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--- nyan:message_formats [2023/11/15 11:38] – created river
+++ nyan:message_formats [2023/11/26 11:15] (current) – river
@@ Line 2: / Line 2: @@
 Some systems for serialising data that may be useful for sending messages over LoRa.
+  * Custom format. Most efficient on space but least flexible and most work to reimplement.
+  * Protobufs - used by Meshtastic.
+  * BSON - Binary JSON. "BSON can be compared to binary interchange formats, like Protocol Buffers. BSON is more "schema-less" than Protocol Buffers, which can give it an advantage in flexibility but also a slight disadvantage in space efficiency (BSON has overhead for field names within the serialized data)."
+  * FlatBuffers - https://flatbuffers.dev/
+  * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cap%27n_Proto
+  * https://msgpack.org/index.html - used by LXMF / Reticulum
+  * Direct use of NMEA2000 PGNs?
+  * NMEA0183 strings?
+  * BSON SignalK? Probably way too verbose I guess.
-Protobufs - used by Meshtastic.
+===== Worklog / Deliberations =====
-BSON - Binary JSON.
+==== 26 Nov 2023, River ====
-"BSON can be compared to binary interchange formats, like Protocol Buffers. BSON is more "schema-less" than Protocol Buffers, which can give it an advantage in flexibility but also a slight disadvantage in space efficiency (BSON has overhead for field names within the serialized data)."
-FlatBuffers - https://flatbuffers.dev/
-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cap%27n_Proto
-https://msgpack.org/index.html - used by LXMF / Reticulum
+I was tempted to go for a custom protocol because of very limited space, but after talking to someone about it last night I think I have been convinced protobufs or similar is the way to go. He said he worked with protobufs, as used by meshtastic, and with Reticulum, which uses a semi-custom protocol, and found meshtastic more pleasant to work with. Also, he is reïmplementing Reticulum in Rust, and such things are much easier where a protobuf library is already available. Also, it maybe possible to define the messages with protobufs, and still use that definition to serialise to a custom protocol.
+Protobufs could also maintain compatibility with Meshtastic which could be useful if meshtastic becomes popular enough that nodes maybe encountered that can relay messages for us.