RoveMesh: The group chat that works when nothing else does

Hi Product Hunt 👋 RoveMesh started with a frustration on a hiking trip: our group split across two trails, every phone said "No Service," and the plan became guessing where everyone was and hoping. I went looking for off-grid mesh radios and found a great hobbyist ecosystem — but nearly everything either needed a phone paired to it just to type a message, or expected you to build and administer your own private network. I wanted neither. I wanted something my family could pick up and use, on a network that simply gets denser as more people carry one. So RoveMesh is: 🔹 A standalone handheld — physical keyboard, e-paper screen, GPS. No phone in the loop. 🔹 One shared network, not private islands — every Rove relays for every other Rove, encrypted end to end, so a relay carries words it can't read. 🔹 Managed towers that plug into an ordinary router and extend the mesh for everyone nearby — nothing to administer. 🔹 Designed for weeks of battery, not days. Text-only over LoRa is what buys that. Honest status: [prototype stage — mesh core validated on the bench, production radios in hand]. I publish what my tests actually show, including the failures, and I don't quote range numbers I haven't measured. Rove is text and location only: it is not an SOS device and doesn't replace a satellite beacon. Built in Québec, in public, bilingual from day one. One thing I'd genuinely like to hear: if you've been off-grid with a group — hiking, sailing, a festival crew, a blackout — what actually broke down about staying in touch? That's the part I most want to get right.