MeshLive is an open-source Android app that lets phones make voice and video calls without mobile operators, internet connection or extra hardware. It relies only on the Bluetooth of the phones, which relay signals to each other to form a decentralised mesh network. The project was born from the desire for communication that does not depend on centralised infrastructure, a weakness that many tech enthusiasts see in traditional telecoms.
MeshLive is an app, not a device. According to the project description on GitHub, it sends camera video and microphone audio directly from one phone to another, in encrypted form. Voice calls are available, while two-way video calling remains experimental: the project has tested one-way video broadcasting more extensively, in which one phone transmits and others receive. A receiver can also pass the stream on to another phone, so a broadcast can reach people out of range of the source.
Image: mesh.co.uk — https://www.mesh.co.uk/
User identification works through a unique identifier that can be scanned to create a contact. To other nearby users who are not contacts, a phone appears under a random name that changes every fifteen minutes. According to the reports, this limits how recognisable a user is to people who have not yet exchanged identifiers.
Range is the most obvious limit. Ordinary smartphone Bluetooth is built for short links, and each device can forward the signal to others only within about 20 metres. The network can extend because every phone relays to its neighbours, but coverage depends on how many people nearby run the app. By comparison, LoRa, long the preferred protocol for mesh networks, covers much greater distances but needs dedicated hardware. MeshLive, by contrast, requires only an app, which lowers the barrier to entry.
Image: meshlive.de — https://meshlive.de/products/mslv-longsleeve-yellow
The project sits within a wider family of mesh networks for communication without coverage. Its developer, Gautam, wrote on dev.to that the potential applications go beyond the protests that inspired the project and include disasters, network outages and remote locations where conventional communication is unavailable. Here too, Bluetooth's limited range remains the main obstacle.
For now, MeshLive is an experimental project distributed as open code. No large-scale rollout plans or app-store release dates have been announced. Anyone who wants to try it must install it directly from the project repository.
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