Meshcore Talk 2026-01-06

Meshcore talk 2026-01-06

• bayareameshcore@gmail.com
• bayareameshcore.org

meshcore!

• similar to meshtastic, meshtastic aimed soly at DMs thats reliable is the usecase
• i.e. NorthBay DM that gets acknowledge, paths are usually working

• hop limit of 64 hops can get a long way, there's smart routing, first time two pepople talk packets flood, then recieving will send ACK and a path to do that connection, don't have to flood everytime. Util is lower for DMs than meshtastic

• Q: protocol different?
  • A: yes, started with meshtastic, frustrated with unreliability, same hardware, has a Heltec V4, Judy says leftyrad.io has a BYORadioAntennaBuild, Last saturday 30th/31st

Mestastic vs Meshcore

• Meshtastic is every node is also repeater, Meshcore is companion to i.e. phone, sends messages to other companions or to repeaters etc etc

• Q: Meshcore app, need to reflash firmware?
  • A: Yep. Process almost identical, still need to use extension/cable connection etc, different codebase/protocol etc, but process is the same.

• There's some....disputes about meshtastic vs meshcore about mac vs pc, etc etc etc etc

• Q: IF you DM someone through flooding, and it finds a route, then you move...how does route change, does it not work?
• A: it will retry established 3 times if no ACK then flood again and thats new route

• Q: Your experience? More reliable for you?
  • A: yeah, until person with antenna went down etc, trying to get more up and available

• public chat is nice bc no hop limit, meshcore has a hop limit of 64, vs meshtastic's like 7(?) - reliable with theres infra but thats hard

• Q: existing bridges btwn MC and MTST like mastodon/Bluesky etc
  • A:nope, its' been mentioned, explained by different use cases, MC good for established network that doesn't move around a lot, vs MTS good for hiking w people "nearby" where you want malleable situations. MTST also has API access for telemetry/tracking w GPS and metadata, so if you want i.e. track where people are with hiking etc, its made for that
  • MC theres functionality for that somewhat but its not built for that, its for reliable "need to send a message" - could volunteer the location etc

• Q: how far would 64 n get me? and comm with people in LA etc? can you setup direct specified nodes? pick "hubs" to be sorta consistent?
  • A: Yep, you can set the path up and it'll be consistent (showing example of map at app.meshcore.nz(?)

• more map showing, looking up to oregon. can choose to upload repeaters/companions/room servers (chatroom-ish?) to internet, and you can be found that way
• LA has a slightly different radio freq (925 Hz?), needs to bridge, but still connects, 925 worked for them better

• Q: origin of project, open source, motivation, devs etc?
  • A: devs are mods of meshcore subreddit, and discord active also, one came from meshtastic and reticulum etc. main app in play store isn't open source but there's some open source apps being built. can do it with linux in cmd line
• FIrmware?
  • Yep thats open source

• Licensing etc?
  • Not that he's aware of, AFAIK it's all free, someone wanted to takeover New Orleans with a paid thing etc

• Meshtastic/Meshcore banning thing - Meshtastic is trademarked, people trying to make money off of that
  • And Wordpress!
  • And Discord!
  • Noooo

• "assume that matrix will get better" "this might be the push"

• Demo of Meshcore
  • showing a chat with someone, person that wants to have reliable comm etc between work/home, happens to also connect the bay

• Showing a DM with Ivan:
  • If he and I never talked, we'd have to exchange keys, bc encrypted. In person with QR code, or you can broadcast your existence to nearby people, or flood the area
  • Now we're able to talk
  • First time it finds a path, shows Path: Direct now, can also show Path: # hops
  • Took a path it already knew when he dm'd the person after trying a couple times
  • lets say it didnt work, lets find another person
  • [person] has best repeater placement ever, trying to send him that
  • has MQTT where public data and metadat uploaded to internet, helpful to see where it went/if it go tout
  • meshcore known to other reprs by frist two of public key i.e. 68, 63 etc

• Q: webapps? dont need to be logged in? hows taht work
  • A: web version of the app thats in the play/app store, apps should be almost identical

other is a website, letsmesh.net - whole world will be selected, so see whole world live, can go up to top and click regions, bay area, this will only be repeaters connected to internet and reported by owners to be at OAK SJC SFO, sort by things, "group text" to see group messages, public messages are public, not encrypted so its visible to internet, but DMs are encrypted - metadata uploaded, but the content is just you/other psron

• Ivan how many hops is that? "someone having fun or just some errors etc"
  • theres' cool maps and tracerotes not going into that

• Q: whats the point of the analyzer?
  • A: when send a message to public, device>companion>whatever - every repeater will only repeat a packet one time. so my companion heard repeat from the one at sudorooms ceiling

• testing repeats, but we're too close to the dish in sudoroom, if i had a device transmit more than RX or otherwise, i wont see the repeat but it could get out, so MQTT server is a good way to see where did it go if no one is responding, so good when building network

• Q: how do they store addresses of hops to know the route? Lora pk can only hold xyz bytes how do they manage to pua full address....
  • A: perfect q for what i was showing, prefix, first 2 chars of public key are the identifier, can do a traceroute by putting in IDs so 65,66

• Q: how handle collision?
  • A: trying to avoid that, learning from seattle, they have a huge mesh, they claim to use it like whatsapp, its pretty close

this is seattle thats just the last week, working on I5 project, want to get all of I5 to be stable slowly - go to meshcore analyzer, look at prefix that hasn't been used, gen a key based on that, when you flash you rnode you can flash it and copy private key, console, connect by cable, supply private key

• Q: How do you store routing table
  • A: No route, stored in the app? you can see it if you click in a packet

• If the route is long does that limit the message?
  • Dont really know that, its a prefix header
  • how.. only have 128 bytes you can send
  • so there's a character limit

• When you flash the node, it gives you a public key, which is available for everyone, the first two digits of that, called the "prefix" to make the path, and along a path those repeaters with those IDs will get the message

• Scalability, cases where network overloaded, do we know behavior of that?
  • A: thats what meshcore trying to solve partially by using direct routing, everything in meshtastic floods usually, so everything repeats everything, vs meshcore frees up other repeaters when an route exists. we also try to discourage things that aren't human-to-human messaging, temps and GPS tracking etc bc its not the use case and it's not as important
• Q: will it scale gracefully has it been tested
  • A: folks in seattle pioneers of freq and coding, they claim its still working great despite all the usage they have. i think meshcore is meant to be DM focused bc its the usecase. there's a lot of community development, theres a discord for the bay area. no modeling bc the space is so big how do you model that, we decide the space etc

• would that be the amigo group, simulation of that, found it got overwhelmed, for any single broadcast, setup cliques that listen and reroute messages, their conclusion was it gets overwhelmed with flooding
• as in no messages getting across or just a spam?
• if everyones talking at once cant discern the actual messages

• we're learning from seattle, prefix utils and collisions, trying to keep overlaps on opposite sides of the bay, we have enough people that are fodcduse don making its a osolution

• are people playing with more advanced, etc double rings, ...or....
  • yeah, even seattle isnt at that point, i think theres people that are looking itno that, but requires breaking changes to firmware
  • "so thatd be meshhardcore or meshhalfcore"

• thanks for doing an adhoc presentation!

• if you want to flash, go to flasher.meshcore.co.uk, select options, very simliar to meshtastic - beware of other havoc causing stuff

• Q: How does europe look?
  • A: crazy