Writing

When I bought my first mesh radio, I honestly thought I would turn it on and start talking immediately. That is not what happened. I ran into settings, radio frequencies, and terminology I had never needed before. The app did not work very well either. The whole experience was sobering. If I was struggling, I could not imagine a busy parent having any luck at all.

That parent is the avatar I keep in my head. I picture a mom who drops something the size of an AirTag into her purse, opens an app on her phone, and gets help when she needs it. Flat tire, kids in the car, middle of the desert, no cellular reception. I want that to work without her needing a crash course in LoRa presets first.

I also think about the backpacking photographer who knows his trade and his camera gear cold, but not mesh networking. I want him to reach the farthest corners of Nevada, stay in touch with his group, or call for help without needing the equivalent of a ham operator's license to do it.

EnvyOS is what I am building toward: a comprehensive distribution with firmware, a bootloader, and client apps that fit together from the first launch. I am sharing it now because the pieces are starting to line up, not because the whole vision is finished.

The local and regional Meshtastic community in Nevada has grown enough that we are moving our Meshtastic repeaters to Medium Fast (MEDIUM_FAST). That is the preset we now recommend for anyone joining the MeshEnvy Meshtastic layer. If you run Meshtastic in Reno, Carson, or anywhere you can reach our community repeaters, this is the setting to match.

MeshEnvy is announcing a partnership with Burning Mesh, the community that has spent years bringing off-grid mesh communications to Black Rock City. They built the playa network that keeps camps, art cars, and adventurers connected when cell service disappears. We just closed the loop back to Reno. That is the hello Reno milestone we set our sights on for the 2026 burn, and Burning Mesh is the partner that makes the playa side of it real.

MeshEnvy is announcing a partnership with the Black Rock Amateur Radio Association (BRARA) in cooperation with the Black Rock Rangers and Ranger Outpost Gerlach (ROG). Together they gave us the final link we needed to carry messages from the playa back to Reno. That is the corridor we have been chasing since our first goal post, and I did not expect to close it on a day I thought was just an information-gathering trip.

MeshEnvy is announcing a partnership with High Sierra Communications, a Northern Nevada microwave relay operator Dave Metts founded in 1982. We are starting on their flagship site at Peavine Peak, where Dave's compound sits at the highest point on the mountain with the best line of sight in every direction.

Sierra Electronics has been keeping Northern Nevada connected since 1964. The company was built on public safety and mission-critical radio: hospitals, first responders, schools, and the wide-area systems that let people reach each other when it counts. That community focus is not marketing copy on their website. It is how Jarry Walton and his team have operated for more than sixty years.

When a tower owner with that history offers space on Peavine Peak for a nonprofit mesh repeater, it matters. Sierra Electronics is not just leasing us rack space. They are dedicating real infrastructure, at one of the best vantage points in the Truckee Meadows, to something that serves the public good.

I recently spent some time up on Brock Mountain here in Tonopah, Nevada, for the annual Brock Mountain Users Group Summit. There were about 20 of us in attendance, representing the Department of Energy, the Nevada Department of Transportation, the FAA, and several private infrastructure companies. It was my first time in a room quite like that, and it was incredibly educational.

We just received a very official letter from the Nevada Department of Taxation, and it is a big deal for the physical expansion of our network.

Under Nevada Revised Statute 372.3261 and Nevada Administrative Code 372.700, MeshEnvy NCC has been officially granted sales and use tax exempt status as a charitable organization. This exemption is valid through June 3, 2031, and it changes the math for our deployments in a major way.

At MeshEnvy, we believe that the vast distances of Nevada should not be a barrier to communication. Today, we are announcing our most ambitious project yet. We call it the Silver Triangle. This is a strategic mission to invite and inspire Nevadans from every corner of the state to help us assemble three critical backbones of mesh radio connectivity—an independent layer that complements cellular and tower infrastructure and adds redundancy for public safety.

In a state like Nevada, connectivity is defined by the land. Approximately 85% of our state consists of public lands, the majority of which are managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). To achieve our goal of a truly connected Nevada, working alongside the stewards of this land is not just logical; it is essential.

We are thrilled to announce that we are working with the BLM Carson Field Office.