This is where it gets interesting...

[00:00:00]Right. Well, this is pretty interesting.

[00:00:02]We finally have a mesh device for mesh communications that looks and feels like a phone. This is I mean this is absolutely brilliant. So, this is probably resembles, I don't know, like a BlackBerry from like 2004 or something like that, but it's the first time we've seen a device um from a manufacturer that is obviously taking things pretty seriously because they've managed to cram a full standalone mesh device into basically like a phone casing. Now, I have actually seen this enclosure before used um as a proper phone, but this is not a, you know, this isn't a phone.

[00:00:37]This is a mesh communications device. It runs on ESP32.

[00:00:42]So, the best way to explain it is it's exactly the same hardware that's in the LIGO TEC Pro, which you, you know, if you're into mesh stuff, you will know what one of these are. But whereas this looks more like kind of like a hobbyist project, you know, you've got ports on the side, it's quite thick, everything else. Um, this actually looks more like a phone. So, this is going to be a bit of a combined video. So, I'm going to show you the new Mesh OS stuff and also um talk about the features of this M9 as well. It's so cool to start seeing devices like this coming and it's just going to be great to see what happens in the future. So, let's dive straight in then. So, we've got a power switch on the right hand side of the device. You can just click that up and it will boot straight away into Mesh OS. I mean, so fast, such a fast boot on these devices.

[00:01:28]Um, as I say, the spec is ESP32, 16 megabytes of flash, usual stuff. um 8 megabytes PS RAM. Uh it's got GPS. It's got SD card slot inside which you can't access very easily. So, I'm not sure what they're going to do about that. I know they're finalizing the um back panel, but if an SD card is buried in there, it's not too much of a problem cuz with the latest um OSS and stuff, we've got the ability to download like map tiles over the internet and of course, you know, do software updates over the air and all sorts of clever stuff like that now. So, it's not really necessary to sort of take an SD card out anymore. So, if that ships inside it, I'm I'm sort of fine with that. We've got all those features baked into Mesh OS now. So, did I mention GPS? It's got the GPS um up here, which actually faces through um here through this sort of like glass. It's not glass, but you know what I mean. It's got clear plastic. Um and it gets a fix very very quickly. Uh you might have noticed when I turned it on, the clock came straight up. So, it's got a real-time clock. Brilliant. This is exactly what we want. The T deck doesn't have that, which obviously creates problems with the clock. You know, people say, "Why doesn't my T deck like get the clock when I turn it on?"

[00:02:43]Cuz it hasn't got a battery backed up um realtime clock. That's that's why. So, this does, and it is it just works absolutely brilliantly. There's some other nice things under the hood of this device, which we'll come on to later.

[00:02:55]So, the screen, yeah, you know, it's okay. It's a usual kind of LCD panel, um similar to what's on the T deck. It would have been nice if we could have gone OLED or, you know, AM OLED. That would have been pretty awesome. Um, and maybe to have it kind of go, you know, fill a little bit more of this space to make it look a bit more modern. But hey guys, this is the first kind of iteration of these devices, so you know, who knows what's going to happen in the future. The display is pretty good.

[00:03:21]Being a bit smaller than the T deck, it makes it look a little bit higher resolution as well. So on the front, you've obviously got the full keyboard.

[00:03:28]The keys, yeah, they're okay. you know, it's not definitely not BlackBerry standard. Um, if anything, the LIGO keys are a little bit better, I think. Um, but what's nice is you do have all these kind of hardware keys as well, which is really good for like shortcuts because this device doesn't have a touch screen.

[00:03:45]So, you're basically navigating this device around with um these kind of arrow keys on this. What what is this like a D-pad or something? You're basically just navigating around with these buttons here. And then to sort of confirm, you just hit the button in the middle and you got a back button. So, we've optimized this version of Mesh OS for the M9. So, it's really nice to use with these buttons. And it is snappy as like it really is um very very fast on its on its feet. This this um RS because we're not using like LVGL or anything like that. It's pushing pixels very very efficiently. I'll show you on the T deck here um how good it is. Look, check this out. The redraw on this. This is like super super quick. So, you know, you can do that and you can scroll scroll down your list of of emojis. Um, so this is a new feature coming to um Mesh OS and this will be released in the next week or so. Just tidying up some final bits on that. So, as with all these ESP32 devices, people want to know about battery life and stuff like that. I will say this has I think it's a 2,300 or I can't remember. I've had this apart to to get to the SD card. Um, and basically I think it's it's definitely over 2,000 milliamp hours. So, this thing just seems to just last forever. I mean, yeah, crazy. The charge rate on this is faster than the normal annoying 500 milliamps charge rate that, you know, a lot of these devices have as standard on the USBC port at the bottom. This is somewhere between 8 and 900, I think. 8 and 900 uh milliamps for charge rate.

[00:05:23]So, it charges pretty quickly. Um, well, compared to, you know, like your standard USB. So, as I was saying, you've got these nice buttons here. So, we can just hit one of these to open the chats. Obviously, this I've got assigned to terminal at the moment, but you can I'm going to make that customizable. So, you can you can basically um you know, do whatever you want with that button.

[00:05:43]Uh, this one opens a you can send location, direct location. Um, and you can hit this one and it will open up the map view as well, which is which is really nice. So, few more bits to do on the map. But now on the map, if you zoom in like that, you'll see Wi-Fi is going to connect and it will basically just download um the tiles that it needs on demand for um that. Where are we with my Wi-Fi network? Yeah, it's coming up. So, yeah, that'll just automatically do that in the background. It's kind of handy.

[00:06:14]You can store multiple Wi-Fi networks on this as well. So basically you can, you know, have it connect tethered to your phone and it will um it will download the map tiles you need for the job, which is pretty nice. As I say, there's more map features to come as well. Like this is the start of it. You can just sort of send your location, send center channel or center contact um just like you can like in the in the apps and then if you just hit the home, it'll just go back to the sort of dimmed home screen.

[00:06:39]So that's saving power. I will say that with this always on display as well, which I've got it set to very very very low dim display, so you can see notifications and stuff just like a sort of smartphone. I found that it's been going for a really long time, well over like 24 hours with that display on which is which is pretty surprising. Um, so there are some power optimizations done um with Mesh OS as well. So it does sort of eek it out a little bit longer as well like this. the new ESP32 power uh kind of optimizations are baked into this as well. One thing we have done on this by request is to sort out the font sizes. So you can actually basically set your font sizes now um on here. I won't go too deep into the settings. There's loads of like sort of developer settings where I've changed different things um and stuff to sort of tweak it live on this on this panel. But um yeah, basically um you can set uh different sizes for different things. So that makes you know cuz this screen is is actually quite small um you know compared to the T deck. So we need to sort of make that at least usable. Got a file manager in here as well. Also obviously for the um for the sort of you know SD card managing things on the SD card you know if it's buried inside file manager is baked in there. Now one of the other things I like about this is it actually has a compass. So now you can actually have a proper direction finding system you know with this with this device. So so yeah it's proper if you move it turns instantly. you don't have to wait for your kind of GPS to catch up before it works out what bearing you're at. So, that's a really nice feature.

[00:08:20]I'm glad they've added that. And then one final thing before I wrap this one up. I love this how compact this device is. It's just been my new carry around.

[00:08:28]I love it. Um yeah, we've got this new browser feature as well. So basically what that does is just allows us to connect to um you know our web server here and basically get news and information that sort of stuff. So basically do this on demand and then you know you've kind of like got wi type pages um which you can serve from here. You can download like ringtones.

[00:08:54]That's another thing I actually should mention. Um so this basically doesn't have proper sort of eye to see audio. it just has a buzzer. So that is probably one thing where the T deck, you know, will win other than it's sort of bigger display, probably better keyboard and other bits. But um yeah, so if we whip into settings here and go into um the sound, basically we've got melodies. So you can do things like that. This is about this is about the extent of it. So things like that, it's actually fine.

[00:09:30]It's quite fun having kind of like Game Boy style um beeps and stuff coming out of this when you get messages. So yeah, customization options for that are going to be pretty cool with like RTL um ringtones. So you'll be able to do that via this as well. But yeah, it's pretty cool. Love that. Um yeah, so I just have it on this little beep one.

[00:09:51]It's just quite nice and doesn't sort of uh draw attention to it too much, but you can definitely hear it. So, that just about sums this device up, I think.

[00:10:00]Um, I haven't shown wallpapers on here.

[00:10:02]Done some improvements to that as well.

[00:10:04]You probably know if you use a T deck.

[00:10:05]Currently, the wallpapers are like dithered down color-wise. Now, we've got the full um 16 bit frame buffer running on here. And it's it's speedy as. So, we can do proper full color backgrounds as well on the um for wallpapers and stuff.

[00:10:20]So, that's cool. And that also makes stuff like this possible. So if you go to a message here that's got a JPEG in it, we can just basically just hit view on that. So it connects to the internet.

[00:10:30]So it doesn't stay connected to the internet. It just basically goes and fetches that image and then basically displays it there. So that's quite handy if you're on a mesh and people are sending images backwards and forwards.

[00:10:40]You can view them like that. Um yeah, I think that is about it for this one for this device. So Ellie Crow is saying end of July for this device. So, we'll just have to keep updated on that and just see um you know if that's realistically going to happen. But yeah, this is a good one, guys. As I say, the antenna works really well. So, don't be put off by that. I'm sure that it will be possible to actually kind of add external antennas by sort of some kind of back case with a with a bulge, that sort of stuff. The 3D print guys will get on that. If not, it's really easy.

[00:11:12]They use like, you know, the usual um UFFL connectors inside, so it's trivial to to put an SMA on this. probably even fit on the top actually anyway if you really wanted to butcher it that much.

[00:11:23]But yeah guys, hope you've enjoyed this one. Stay tuned for more. Check the mesh cord.co.uk website for more information and stuff about this. This new firmware for the T deck will be coming out in about a week, I reckon. And yeah, so stay tuned for that. Catch you next time,