Thank you Greg. Your “short version” explanation goes a long way. I’ll research what I can to see what I can learn. I especially like the management of a hangar power switch remotely. Hopefully it will explain what “no-hop” means, and what a “node” is.
Of course, maybe there’s no hope for a technical Neanderthal senior citizen like me…..
A "node" is basically a device that is participating in a network of devices.
"No-hop" refers to a connection directly between one node and another node. The way meshtastic works is, each node can receive the messages broadcast by other nodes, and can/will typically forward those messages on to any other nodes it can "see." In that way, messages can hop between nodes, being forwarded along by a "mesh" of network nodes until the recipient is reached. Sort of. It can get more complicated than that, but not really relevant to this discussion.
If my meshtastic device is in my airplane up high in the sky, I have a much better view (direct line of sight) of other participating meshtastic devices (nodes). Since the frequencies involved perform best with a direct line of sight and nothing in the way to obstruct the signal. So, in that situation, my node can transmit and receive messages to/from other meshtastic devices that are a lot further away than when on the ground with obstructions compromising the signal.
My device >>> Node 2 >>> Node 3 >>> Node 4
In the above network (and keeping with the language being used in this thread) "my device" is "no hops" from node 2 (it's a direct connection), and is "one hop" from node 3 (there is one node between us), etc. On the ground, I might need to rely on node 2 to get my message and send it to node 3 due to limits of how far I can send on the ground, but from the sky I might be able to see node 3 directly (or maybe even node 4 as well).
And no, you won't be surfing the web with this technology. But you can send some useful small bits of data. For example, maybe it's the equivalent of "turn on the engine heater" and your smart switch in your hangar flips on, and the engine block heater starts doing its thing. Or from the air, small bits of real-time telemetry from your avionics coudl be transmited to a ground node (probably a bit limited in how much you can send, but still pretty cool to be able to do it). Then there's the crowd that uses it for the doomsday scenario (where all cell networks are down and the internet is also down, but we can still send short meshtasic text messages to each other).
Super nerdy (unapologetically so) to be sure. But fun to learn from and kind of like building an airplane and then flying it, it's fun when you put together these devices, load up some software, and start seeing little messages bounce around the mesh of participating devices. BUT - it will also completely destroy two days of time you'd otherwise spend building an airplane, so keep that in mind.
