Meshtastic

• Plan
• Moving the AQ== channel out of channel ID 0
• Time zone
• Flaky UI
• 8-bit channel keys
• MQTT
• GPS
• CLI
• Our nodes
• Trouble
• AI questions

Default config.yaml.

Plan

• Enhance mt-dump so that it publishes to collectd

  • collectd doesn't seem to have a simple method of submitting reports remotely, but instead, we could run collectd locally, configure it to upload to a central collectd instance, and then use the unixsock plugin to submit locally.

• Have SVG charts built from collectd RRDs. Better than pixel charts from Graphite. Publish CSV to site then serve static HTML

• Or get Node-RED to decode via MQTT?

Moving the AQ== channel out of channel ID 0

The channel name MUST be LongFast otherwise you'll only see nodes where node info came from other channels where the channel name did match across nodes.

Time zone

Use NZST-12NZDT,M9.5.0,M4.1.0/3 instead of Pacific/Auckland.

Full list.

Flaky UI

Some tips for dealing with it:

• Connect via serial.

• When making changes via serial, the app neglects to reboot the node after changes that do cause a reboot when changed via bluetooth / network.

• Sometimes even a reboot is not enough, yet pulling the power seems to work.

• Definitely do not leave multiple apps connected to the node simultaneously as this make the UI even flakier.

• It might be cargo-cult configuration, but disabling the WiFi might make configuration via serial more reliable (and button presses on the device more responsive?)

• When the app thinks it's connected, but it's really not (green cloud, but opening a radio config menu stuck at 0%), connect to a bluetooth node, then disconnect, then reconnect to serial.

• Android Settings, Meshtastic, Force Quit.

• Check to see if it has reset the Slot to 37.

• Old messages in a channel may be left behind from when the channel was configured differently. This can cause alarm when a channel was previously configured as public AQ== and was later reconfigured as private with a key.

8-bit channel keys

Encode:

echo -en "\001" | base64

Decode:

echo Qg== | base64 -d | hd

MQTT

Meshtastic (in August 2025) seems to have trouble with TLS for MQTT. I can't see the value in using credentials for MQTT without TLS yet Meshtastic seems to require the use of credentials even though TLS seems broken (Definitely on portduino due to WiFiClientSecure). Instead, configure a local MQTT instance that does not require TLS (over the relatively trusted LAN) that bridges messages to and from a central broker connected using TLS:

The mosquitto instance in the data centre doesn't need any special configuration, but the satellites do:

connection       msh
address          mqtt.alie.nz:8883
bridge_cafile    /etc/mosquitto/ca_certificates/ca.crt
remote_username  $username
remote_password  $password
topic            msh/#  both  0

ca.crt:

-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
MIID7zCCAtegAwIBAgIUF45KYAvSOskdYKm6C3RcQAjVF2EwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEL
BQAwgYUxCzAJBgNVBAYTAk5aMRMwEQYDVQQIDApDYW50ZXJidXJ5MRUwEwYDVQQH
DAxDaHJpc3RjaHVyY2gxGTAXBgNVBAoMEEdheWh1cnN0IE1hc3NpdmUxETAPBgNV
BAsMCFNlY3VyaXR5MRwwGgYDVQQDDBNNb3NxdWl0dG8gQ0Egb24gYmxkMCAXDTI1
MDcyNjA1NDkzOVoYDzIxMjUwNzAyMDU0OTM5WjCBhTELMAkGA1UEBhMCTloxEzAR
BgNVBAgMCkNhbnRlcmJ1cnkxFTATBgNVBAcMDENocmlzdGNodXJjaDEZMBcGA1UE
CgwQR2F5aHVyc3QgTWFzc2l2ZTERMA8GA1UECwwIU2VjdXJpdHkxHDAaBgNVBAMM
E01vc3F1aXR0byBDQSBvbiBibGQwggEiMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4IBDwAwggEK
AoIBAQC/T/7VCIVb7onNAnltGRVKLU7VKpX3xj5nJlPoWLKU3evUVXTxhf1VPIro
6+33nLqn+e65MBqoCubgeZlIjGjImXCKym6W/8IDFnEfaEOcIV1vA37sNgDAz5An
f4jrvSTLF4fvgTxpk/l+MSUpxM92jfht4MFhkWiNmqPR3PueKm3ii1u6AV/ORAXI
VeI63A/3PjIR0VkDWuLQBxo6TUgPwIUFZvA6kaOhBl9I2XXIZAM0KxDGfYtp5XrI
Mc3PzUZWKHnYQN4qOF7Qu28+k3IsSHk7gxU0tZTKgGaVmpHSepF4Zff/q9TqIbex
iqaIB2CcpTNvxohbSLtmlX3Ff5vvAgMBAAGjUzBRMB0GA1UdDgQWBBQvilrHe0+1
huhmlsCJTW8J0PPWtDAfBgNVHSMEGDAWgBQvilrHe0+1huhmlsCJTW8J0PPWtDAP
BgNVHRMBAf8EBTADAQH/MA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBCwUAA4IBAQCl8LqFvNaayTBz4Dr4
puUPLtt8quAxftfREvFrDvSUYgCAIb7P9IJyYC45agUZrhjfRI6SMHD1I7JKDktr
NNBy4E/CoUpPXSKKa0/Y7dpKxxo+8yDvt691pNFntJc1tYBomgiV/H6lVvzRYb+I
oKsH+q731Q/afseorPy0/MCnElW6cgHZfzU0yVa4NVosUFB29T0Rd/R/tbAw2we8
DnWNilkFycWF193WnRra03RcVPd/rvjSGgxQp49kiaoCC0HD3jPgFIeEvcQSY3D/
yQoso7jEyyE4KURf9+R5r4zAdVelLd/+LR5bGESlrBC6QFEXEVbHrUCOjwo9+wmB
zjHJ
-----END CERTIFICATE-----

To dump all messages (for debugging):

mosquitto_sub -h mqtt.alie.nz --cafile /etc/mosquitto/ca_certificates/ca.crt -u $username --pw $password -t 'msh/#' -F '   %I   %t   %X'

GPS

On Portduino, the GPS UI is ignored completely and only the [GPS] section of config.yaml is important. See A, and B.

GPS.cpp:478:

static const int serialSpeeds[3] = {9600, 115200, 38400};
static const int rareSerialSpeeds[3] = {4800, 57600, GPS_BAUDRATE};

My ublox GPS is 19200 baud and doesn't seem to accept the command to request 9600 or 38400. Need VSCode to compile.

Could I create a FIFO (and hope that Meshtastic is OK with that) and a small program to read the NMEA sentences at 19200 and relay them at a supported baud rate?

CLI

python3  -m venv  /root/venv
/root/venv/bin/pip  install  meshtastic
/root/venv/bin/meshtastic --host --help | less
/root/venv/bin/meshtastic --host --dest 0x0x60f74ef0 --request-telemetry

Our nodes

Linwood

• Rynn: Pi 3 with patch board and SX1276
• Kaya: Pi 3 with SX1262 via loom
• Walk: 7747 "Walkie" WisMesh Board ONE Pocket, WisBlock 4631
• WisMesh repeater with solar panel
• LG01 LoRa gateway (with SX1276) (Not usable with Meshtastic). Could this be used to dump raw LoRa packets on the Meshtastic medium? Doing that with MQTT now.

Four-letter girls' names

Enya Kali Kaya Leah Maya Nina Rain Rynn Star Skye

(Culled from a list of 2,380).

Dallington

• FRED, Heltec V3, AdminPub:xG/HJY+avJaqmSena99d6a5cKyfQSuOmzbEfb+0o63o=
• DINO
• BAMM (Bamm Bamm), hardware became BRNY (Barney R) now in Loburn
• BAMM (Bamm Bamm) is at Marc's
• MSla: 6110 "Mr. Slate" Heltec V3
• WisMesh Board ONE (Bare board)
• Pi with SX1262 via loom
• Another Arduino SX1276 module

Trouble

Aug 24 18:05:40 kaya meshtasticd[142254]: INFO  | 18:04:33 122 [Router] Received routing from=0xda5ad5ec, id=meshtasticd: src/mesh/SX126xInterface.cpp:242: void SX126xInterface<T>::setStandby() [with T = SX1262]: Assertion `err == RADIOLIB_ERR_NONE' failed.

..which causes Meshtastic to quit, followed by:

Aug 24 18:05:53 kaya meshtasticd[142379]: INFO  | 18:05:53 10 SX126x init result -2
Aug 24 18:05:53 kaya meshtasticd[142379]: WARN  | 18:05:53 10 No sx1262 radio

AI questions

DeepWiki protobufs.