How do you know? For instance, I'd suggest that not every method of modulation has been invented or even yet implemented. Also, we've hardly begun to design and implement meta materials into antennae and RF filters—the field's still wide open for innovation and invention.

And new methods of 'machining' steel have recently been invented and are just coming into use (if I owned the patents I'd be sitting pretty for life).

This is the radio chip used in their hardware: https://www.semtech.com/products/wireless-rf/lora-transceive...

Very similar to the CC1200 I used in a radio I designed in 2013: https://www.ti.com/product/CC1200

Low data rate networks are super interesting. The long range let’s you do things you wouldn’t do with WiFi. But what i would really like is a high bandwidth long range mesh. The issue you run in to is who owns the spectrum. In the US it’s private communications companies that buy large chunks of spectrum. I’d like to see more valuable spectrum allotted for public use. This would pave the way for free or very low cost municipal cell phone service. Unfortunately there is big money interested in making sure that doesn’t happen. And with “business friendly” people in the FCC, the idea of free communications doesn’t have much traction.

This radio project looks cool. Ideally we’d have a generic 915mhz radio in our cell phones. I guess since this device also has WiFi, you could connect a phone pretty easily. Let’s beg the Librem folks to add a sub-Gigabertz radio (915/868/433MHz) to their next phone. :-D

I see the older technologies as solid foundation for robust networks. Most of these old systems are behind in terms of implementation technology but the foundations of these technologies are very strong. I believe that by integrating the robustness of older technologies with newer systems you can get the befits of new systems and technology but keep the robustness and stability of older systems.

Also, you're not entirely correct about how the system works.

I was just wondering if there's spectrum allocated for experimentation or if you'd be stepping on FCC rules by putting this into practice.

A long time ago, we were acquiring the shadiest RF devices possible to test against our WiFi routers, which should avoid auto-selecting interfering frequencies. One device we got was an analog wireless security camera thingie bought right from Amazon. "2.4GHz" it declared, so it was the perfect test case. We turned it on and there was no WiFi interference whatsoever. We got out the test equipment and... its carrier frequency was right on the edge of the L1 GPS frequency. You turn the thing on, there goes GPS for the neighborhood. It was impressively disastrous and we did not test it any further!

That's a company trying to build a radio product, for sale to consumers in the US market. I don't have a lot more faith in random people trying to build FM radios. Sure, you'll know if it doesn't work, because you tune your car radio to it and you can't hear anything. But unless you're careful, you can radiate a lot of power in the sidebands and the harmonics. That will trash licensed spectrum users, which is Not Nice Of You. (As for "amateur radio" operators, how to build and test radios is part of the exam, so there are a lot of great homebuilt radios floating around out there. Also part of the test is knowing when you can use non-amateur frequencies, and what the punishment for doing so is. Needless to say, not a lot of trained hams are building pirate radio stations. So that brings the likelihood of doing a bad job even higher; by definition, only the unlicensed and untrained are even trying this.)

This comment is already too long but I want to relay another fun fact. Building a receiver can interfere with other users of the spectrum; a common design mixes the incoming radio signal by a higher frequency, filters it, and then mixes it down to audio frequencies. If you don't shield this well, then your receiver is actually a transmitter on some random other band. Be careful and test your design with a spectrum analyzer. It's not rocket science but it's not trivial either.

I would understand perhaps semaphore because anyone can wave their arms about and communicate long distances.

But since radio requires equipment anyway, you might as well use modern digital equipment - with the benefit that in the same amount of time, power and bandwidth that a morse signal would use, you can send 10,000x more data.

There is nothing wrong with two way radios, per se. The issue is the FCC "typing" rules that disallow a single device operating on multiple, disparate frequency bands.

Imagine I respond to a car accident and need to call for a helicopter and arrange a landing zone. In this situation, I will be juggling four brick sized radios throughout the duration of that call.[1] Possibly while driving.

We have started to funnel most comms to "tablet command mobile" on our personal phones, which is all text based and ties into GPS map on the phone, etc. - this is very efficient and works very well, but it is heavily dependent on infrastructure we don't control (the mobile phone network).

Anything complicated and we're juggling four bricks again. It's very frustrating, especially in an era of SDRs that could very obviously give me p25+calcord+GMRS all in one simple device.

[1] Pager that the call came in on, county P25 radio that we use all the time, Hi-Band radio to speak on "calcord" to the helicopter, GMRS handheld for traffic control.