Hello Direbox
Direbox is the ultimate off-grid mesh messaging platform, allowing you to send text messages over a wide area with no Internet or cellular connection. It operates on the massive and established global APRS network and includes end-to-end encryption if you so choose to enable it.
"Ultimate off-grid mesh, you say? A bold claim!"
But I believe it to be true. Bear with me for a moment.
The Great Radio Resistance
Like so many others, I fell into the world of amateur radio with emergency communications and preparedness in mind. I bought a Baofeng UV-5R, programmed in some local repeaters, and joined a few nets, only to let it collect dust in my closet after a couple months of use.
This is the fate of many would-be radio operators these days.
Around the same time, I became fascinated with mesh networks and alternative data comms. Back then, goTenna Mesh was the only consumer-grade player in town. While it didn't have particularly good range, it was a neat proof-of-concept, license-free, and came with encryption built-in. This was the era of Snowden NSA disclosures, WikiLeaks, and the first inkling among the populace that Big Tech didn't have their user's best interest in mind, so this tech was very exciting.
Then goTenna promptly became a member of the Military-Industrial Complex and stopped selling to us lowly civilians.
Another piece of gear found eternal rest among the dust bunnies and the search for the "perfect" preparedness comms system continued.
Trying APRS
My gaze turned back towards amateur radio and its many digital modes.
The late Bob Bruninga's APRS (Automatic Packet Reporting System) system stood out as the most interesting, and Bob was an interesting man. Unlike goTenna and most emergency comms companies, instead of cannibalizing their consumer market to chase government contracts, Bob did the opposite. He built APRS for the US Navy and then promptly gave it away for free in the 80s.
APRS had everything I was looking for in an EMCOMM system - it could run on my dusty old Baofeng, the mesh had a massive preexisting node network, and it could do all sorts of data, from texting to position reports to weather updates. Even now, it's arguably the most popular digital radio mode on Earth.
Using APRS is far from easy, though. Most of the software is ancient garbage with user interfaces that were cutting-edge... for Windows 98. Configuring the software is highly technical and pretty unstable. And even when you get it all set up, you quickly find that nobody is actually using APRS. They're simply beaconing location data and not much else. APRS software reflects this, too - messaging is cumbersome and poorly implemented with a map of local strangers taking center stage.
But the potential for APRS to be an amazing off-grid text messaging system was there. As a software developer, I started building what would become Direbox in my spare time.
Mesh...tastic?
In the interim, though, Meshtastic took the world by storm. For the uninitiated, Meshtastic is a mesh network that runs on very affordable hardware in the license-free ~915MHz ISM band. It also offers end-to-end encryption. It's a very cool project and I hope it continues to grow.
Unfortunately, actually using Meshtastic was a less than stellar experience.
Being limited to 1 watt of power output meant that "real world" use-cases were limited to a mile or two at most. To make matters worse, 915MHz is not an ideal band for comms at distance. Firmware updates are released frequently and are often unstable. It may be a useful system for urbanite techies where node density is high, but it couldn't replace my cell phone for local texting and I certainly wouldn't trust my life to it in an emergency. The range is just too short.
At my home in the rural Midwest, I can hear between 20 and 40 APRS stations in an hour and hundreds of packets. On Meshtastic and other LoRa systems, it's total radio silence.
But Meshtastic was clearly onto something.
Look, I'm a Millennial - we talk to strangers in far-off lands on the Internet all the time. The digital world has taken away all the "magic" of HF and DX'ing that set the hearts of hams past ablaze.
We also like texting. We expect encryption because everything else we do on the Internet uses encryption. We have grown up in a very uncertain world where war, natural disasters, poor economic conditions, corrupt corporations, and untrustworthy governments can interrupt or usurp our ability to communicate with one another at any given time.
That's why Meshtastic has been such a hit with younger radio enthusiasts. Having a modern UI and a low price tag also doesn't hurt.
Realizing that Meshtastic wouldn't suit my needs, I decided to buckle down and build something more capable. That "something" is Direbox.
Why Direbox?
I built Direbox because I wanted an easy-to-use and modern comms system that I could use to easily and reliably send text messages in a 50-100 mile radius from my house without relying on cellular data or the Internet.
If you want such a system, I built Direbox for you, too.
Why should we limit ourselves to 1 watt of power? Why should we hamstring a mesh protocol by limiting its use to only a small sliver of the sub-GHz frequency spectrum? Why should off-grid comms systems that actually work be limited to nerds like me?
Standard radio transceivers can operate at hundreds of times the power output of an ESP32 chip. They can operate on a large range of frequencies, some of which (like the 2 meter band) have better line-of-sight propagation characteristics for mesh networking. They can be used for both voice and text communications with excellent coverage.
And yes, standard analog VHF/UHF radios can be encrypted. It may not be legal on all bands, but there are many locales and license types where it is legal. It's just that nobody has taken the time to build software that makes it easy to use and affordable... until now.
Direbox was built with no compromises in mind. A beautiful UI that can also run at high power. A mesh with great coverage that can also be encrypted. A powerful system that doesn't require complex configuration files or firmware flashing. A network that works just as well in the countryside as it does in the city.
A system where you can buy a prebuilt unit or build your own with a Raspberry Pi that will work with just about any off-the-shelf radio gear.
Welcome to the future of off-grid messaging.
If you made it to the end of the article and want to learn more, feel free to drop me a line or join me on Discord.