Our city’s Christmas parade always feels like controlled chaos—and this year was no exception. A tremendous amount of work goes into both the planning and the execution, but events like this are a fantastic real-world demonstration of just how much can be accomplished over RF.
Overall, it was a big success, though we definitely came away with a few lessons learned. And honestly, if you aren’t learning something during an event like this, you’re probably not paying close enough attention. There’s always room for improvement 🙂 Rather than diving into every detail here, a few highlights are worth sharing:
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Our digital data transfer system worked almost flawlessly—again.
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Everything ran completely without internet access.
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All systems were powered by emergency power.
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Meshtastic didn’t perform quite as well as I’d hoped.
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APRS continues to shine for events like this.
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Always have a backup plan… for your backup plan.
If you’re interested, you can read the full after-action report. It’s a living document, so a few tweaks may still happen as additional thoughts come up, but it’s about 97% complete.
