Hopefully this will help to clarify what the various Ripple components are, and which can be combined together into a mesh. I have tried to make everything as interoperable as possible, but there are still some limitations on which components can be used together.
The Basic 'Chat' Network
This could be something ad-hoc, like on a camping trip, or in some area the group is in temporarily;
Here, you can combine Androids (running the Messenger app) paired with 'pager' radios, and/of standalone devices (like the T-Deck or the 'Touch' devices)
More Advanced Chat, With Repeaters
For a known/set area, setting up repeaters in high elevations can establish quite a large coverage area:
With this setup, it also opens up the ability to enable 'Post Office' features, such as message store-and-forward. If recipient is offline or out of range, the nominated Post Office repeater stores the message in a queue, downloaded later when recipient is back online.
You can also enable Group Chats, Shared Calendars and Shared Map Places.
Tactical Team
This is a different setup, where the Android users are running the Ripple Tactical app, and have paired the more specialised Ripple Tactical pager radios. This is for location-centric cases, where having live geo-location of the team is important:
So, these deployments can involved repeaters, Tactical pagers, standalone (eg. T-Decks) devices, and even GPS Tracker radios (with an SOS button). Tactical also has the ability to do broadcast messages to entire team (however, delivery is NOT guaranteed). The usual direct messaging is also supported.
Sensor Network
This usually involves a single admin running the Ripple Commander app, with various sensor and actuator nodes deployed:
These can also have standalone devices (like the T-Deck) which can be granted access (by the Commander app) to monitor the sensors/actuators.