Welcome
Connecting the Puget Sound, Regardless of the Grid.
Puget Mesh is a volunteer-led community building off-grid, community-owned communication networks across the Puget Sound region. Our primary focus is MeshCore—a resilient, low-power LoRa texting network—alongside AREDN high-speed data for emergency communications and our legacy Meshtastic network. Together these provide resilient digital infrastructure for disaster preparedness, emergency response, and everyday experimentation.
New to mesh networking? You’ve come to the right place. Beyond the technology, we are a community of builders. Whether you’re looking to troubleshoot a node or brainstorm your next project, our Discord server is the hub for our off-mesh collaboration. Use it to ask for help and also to meet others in your area in one of the regional location channels.
Get Involved: Join our Discord. We use it for nearly all of our communication outside the mesh.
Follow Us: We occasionally post user projects and events on both Bluesky and Instagram
Contact Us: For official inquiries, please email inquiries@pugetmesh.org.
Which network is right for me?
Start here — MeshCore
For most people, MeshCore is the best way to get on the mesh today. It runs on inexpensive, low-power LoRa hardware, works off-grid, and is the most active and effective network in our region. → Get on MeshCore
AREDN — high-speed EmComm data
AREDN turns commercial WiFi hardware into a high-speed IP mesh for amateur radio operators, carrying IP phones, Winlink, file transfer, and video. It requires a ham license at the frequencies and power levels we use in this region. → Explore AREDN
Meshtastic — legacy / interop
We still operate Meshtastic infrastructure, but most new deployments should choose MeshCore. → Meshtastic
Current Events:
Test2 — 500 kHz MeshCore Spectrum Test (Sept 19–20, 2026)
More bandwidth, fewer retransmissions, faster propagation — that's the goal of our 500 kHz backhaul, and Test2 goes looking for the frequency to deliver it. On Friday, September 19 and Saturday, September 20, 2026 we'll run a spectrum study to find the optimal frequency for our 500 kHz backhaul, which means taking the Cougar Mountain repeater offline a few times to sweep and analyze the RF spectrum. Expect intermittent Cougar outages across those two days. Questions or coordination in the backhaul-testing Discord channel.
Test3 — Modified frequency, SF, and CR (Sep 21 - 22, 48 hours)
Mon Sep 21, 5:00 PM → Wed Sep 23, 5:00 PM Pacific (48 hours)
Next step towards more bandwidth, fewer retransmissions, faster propagation. Building on Test1 and Test2, Test3 changes frequency, spreading factor, and coding rate together to see how they trade off in the field. The current proposed settings are 911.340 MHz, 500 kHz BW, SF8, CR7 — provisional, to be updated after Test2 completes. The exact start/stop schedule, radio settings, and step commands are encoded in the scheduler link and shown in the embedded schedule below.
We'll step these settings in a coordinated fashion, running bridges to keep the mesh usable throughout, and we'll attempt to limit impact to the mesh as we go. The aim is to optimize penetration and error handling while balancing our speed and bandwidth goals and the supporting calculations. We've already been doing limited testing between non-critical repeaters; now we need to observe the real-world impact on our own unique mesh. Coordination happens in the backhaul-testing Discord channel.
Test schedule
The live preset-test schedule is embedded below. If it doesn't load, open it directly: Test3 preset schedule (mikecarper.github.io).
Past Events:
Test1 — 500 kHz MeshCore backhaul trial (Sept 11–15, 2026)
From Friday, September 11 through Tuesday, September 15, 2026 we ran Test1, evaluating a 500 kHz LoRa preset for backhaul links and FCC compliance. 500 kHz is the minimum 6 dB bandwidth the FCC requires for the higher-power digital path in the 902–928 MHz band, making it a candidate for longer, higher-power backhaul hops than our 62.5 kHz local preset. See RF Bridge & Backhaul for background, the LoRa bridging guide we created, and the FCC 900 MHz rules.
May 2025 Meshtastic ShortFast Experiment!
For the Month of May we are trialing SHORT_FAST/ShortFast. We encourage all users to move their nodes over for the whole month of May. More information can be found on the event page here.
April 12th, 2025:
In-Person Meetup hosted by the Radio Club of Tacoma, W7DK.
November 23rd, 2024:
In-Person Meetup at the Shoreline Library.
October 12th, 2024:
AREDN Flashing Party at the Seattle Public Library, Broadview Branch.
