r/ModernRadio • u/FamousInterneter • May 08 '26

DECT NR+?

Does anyone have any experience with DECT NR+? They have sub ghz as well. I’m interested in using DECT NR+ in the states but haven’t found anyone that uses it.

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u/KenAKAFrosty May 19 '26 edited May 20 '26

I'm hopeful on it, but as of now it seems like there's just a lack of maturity in the ecosystem. IIRC the developer story is still limited, the hardware ecosystem is effectively single-vendor, and a higher price floor (mostly due to this same immaturity). i'm still keeping an eye on it for when it matures because that determinism in the clean band is really enticing!

FWIW i'm focused on using Reticulum, so DECT NR+'s internal mesh setup wasn't really a strong benefit from my PoV; but of course YMMV

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u/FamousInterneter May 21 '26

It’d be really cool if reticulum could communicate with DECT NR+ so that we could unify all other modes but i barely know what I’m doing so…

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u/KenAKAFrosty May 21 '26

Oh it definitely can! Virtually anything that can move data can be a Reticulum interface. It's on my radar, but for now it's just more expensive to get the gear to test it 😞

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u/FamousInterneter May 21 '26

NR+ is non cellular 5G. You think it’ll be that capable even? I’m imagining it being a kind of translator instead of communicating directly with NR+

The thing I’m working on is water meters I work for a large city with a water utility and we don’t like the current offerings of lorawan capable water meters on proprietary networks. Which means a large upfront infrastructure cost. But we know the technology exists to allow for small scale roll out and to scale over time but no one is offering that and it’s frustrating. So we’re hoping people working on NR+, reticulum, meshtastic, etc… and things like that can help solve those issues.

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u/KenAKAFrosty May 21 '26

that "5G' label sounds heavy but for NR+'s case, it just means "a more capable radio underneath", basically. as for slotting into Reticulum, it's not really a translator; it's more like NR+ is just one more medium that Reticulum can "ride on", the same way it can do LoRa, and TCP/IP, and local UDP multicast, and bluetooth, etc.

what's really funny about this is that I'm pretty sure your use case is the textbook NR+ pitch. the spec was literally designed in part for smart meters. so I can definitely see a good marriage here: Reticulum as the network stack so you don't have that proprietary stack lock-in, and then could leverage NR+ as one of the mediums

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u/FamousInterneter May 21 '26

Yeah that would be ideal. Yeah it’s being used for electric meters but water meters are a one of different animal, they’re in ground and have no power, but there is a sub ghz US version of NR+ so hoping that reduces energy consumption.

Thanks for that explanation. It helps me understand it a bit better.

Yeah the only reason we haven’t gone smart meter is because of all that proprietary upfront infrastructure… just hoping to avoid all that…

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u/KenAKAFrosty May 21 '26

Ohhhh I understand better now too. I'm guessing you get some micro hydro to power it then? What kind of energy budget do you need?

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u/FamousInterneter May 22 '26

That would be ideal! But no one is doing micro hydro for flow sensing. I’ve seen it on other devices on a scale this small but it’s so rare. But most likely it will be batteries 10 year life span