Separately: while it's cool to chat human-style over these networks, lately I've been thinking that the real value add is last-mile automations. Stuff that won't clog the network like remote-starting your car once or twice a day, and is normally built on top of LTE.
Thats what helium and some iot manufacturers tried like Ring. A mesh that only routes out the least utilized egress node.
This is also convenient for backpackers and campers to request help, or get alerts, with their exact location
Meshtastic is actually good though. Helium is just another crypto pyramid scheme that pollutes the airwaves. The things network is a much better alternative from people that actually care about making a great network and not about getting rich fast.
It has some functionality of this type (you can see in the overall map a small number of "sensor" nodes), but it's not super well fleshed out or documented ATM.
What I think you can do for sure today is poll a sensor over the mesh, unlike the meshtastic way where you generally automatically broadcast telemetry.
Separately: while it's cool to chat human-style over these networks, lately I've been thinking that the real value add is last-mile automations. Stuff that won't clog the network like remote-starting your car once or twice a day, and is normally built on top of LTE.