MeshCore

MeshCore

As we gather more tips, we'll reformat this page to be more cogent.

Documentation

• Official MeshCore site

• A good overview of room servers and MeshCore in general.

• The Deep MeshCore Wiki

• Observer Nodes feed the analysis sites

Community

• Bay Area Discord Server has a lot of good dialog and help

Live Analysis

• Analyzer 00id Map of Nodes and other things.

• Analyzer LetsMesh Another map of nodes and other things

• Baus Meshmapper San Francisco Bay Area

Misc Info

Hardware

For a G2, transmit power of 10 = 1 watt

Repeaters

You used to worry about using the same key prefix of someone near you. You would admin via your companion to set an unused prefix. Prefix Utilization grid.

As of 1.14 multi-byte path support makes this unnecessary. Instead, use any two digit prefix you want to generate your repeater's keys. Connect to your repeater and set path.hash.mode 1

However, until all the repeaters and companions are on 1.14+ the old ones will still degrade to a single byte path. So, while the transition happens you would be a nice person to try and pick a less used prefix.

Once your repeaters are up on multi-byte then you can move your companion to multibyte. If your message hits a repeater that is not up on 1.14 then that repeater will not forward your message.

set advert.interval 240

set prv.key <key>

set owner.info <info>

Paths both ways get cached and if a route is bad you might get a message to the destination but the ack may not get back. If you have a repeater you own in the path force a flood by hard pressing the logon button. The path back might still be wrong so go to the console and send “reboot” 3 times … you don’t need a confirmation just spam it 3 times

Companion

Hold down on a message and find the "heard repeats" button, it will give you more info what repeaters it hit

Seems a lot of folks turn off auto-add contacts and just add devices out of the discovery tab manually. Some leave on auto add Repeaters so that they will show up in the application map.

Are you connecting to the mesh?

Receiving: Tools > Rx Log will show messages coming to you.

Transmitting: To see if you make it to the mesh, add the #test channel. Post a message and look for the number of repeaters. Also try posting !path and look for a pathbot to reply.

Traceroute

Only works to repeaters.

Tools > Trace Path - Using Map Select repeaters by tapping on them. Your companion has to hear from the last one in the path so you might tap on the same nodes to make the path go out and back.

Remotely connect to a repeater: Tap the repeater in your contacts list. Long press the connect button and select Flood.

Staleness

Staleness is based on last heard — the most recent time any traffic was seen from that node (not just adverts).

Thresholds:

Role	Goes "stale" after
Repeater	72 hours
Room Server	72 hours
Companion	24 hours
Sensor	24 hours

Visual cues:

• Nodes list: green dot → white dot, label changes from "Active" to "Stale"
• Static map: full color → grayed out (70% opacity + grayscale)
• Live map: full color → heavily dimmed (opacity 0.25)

Repeaters advertise every 12-24h, so 72h allows several missed cycles before flagging. Companions/sensors get 24h since they go quiet more often by design.

Unexplained Things

• All contacts not in contacts list.

With a Heltec V4 on 1.14.0 and iOS app. I see 146 contacts in my Contacts list. When I go to Discover Contacts I see 270 contacts; the ones not in my contact list have an "add" button. In Settings > Contacts I have set to Add All and Overwrite Oldest. Why aren't all the contacts in my Contacts list?

Open Questions

• Ping Warning

You know 2 repeaters or room servers with prefix <61>. Unfortunately we won't know which of them replies to this ping request. Dismiss/Confirm.

What exactly does this mean to me as a Companion node?