In some respects, that is more like it (using 802.11s with an existing 802.11whatever wireless protocol).
Standardised
Much faster than LoRa
With point-to-point (pairs of antennae) can get good range where you need it e.g. to span gaps in the mesh.
The key difference would seem to be that 802.11s assumes mostly fixed nodes and probably assumes a decent amount of power available.
Wouldn’t it be nice if the whole lot were interoperable, so that a LoRa relay node could alternatively bridge onto a WiFi mesh, and in turn that maybe tunnels over the internet at some point, and later on the traffic would pop back out onto a LoRa relay node?
The Meshtastic people have something similar up and running.
There is an existing Python API for sending and receiving messages.
So if you had a compatible device it shouldn’t be too hard to write a Chatty plugin that can send/receive messages over LoRa.
It would be even easier to just use the web interface with the Librem5 to start with.
Then as long as you have a Meshtastic device you can communicate directly over LoRa (ideally with Chatty).
There is also already work on supporting devices directly, see portduino and the PineTab issue. So in the future if the right hardware was available you could swap the WiFi or modem for a LoRa board.
