in a Kubernetes cluster. This allows for three unique instances of each microservice running on its own hardware node. One of these microservices ties in with Twilio, which powers the SMS functionality.
Overall, this proof-of-concept project has been successful in enabling Meshtastic users to communicate effectively to SMS and vice versa. The architecture design by using Kubernetes for container orchestration has proven to be helpful to allow for optimal uptime of this service. This has been a powerful project to learn numerous technologies and design strategies.
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