Long-range mesh radio kit project for the French market — explored in April 2026, archived after 84 files, 3 successive theses, and 0 customer interviews.
This repository is kept public as honest documentation: what was built, why it was stopped, and what survives. If you recognise yourself in the pattern « many projects, few customers », the POST-MORTEM is for you.
⚠ Disclaimer — domaine
maillon.fr: le domainemaillon.frappartient à un tiers indépendant (site WordPress actif depuis 2004, hébergé chez OVH) et n'a aucun lien avec ce projet. Toute référence interne au sitemaillon.frqui aurait pu subsister dans les premiers commits est obsolète : la canonical du projet archivé est désormaishttps://github.com/aissablk1/maillon. Si vous cherchiez lemaillon.frhistorique ou une marque française nommée MAILLON, vous n'êtes pas au bon endroit — ce repo documente uniquement une exploration personnelle d'avril 2026 autour de Meshtastic.
- POST-MORTEM.md — the five mistakes I made and the decision to stop. Start here.
- docs/00-research-tech.md — sourced state of the art of long-range mesh in 2026 (Meshtastic, Reticulum, MeshCore, regulation, hardware). Also published as a community Gist (English).
- docs/09-legal-compliance.md — ETSI / ARCEP / GDPR / CE framework for any hardware startup in the EU.
The remaining business documents (docs/01 to docs/16) are kept as historical context. Per the post-mortem, none of the figures, projections, or pricing were validated against a single real customer. Treat them as artefacts of an exploration, not as advice.
| Asset | Where | License |
|---|---|---|
| Meshtastic factory preconfig (with GDPR-friendly two-registry design, AES-256 PSK encryption) | github.com/aissablk1/maillon-preconfig | MIT |
| State-of-the-art article (English, community-targeted) | Gist | CC BY 4.0 spirit |
| Cross-platform app skeletons (Swift universal, Kotlin Compose, Tauri 2) | apps/ in this repo |
Unfinished — needs a mobile dev to ship |
| Multi-tenant SaaS scaffold (Next.js 15 + Better-Auth + Prisma + EMQX bridge) | web/ in this repo |
Unfinished — would take 6-8 weeks solo to productise |
3 kits (Discovery 99 €, Pro 399 €, Rescue 1199 €) + a SaaS Fleet Manager at 9 €/node/month. Rejected because no segment (rescue NGOs, BTP, festivals, outdoor) would buy it as a must-have. Apple Find My Satellite, Starlink direct-to-cell, and goTenna's military pivot were already squeezing the civilian niche.
Cloudflare-of-the-mesh model: 50 → 2,000 permanent relay stations on European municipal rooftops and tower infrastructure (TDF/Cellnex), monetised via SaaS, compliance, insurance label, and aggregated data. Rejected for me because it requires a sales co-founder, EU venture capital, and 12-18 months of partnership negotiation. I am solo. The thesis itself may be valid for a team that has these resources.
Extract the web/ scaffold as meshtastic.cloud: Free 5 nodes / Pro $9/month for 50 nodes, English-speaking 40,000-node community, self-service Stripe, 6-8 weeks of solo coding. Realistic ceiling: 30-50 k€ ARR at 24 months. Not rejected, but parked — per post-mortem rule #1 (« validate before producing »), this should not be coded until at least five paying signals exist.
MAILLON/
├── POST-MORTEM.md # ★ Start here
├── README.md # this file
├── docs/ # 16 strategic documents (historical, unvalidated)
│ ├── 00-research-tech.md # ★ Sourced state of the art
│ ├── 09-legal-compliance.md # ★ EU regulatory framework
│ └── 01..16-*.md # business plan artefacts
├── scripts/
│ ├── preconfig.py # Released MIT separately
│ └── README.md
├── apps/
│ ├── ios-macos/ # Swift universal skeleton
│ ├── android/ # Kotlin Compose skeleton
│ ├── desktop/ # Tauri 2 skeleton
│ └── common/contracts/ # JSON Schemas shared across platforms
├── web/ # Next.js 15 SaaS scaffold (incomplete)
└── kits/ # Sales sheets (historical)
_backup/ (local development backups) and _release/ (standalone packaged releases) are gitignored.
Documentation under CC BY 4.0 — share, adapt, with attribution. Code in this repository under MIT (where a LICENSE file exists at the relevant path).
Aïssa Belkoussa — Paris, April 2026 github.com/aissablk1