I recently purchased a Heltec V3 and a Heltec T114 to start tinkering with and get more familiar with. I was also interested in seeing if I can make contact with any other nodes nearby. It turns out i’m all alone out here, at least that’s what I thought.

My friends and SO have no interest in these kind of things but then an idea hit me. My daughter (who is 6) is learning to read this and is getting better with her writing as well. Shes usually my partner in crime when I get something new so I figured I’d see if this is something she’d like too.

I had an old Android phone laying around that I grabbed and spent a good 15 minutes giving her a crash course on how Meshtastic works, its components, the app, how to connect to a node and how to send messages. This was also the first instance where she has used a device to send messages to another device (my phone). The second she saw her message pop up on my phone, you could see her little mind explode with possibilities!

I had her stay in the house (with her mom) while I went outside to do some range tests and we messaged each other emojis back and forth as her little face watched me from upstairs bedroom window.

Now every morning during my morning bathroom ritual, I get these broken misspelled messages (which are totally understandable) asking me how my crap is going. This inquiry is then followed by ideas she has regarding other experiments she wants to do. Just this morning we were planning our next adventure where she was going to wait for a nice day and get her mom to bring her and her brother to the park so that she can see if we can still send messages to each other from there.

I’m so incredibly proud of her that I just had to share this with all of you. If I hadn’t come across this community I wouldn’t have discovered the Meshtastic project and I wouldn’t have had this story to share! Thank you to all that have made this project possible.