Meshcore and Alternative Tech
Every Scale Possible
Mark Rushton’s Curator Mindset is a place where I talk in 2026 about my ongoing work as a recording artist and visual artist, tech things, and provide music recommendations. This is being released on Saturday, April 4, 2026.
This week’s topics:
Meshcore
Ongoing Work
Pat Metheny - “In On It”
Meshcore
Because I’m always interested in “alternative tech”, I was curious about Meshtastic - an “off-grid” text messaging service that has sprung up in the recent years.
It wasn’t long before I discovered that a slightly different, more appropriate service (for me) exists, called Meshcore.
I’ve purchased some Meshcore hardware and will be going in that direction after it arrives in the mail and I set it up.
While I’ve held and renewed an amateur radio license since the late 1970s, I haven’t been active to any degree in over 40 years. Like with discovering “progressive rock” as a teen, it’s kind of a phase some people go through. But I knew I didn’t want to hang around there forever.
Meshcore operates similarly to what interested me in amateur radio back around 1980, but you don’t need a license to use it. The equipment is not expensive. It can be used with 2017-or-newer (Bluetooth 5.0 compatible) mobile device hardware while in Airplane mode, although some dedicated hardware is starting to appear on the market using the nascent “MeshOS”.
I like the idea of operating outside of cellphone networks, wi-fi, ads, planned enshittification, and subscription BS.
At a high level, Meshtastic operates on the concept of a “node”. Every user has a node radio that can “talk” to each other nodes. That’s how the messages get sent and received and forwarded. The problem is that the community isn’t large and everybody with a node needs to be close by. It’s a good concept for a farm or a warehouse, although conventional voice walkie-talkies
Meshcore also has nodes for individual users to text with each other, but the nodes can also talk to a local “repeater” base radio, which routes the messaging packet by talking to other repeaters. Individual nodes on Meshcore do not forward packets for others, only repeaters. This is the concept that connects with me.
I bought a personal node and a repeater node. I’ll install the repeater node in my studio at the Fitch Building, near the 88.5 FM transmitter. The repeater should help build a network and the community. This is very much in keeping with my current philosophy of “the curator mindset”.
Ongoing Work
It’s the “endless work in progress”.
It’s not exactly a painting.
I took the photo, processed it a little in software, printed it using a thermal ribbon printer onto spunbonded olefin, and then inked it.
Then I projected it via the Elmo and NEC to a wood panel that has acrylic paint built up over a starch-based adhesive.
And I keep taking photos of the new images.
I like this method.
No pressure to complete anything, except what’s in the moment. And then on to the next thing.
Pat Metheny - “In On It”
It starts off like any conventional Pat Metheny piece of music…
Halfway through, his guitar turns “trumpet/electronic” and he proceeds to play every scale possible.
And then the seemingly impossible Joe Dyson drum breaks start and stop between electronic processing.
Before going back to conventional Pat Metheny…