Offline guide
Messaging on the trail with no signal
This is the page where we talk you out of things. Knit is a short-range tool, and the backcountry is where that matters most.
If you are heading somewhere remote and you want a way to call for help, you want a satellite messenger or a personal locator beacon. Not this, and not any other phone-to-phone app. A mesh built on Bluetooth and Wi-Fi covers tens of metres per hop, and rescue is not a tens-of-metres problem.
That leaves a narrower job, which Knit is genuinely good at: keeping a group in touch with each other when they're spread out further than shouting distance and there's no signal to fall back on.
Where it actually helps
A party strung out along a trail is the obvious one. The fast walkers are ten minutes ahead, somebody stopped to deal with a boot, and nobody wants to walk back down to ask a question. If the group is spread across a few hundred metres with people at intervals, each phone relays for the others and the whole line stays connected.
Camp is the other one. A basecamp, a car park meeting point, a large group site — anywhere a cluster of people is milling around out of sight of each other, with no coverage worth using.
It also works on the way there. Coach trips, ferries, remote hostels, anywhere a group is together but the network isn't.
The range problem, stated plainly
One hop is the range of Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. Line of sight across open ground you might get a hundred metres or so; through a stand of trees, around a ridge, or with the phone in a pack, expect a lot less. Terrain is unkind to short-range radio in ways an open field never shows you.
Multi-hop relaying extends the reach of the group as a whole, but only along a chain of people. Two hikers a kilometre apart with nobody in between are two hikers a kilometre apart. There is no clever routing around an empty gap.
If what you need is kilometres per hop, that's a hardware problem, and LoRa radios solve it — everyone carries a dedicated device rather than relying on the phone in their pocket.
Do not rely on this for
- Calling for rescue. Carry a satellite messenger or a PLB, and know how to use it before you need it.
- Reaching anyone outside your group. There is no mesh where there are no people.
- Solo trips. A mesh of one phone is not a mesh.
- Navigation or location sharing. Knit is a messenger; it doesn't do live positions on a map.
- Anything where a message absolutely has to arrive. Short-range radio in real terrain is best-effort, and you should treat it that way.
Common questions
Can I use this instead of a satellite messenger?
No. A satellite messenger works anywhere with a view of the sky and reaches people who aren't there. A phone mesh reaches people standing near you. They solve different problems, and only one of them gets a helicopter sent.
How far apart can we be and still message?
Per hop, tens of metres in real terrain — sometimes a hundred or so with clear line of sight, often much less through trees or around rock. A group strung out along a trail extends that by relaying through the people in between, so the useful figure depends on how your party is spread out rather than on any single number.
Does it drain the battery?
Scanning for nearby phones costs power, so it uses more than an app sitting idle. On a multi-day trip treat it like any other radio: bring a battery pack, and switch the cellular radio off if there's no coverage to find, which usually saves more than the mesh costs.
Does it work with no SIM in the phone?
Yes. Knit needs no SIM, no account and no internet connection — an old handset with no service at all works fine as a mesh node, which makes a spare phone a reasonable thing to hand to someone in the group.
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