Rostec has developed an "independent data transmission network for drones"

Image from the Rostec website

Why familiar? Because it’s a regular Meshtastic terminal! Yes, yes, their “innovative” device includes T-Beam And frameprinted on a 3D printer (even the Meshtastic logo was not erased), and in the image in the press release, I saw a surprisingly familiar interface – the Meshtastic interface.

It is worth noting here that Rostec simply took a board from Aliexpress, and did not try to master the development of the board from scratch, or at least its own case, as in the news about the router!
Fan fact: My colleague and I developed a unique board in the format NGFF for Meshtastic, which even Rostec could not implement, preferring to simply purchase a Chinese board and pass it off as their own development. It turns out that “Army of Two” from two enthusiasts can give birth to a product that the whole “Rostec” could not master.

Pinout T-Beam v1.1 (on the diagram without a display, but it is included)

All the magic of this “innovative” terminal lies in the firmware, which Rostec, of course, also did not develop. And, although it can be difficult and costly to fight back Rostec in court, I believe that it is necessary to pay attention to this. In the end, this can help increase the visibility of the Meshtastic project in Russia, as well as draw attention to the importance of complying with licenses.

A very important fact is that the Meshtastic firmware is distributed under the GPL license. This means that everyone who uses our code is obliged to indicate the authors and not to appropriate someone else’s work, as Denis Popov did, for example, which we remember well. It seems that Rostec decided to ignore these rules, which violates the terms of the license.