Chatters Mesh Cloud

ChatterBox is designed to need no service. LoRa frequencies, distributed packet caching, and smart meshing to enable you to communicate privately, even over impressive distances.

If you need to bridge a large distance between portions of your cluster, you may want to use our mesh cloud service. Having only 2 or 3 of your devices connected to our cloud can connect distant portions of your cluster.

  • Connect devices to your cluster from any distance, forming long distance bridges

  • Your messages remain end-to-end encrypted and signed, the same as when transmitted via LoRa.

  • Your off-cloud devices automatically learn to utilize cloud-connected devices as a bridge.

  • This bridge is available even to your off-cloud devices, if they have a mesh route to a cloud-connected device.

  • If internet becomes disconnected, packets cache in your distributed off-cloud cluster for up to 24 hours, waiting for a bridge or other device to close the gap.

  • Easily enable/disable cloud and set routing to prefer LoRa or Cloud per-device, or let the device automatically choose.

Try it free for 30 days (see instructions below). If you choose to keep using Chatters Mesh Cloud, you can subscribe up to 3 devices for 4.99/month, 10 devices for 9.99/month. You may also contact us for other options.

Using Chatters Mesh Cloud

Using the mesh cloud is automatic, once it’s set up. On any devices where you have activated cloud, if an internet connection is available, both LoRa and Cloud will be options that device can use for routing packets. All cloud-connected devices on your cluster will be a single hop away from one another. Devices in your cluster that are not cloud-connected will automatically be able to leverage these connected devices as a bridge.

Activating Mesh Cloud on a Communicator

Note the following quirks/limitations:

  • Only 2.4 GHz WiFi is currently supported.

  • Depending on the reliability of WiFi between your router and the Lilygo devices, the Node/Communicator may automatically restart occasionally (or frequently) to maintain a good clean connection. but just be aware.

  • If you are running cloud connectivity on nodes only, you probably won’t even notice. On a communicator, you probably will notice.

  • You can enable/disable cloud easily on any device at any time

  • It is recommended to run cloud on as few devices as necessary to bridge large gaps in your cluster. LoRa performs better if it doesn’t have to compete on each device with WiFi, so save cloud for a few devices rather than enabling it on ALL devices.

You can enable and disable cloud on any ChatterBox device at any time. All devices within your cluster will automatically learn to use (or stop using) their own or other devices’ cloud connections.

The scan can be picky about hiding networks with long names or weird characters. If you’re not seeing your network, try (on your hotspot or router) shortening the name, or just wait for the next firmware update and try again.

1. Choose Settings / Cloud / WiFi Setup

Select a network, enter network password, and test it. If test is successful, save the connection.

2. Touch the Cloud Icon (home screen)

Scan the QR code. Your trial subscription should automatically be activated, and you can then Enable Cloud.

Activating Mesh Cloud on a Node

Running a node with cloud activated is really what the Mesh Cloud was designed for. By cloud-connecting nodes, you can have well-positioned LoRa nodes with good antennas/boosters/etc, and any nearby on-cluster devices will be able to utilize that node’s cloud connection as a bridge to other far-out-of-range, cloud-connected devices within your private cluster.

1. Select your Node in the Devices Screen

From a cloud-connected communicator, locate the node you want to activate for cloud and choose the command/control button.

2. Choose Push WiFi

The node will receive your currently connected WiFi SSID/password and attempt a test connection. You should get back a confirmation that the test was successful.

3. Choose Enable Cloud

Go into devices again, select the same node, select command/control again. This time, choose Enable Cloud.

You should receive confirmation, the node should reboot, and within a few moments you should see the node appear as Cloud-connected in your neighbors screen.