Setting Up Blackout Comms
Blackout Comms is an encrypted off-grid tracking & texting system, which uses LoRa-capable devices in a private mesh cluster. Setting up your own cluster is pretty simple, once you have compatible devices. The setup steps are: flash firmware onto each device, setup your root (first) device, setup & add each additional device.
Flashing is the name for installing firmware.
Flash Firmware Onto Devices
Cluster Setup (Root Device)
Your first device is called the "root" device. It's basically the admin of your mesh cluster.
​
This root device controls encryption, trust, frequency hopping, and all other cluster-wide settings.
​​
It's a good idea to backup the SD card of root and other devices in your cluster, after you've got it fully setup.
Onboard Devices
Your mesh network is encrypted and private. As such, anything you want to add to your mesh cluster needs to be trusted by the root device.
​
This is called "onboarding". Only the root device is allowed to do it. It's easy and only takes a minute or so for each new device.
​​
Blackout Comms' zero touch trust means all your on-cluster devices automatically trust new devices, after they've been onboarded by the root.