Hey everyone, I hope this is ok to post here! I’ve been putting off getting into meshtastic for a while now but the time has come to play around with it. I have done some research but I always like to talk to real people if possible for real world advice and experience, not just youtube salesman and AI top ten lists. I have minimal experience with radio, but some.

As to meshtastic the research I’ve done has pointed me to a few LoRa boards, the heltec t114 v2, and the Lilygo t-beam, and also the Lilygo T-deck plus.

I really would love to have a phoneless standalone set up, but have seen some stuff about the T-deck lacking good firmware and so it isn’t “ready,” but then I’ve seen some people say to the contrary that some good firmware exists now. Are there other better phoneless devices for meshtastic? Is the t-deck good enough now that I could pick that up now and add some t114s later to expand the network? Or should I go with a couple t114s, and wait til phoneless matures a little?

As for the phone using set ups, are there other boards I should look at instead of the t114 and the t-beam? I do require either it to come with a case or have available .stl files to print one, I suck at CAD.

My final questions are to the antennas, is there an antenna manufacturer that is commonly recommended for meshtastics (915 khz), and am I looking for SMA female or SMA male connectors on the antenna, or does that depend on the board in question? I tried searching the product page for the heltec board and SMA isn’t mentioned anywhere according to ctrl+f. I see some kits with an antenna on amazon, but they don’t mention either and I’m sure I’ll want to upgrade the dinky rubber ducky it comes with.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, double thanks if you responded, triple thanks if you have answers or any helpful links! I’m excited to be getting into the hobby here soon, and glad there’s already a lemmy comm for it!