I got #meshtastic nodes working as advertised and it's super freaking cool. Here's a picture of my test setup.

Messages come from phone and go to the wifi access point (in my case, a raspberry pi) to the Meshtastic node. That, in turn shoots it through the medh network using LoRa, and it goes from the recipient Meshtastic node to a computer via serial (USB).

Messages are encrypted across the LoRa link by the Meshtastic nodes. My WiFi has WPA encryption to protect it between the phone and the node that is on WiFi, however I believe the router and anyone connected to that access network can see everything in plain text.

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Looks like the plan is to eventually run Signal over the LoRa meshnet. That would fix the encryption issue.

https://hackaday.com/2020/02/26/lora-mesh-network-with-off-the-shelf-hardware/

Huh, I wonder why Tom Nardi thinks there is a plan to run Signal over LoRa mesh network. 🤔

Normally hackaday authors would back up claims like that with a link to their source, so I suspect it's just conjecture, not a plan of someone who contributes code to either Mashtastic or Signal.

I agree it'd be another way to address the issue, but it would also require a gateway to the internet. It would not solve anything for off-grid communications.

are you running meshtastic on the Pi? I have added a lora hat to my pi and I can run the meshtastic node right on the pi as well as run TC2-BBS on the same pi. I am also running a MQTT server on the pi to route traffic to the internet. That way, you have an all in one meshtastic "router"

What software are you using?

I have a rpi w/lora hat… idk what software I need to use…

Thank you I’ll have to read this stuff but is there no standard iso file

no. you need to have linux installed on your raspberry pi first. I use Debian Bookworm Lite (without a UI, just shell). then install the meshtastic stuff on top of it. Meshtastic has a web interface that will install on the pi, so you can then have a web based UI to configure the lora settings. You can see Bookworm Lite on the Raspberry Pi imager in the "Raspberry Pi OS (Other)" section:

Ugh 😑

It is food practice on your Linux skills 🤣

This is why i have an large amount of electronics just laying around…

I stopped messing with code 10+ years ago lmfao

If you use a Pi Pico, the's very little software work:

- download a firmware image

- plug in the pi while holding down the boot selector button (it'll show up like a thumb drive)

- copy the firmware to the drive

- that's it. You now have the software installed.

Go to client.meshtastic.org and you can configure everything through any Chromium-based browser (over WebSerial). Firefox reportedly doesn't support the standard for WebSerial

Once configured, you should be good to go.

Nope this is a rpi4 w/hat

I’ll figure it out sooner or later….

I’m not even sure I know what a pico is…

I am, but I am using a Pi Pico, and I see you used a Pi 3 (or Pi Zero 2?).

I'll check out your writeup in more detail and try to reproduce your work. I've found the documentation on pi-based nodes to be difficult to find and sparse. Having your notes to tie it all together will be great!