Meshtastic in The Villages.

​Welcome Meshtastic users, both new and experienced!

​This section provides a comprehensive resource for utilizing Meshtastic within The Villages community.​

Meshtastic Etiquette

​Learning and experimenting with Meshtastic is fun!  However, being aggravated by your fellow mesh users is not.  Here are some tips to be a good mesh neighbor.  Please read them over carefully.
  1. Rename your radio's long and short name so you can be identified in case you are unintentionally spamming a shared channel.  Use name, initials, ham call, etc.
  2. Turn on location reporting.  Location is another way to identify a radio's operator.  If your node is a fixed station without GPS, manually enter your fixed Long/Lat/Altitude coordinates and disable Smart Position.
  3. Leave your Device Role set to CLIENT or CLIENT_MUTE.  Other roles are reserved for special functions in the mesh.  Setting your device to another role can interfere with message routing.
  4. Do not turn on MQTT unless you are an isolated node that is out of radio signal range from the rest of the mesh network.  Turning on MQTT repeats all traffic to the network.  Too many MQTT nodes forwarding traffic is a good way to kill the network via flooding.  If you must enable MQTT for another channel, be sure Uplink and Downlink for LongFast are turned OFF.
  5. Range testing transmits an automated repeating beacon that creates spam.  No one else wants to see/hear your transmission every few seconds on the shared channels.  Just temporarily change your  Frequency Slot in LoRa settings to something other than 20 before doing ranges tests.  Be sure to turn off range tests before your switch back when you are done.  See Resources section for how to do range tests.
  6. Keep the Licensed Amateur Radio toggle disabled even if you have a Amateur Radio license.  Enabling will automatically turn off encryption and you will not be able to communicate with others using the default (or any) encryption key.​
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Radio Settings

  • Primary channel is LongFast, PSK is AQ==
  • Secondary channel is TheVillages, PSK is CQ==  (use 1 byte setting for IOS)
  • Frequency Slot (Lora Settings) is 20 (default)
  • For those needing MQTT (again, do not use MQTT unless you cannot communicate via RF!),
    • MQTT server is mqtt.meshtastic.org
    • Username/password are meshdev/large4cats
    • The MQTT Root Topic is msh/US/FL/thevillages  (yes, the topic uses thevillages lower case & the channel is TheVillages mixed case)
To make it easy, you can scan the QR code below using the Meshtastic App.  This will replace your primary and secondary channels to the new settings.  If you have an existing channel that you need to preserve, you will have to enter the new settings manually.  Scanning the QR Code will erase your existing channels. 

​Whether you use the QR Code or not, be sure your Frequency Slot in Lora Settings is set to 20.


Resources
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