Help Liberty Hill stay connected when the towers go down.
Liberty Hill Mesh is a free, non-commercial text network built from small solar-powered radios on rooftops, poles, and hilltops. When an ice storm or a flood takes the towers out, it keeps carrying messages between neighbors. No company runs it and no agency operates it. Everybody owns it.
How far one node reaches depends on where it sits. A valley floor covers the neighborhood. A ridgetop covers the county.
What it is
A mesh is a network with no center. Each radio hears its neighbors and passes messages along, so a text from one side of town hops radio to radio until it lands.
- Free and non-commercial
- There is no company behind Liberty Hill Mesh, no account to create, and nothing to subscribe to. Using the network is free. The one cost is your own radio, from about $35 for a pocket companion to $400 or more for a solar repeater build, and the software and the airwaves are free.
- Hosted by neighbors
- Every node is hosted by a neighbor, a business, a church, or a ranch. Together those nodes are the network. No single person controls it, and no single failure takes it down.
- Built for the bad days, used on the good ones
- Mesh nodes run on sunlight, so they keep passing messages after the towers go dark. The rest of the year it is how you text a friend across town with no phone plan, or from a ranch with no bars. Everyday use is what keeps it healthy, and what makes sure it works on the day you need it.
When the towers go down
Cell service is usually the first thing to fail in an ice storm, a flood, or a long power outage, and for most people 911 goes with it. The mesh runs on sunlight and keeps going.
What travels on it is the traffic neighbors actually need, the kind official channels are not for and have no room for: whether the low water crossing is under, whether your road is passable, whether the family at the end of it has water. Weather warnings and San Gabriel river alerts arrive on their own, as text, with no internet in between.
The catch is that a radio has to be set up before the storm, not during it. That is the entire reason to do it on an ordinary Tuesday.
How it works
Nodes on high ground
Small solar-powered repeaters sit on barn roofs, light poles, chimneys, and hilltops. Each one relays what it hears to the next. These are the nodes we ask property owners to host.
A radio in your pocket
You carry a small long-range radio, called a LoRa radio, about the size of a key fob or a deck of cards. It pairs to your phone over Bluetooth, the same way headphones do.
The MeshCore app
You type a message in the free MeshCore app. Your radio sends it to the nearest node, and the mesh carries it the rest of the way, hop by hop, to the person or channel you picked. Liberty Hill talk happens on #lhtx.
Ways to help
- Host a node
Got a roof, a pole, a barn, or a parking lot light pole with a view? A node from us costs you nothing and we look after it, or run one of your own with a hand from the group. No power and no wiring from you either way.
- Get on the mesh
Every radio on the mesh makes it stronger and more useful. A pocket radio starts around $35. A solar repeater build runs $35 to $400 or more depending on the parts.
- Join the Facebook group
Support, radio talk, and news about new nodes. It is the easiest place to reach us, and the best place to tell your HOA, your church, or the business owner down the road about the mesh. Not on Facebook? Email hello@lhtx.org.
One mesh, many communities
Liberty Hill Mesh is one part of a single, much larger mesh. Volunteers from Killeen to San Antonio put up nodes and carry radios on the same open MeshCore network, and a message can already travel that whole distance with no cell service in between. Every community that adds nodes improves coverage for everyone. There is no membership. If you have a radio, you are part of it.
Groups like Austin Mesh do the same work in their own towns. They are independent of us, and we are independent of them. What connects us is a shared protocol and a shared radio preset, not an organization.
Closer to home, we are talking with the City of Liberty Hill about adding coverage across the city limits and the surrounding area, at no cost to taxpayers.