I built several nodes. I think it's most useful as an asset tracking tool, but the battery life isn't great. Like, I have a couple premade credit card sized nodes. It's pretty neat to ping them and get their gps. But, to be honest, your money for that application would probably be better spent on an iPhone and apples tags.

For communication: there are dubiously legal, cheap radios you can get off Amazon that would probably be 100% more useful.

I did enjoy it, though, and I still have some nodes. Also, it's illegal to send encrypted messages over mestastic.

Edit some mestastic nodes double as a low power gps with a screen. These may be useful on their own.