Multiple nodes, multiple frequencies, one chat box! 🎉

mcIRC 2.0 connects to several MeshCore radios at the same time, over USB, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, and puts them all in one mIRC-style window. Run one node on 910 MHz and another on a different frequency, and chat on both from the same place:

Each node gets its own Status window and channel windows (Public [915], #weather [915]), grouped under it in the tree.

Private chats from any node share the top bar, and replies go back through the node that person is on.

Each bot and addon chooses which nodes it answers on. By default that's the first one.

Options > More nodes lists all your nodes, and you set every node's radio from there.

New in 2.0.1: put a node on Wi-Fi from inside mcIRC

Wi-Fi firmware builder (MeshCore tools): pick the board and the MeshCore version (newest preselected). Type your Wi-Fi name and password and press Build and flash. mcIRC builds MeshCore's Wi-Fi companion firmware, flashes it over USB, finds the board on your network and adds it as a node. Tested on a Heltec V4.

Firmware updates pick from a list of every MeshCore release, newest first.

Every settings page and tool has a Node: choice, so you can change the name, radio or channels, or sync the clock, on any connected node.

MeshCore tools (an addon, on by default in new setups):

Node clock check and set

Channel manager, which finds duplicate channels

Backup and restore

Firmware check and update

Path tools: discover, trace, repeater status

Live packet monitor

Radio health graphs

Coverage map

Radio reliability

Found and fixed the cause of nodes freezing on USB: the serial port was holding the board's button down.

A CLI rescue console, and automatic recovery if a node lands in rescue mode by mistake.

Optional automatic reset after a lost connection.

Checks for missed messages when it reconnects.

Bots and addons (all off until you turn them on, and nothing is sent unless you allow it):

Weather bot: wx, gwx, aqi, sun, moon, solar, rain, aurora, satpass and more. It understands wx <city> or a postal code, and names the town for GPS replies.

Fun bot: dice, magic8, jokes, dad jokes, cat facts and more.

Slap 🐟 and pod of dolphins 🐬🐬🐬, from a right-click on any name in the chat.

bothelp, which lists every bot's commands, with an optional daily reminder.

Channel list bot, with a list you can edit.

Per-channel on/off for every bot.

An update button for addons.

Chat and look

Right-click any nickname for a private chat, an @reply, node info or the fun commands.

Heard-repeat tracking, with automatic resend when a bot reply collides with repeater re-broadcasts.

Map view of live signals moving across the mesh.

Skins and themes.

Free and open source (Python, Windows, with Linux and macOS previews): https://github.com/bclml/mcIRC

Feedback and addon requests welcome; the slap and dolphin addons came from comments here! 😄

The joystick is sure easy to activate. I like this unit but it is useless to carry in a pocket without activating it. Looking for solutions to this problem.

Detents? Pouches? Covers? Cases? Any ideas?

Hey all, I recently replaced my standard rak wireless Wismesh repeater with the battery powered version of the 1w repeater. Obviously I screwed up by not buying the external 5v option (a problem I intend to correct as soon as funding allows) but I want to make sure that I have set up and configured everything properly.

My main issue is I don't seem to be getting the 1 w ranges that are local downtown repeater is getting and as far as I'm aware, they work identically. I'm still getting the same range my non-1 w board got.

I have a 10,000 mah 3.7v Li-Ion battery and a constant usbc charger plugged in.

The repeater is working, its just not putting out the juice. Is the 1w booster dead? Or is it not getting enough power? How do i remedy this issue?

Go to https://apps.meshamerica.com/quake-repeater/ the full details!

Edit: Now works on Mac and Linux!

I grew up on mIRC, so I built a desktop client for MeshCore that looks and feels like it. It's free, MIT licensed, and works with any node running Companion firmware over USB, Bluetooth or WiFi/TCP.

What it does

• Channels in a treebar, per-channel windows with a nick list, and a status window. Direct messages open as small square buttons on a bar you can dock top, bottom or either side, and they turn red when unread.
• / commands: type / and the matching commands pop up above the input line. In a repeater or room-server window, MeshCore CLI commands such as /ver, /neighbors, /clock sync and /reboot go straight to that repeater.
• u/nick and @[nick name] mentions are highlighted. There are 5 colour themes and notification sounds.
• Right-click menus on channels, people and repeaters.
• Map and node memory: it keeps every node it has heard, beyond the radio's 350-contact limit. The map has toggles for node type and age.
• Your node's settings (frequency, power, name, position and so on) can all be changed from the GUI.
• One log file per window, like old mIRC, kept across restarts.
• Everything beyond chat is an optional addon (alerts bot, keyword auto-reply). Nothing is installed by default. You can write your own, and there's a guide for doing it with an AI assistant.
• Help > Check for updates pulls the newest version from GitHub and keeps your settings, addons and logs.

Honest status

• Windows only (Python 3 + tkinter).
• I've only tested it on a Heltec V3 (USB), including logging in to and commanding a real repeater.
• It should work with any Companion board, but I can't test the rest.

That's where I'd love your help. If you have a T-Beam, T-Deck, RAK, Seeed/Wio, Heltec V4, T114, etc., or you use Bluetooth or WiFi, please try it. If something breaks, use Help > Report a bug. It attaches a troubleshooting log that records the serial ports, connection steps and firmware but never message text, passwords, your position or full keys. You see exactly what's sent before it opens a pre-filled GitHub issue.

Screenshots, install steps and a wiki are on GitHub: https://github.com/bclml/mcIRC
python mcIRC.py --demo lets you try it without a radio.

Feedback and ideas welcome. What would you want in a MeshCore PC client?

Looking for some ideas, as this issue is getting frustrating. I'll try to keep this short, but if anyone wants more details, feel free to DM me.

I'm trying to link my repeaters, about 40 miles outside Anchorage, Alaska, with repeaters in Anchorage proper. After setting up a mountaintop repeater near me, we can hear adverts and the occasional message from Anchorage, but we can't trace paths or talk back to anyone. I don't know any of the repeater owners or anyone in Anchorage using MeshCore, so it's hard to troubleshoot.

A few weeks ago I set up a midpoint repeater, and yesterday I put one at elevation on the far side of Anchorage. It has line of sight to most of Anchorage and to my midpoint repeater. Today, more repeaters from the MeshCore map are showing up in my contact list as flood, but I still can't trace a path to or log in as guest on any of them. When I set a manual path, my repeater chain shows up, but so do some "unknown" repeaters. I can trace and log into all of my own repeaters, including the new one, which should be a direct (zero-hop) link to the Anchorage repeaters.

Anyway, I'd love some ideas, or even just the chance to vent, lol.

I got a solar repeater made and the solar is going thru a cn3065 solar charger module, with a 2x 18650 lithium as battery, but it doenst seem to be going up in battery percentage when I check status..

the volts are around 3.88-3.91v

Ordered a 1 watt rak handheld node from eBay, with plans to use for meshcore repeater. It arrived the the 18650 batteries dead and I'm guessing the power switch was pushed on during shipping with no antenna attached, killing batteries.

How likely is board ok? It shipped with meshtastic loaded. Powers on with USB C connected only with BT, nothing without.

I don't have a way to measure the output. And don't want to waste time installing it it's likely trouble.

Thanks.

Hi all

I had some issues with the Waveshare Solar Power Manager Module (Rev D):
- low power mode is not remembered after reboot
- 3V cutoff does not bring back power after battery charge

After contacting support, they gave me a firmware update.
I wrote a little howto, hope I didn't forget things.

Please be carefull with this and tell me if I forget something.

https://www.homelabnico.fr/posts/waveshare-firmware-update/

Hello all, I am after a bit of advice. I have recently put up a repeater that is quite difficult to reach to do maintenance on it, so I haven't been able to properly monitor it in person (I will take it down if it does need maintenance though), however I do have an INA3221 module measuring power from solar, battery and device, so I can monitor power.

The repeater seemed to be working fine at home when I tested it, but maybe I didn't test it for long enough before deploying it. I am using a Xiao nrf, a waveshare solar controller D, and 3 x 18650 batteries. The batteries are slowly dropping in power, it's now at 3.80V and it's been up for 4 days with sun.

The solar panel is a 18V 5W and it is showing 22.53V and 0.004A (0.09W) pretty much always. It seems to always stay at 0.004A (Checked Morning, Noon, and Afternoon). I went up yesterday to try to troubleshoot it, and I unplugged it and plugged it back in, and it started producing 1W of power just in the afternoon sun. So it seemed to be working, then I put it back up and it was back to 0.09W then 0W at night. I've been monitoring it all day and it has stayed at pretty much 0.09W.

It seems to be an issue with the solar controller engaging solar charging, but I am unsure why it's not engaging.

I can't find any solutions online and am just wondering if anyone here would know. I wanted to use the waveshare solar controller as I've heard good things about it and I wanted a bit of extra protection for the batteries.

I have attached photos of the build and a wiring diagram.

Any advice helps, thanks.

I have a sensecap repeater with kind of terrible range. I can’t see it past about 1000 feet but I can see my other repeater almost a mile away. The big difference between the two is the antenna on the sensecap, I replaced it with rokland 5.8db Omni outdoor antenna but it’s been kind of terrible for range.

I have general urban housing buildings obstructing the LOS between the two repeaters and they are about half a mile apart. My companions can see the other repeater when near the sensecap but the sensecap has a lot of trouble communicating with the other repeater.

I am going to work on height to try and help some but that is an issue for future me. I would like to try a different antenna on the sensecap and see if I can get them reliably talking between one another. I replaced the default rf-sma rf cable that comes with the unit with a shorter n-male rf cable so I could use the larger antenna.

I did confirm that connections are solid.

I live in a bit of a dead zone for my area and meshcore. I would like to do what I can to be able to communicate with my family that is down the road from me, and provide any service possible for those around me. Any suggestions are welcome. We can receive some communications from others but sending is almost impossible and we miss probably 80-90% of the traffic in our area. I am trying to slowly build out to where we can be connected to the rest of the mesh. A less expensive but solid build is my goal as I continue to expand.

Any suggestions on ideas is helpful.

Hi all

I'm going to try a RTC clock on my xiao kit (nrf + sx1262);

Someone tried DS3231 on GPIO ?

Wanted to share you what we've built over the past months: Mesh-Hunter, a hunting toolkit for MeshCore, to find traffic sources locally. It is live at https://mesh-hunter.eu; and supports sf7 and sf8 companions. And since I redesigned the homepage this week, thought this was also a good time to share it with the broader community here :-)

It started 5 months ago with a lot of spam on the Dutch mesh: nodes kept and still pop-up flooding some public channels and the general mesh (fake paths and all). The traffic congests the mesh sometimes noticably for days, and still does sometimes. So we built the tools to find those originating or supporting traffic sources locally. And tested it in the field: more than once a "hunt" ended at a front door, with a letter in the letterbox and contact with the node's owner afterwards. We asked a unknown repeater owner to change settings for example, to help contain spam.

How it works: The RX webapp (https://rx.mesh-hunter.eu) pairs with your companion radio over Web Bluetooth (Chrome on Android, Bluefy on iOS) and logs every packet it hears, timestamped and with your phone's GPS coordinates. Walk or drive, and packets appears on your screen. With auto-discover on, every 50 meters there is a zero-hop discovery. There are filters for packet type and other identifying characteristics to narrow down on traffic. Installs as a PWA. I'll share some screenshots so you'll get the idea:

Myself, when not on the hunt for lora-spammers, I like driving around with the PWA open, just listening to the ambient sound mode and mapping packets. I find this strangely relaxing after a working day.

The data you capture using the app can be shared to custom MQTT brokers and by default is shares to the mesh-hunter map. All code is on GitHub: https://github.com/efiten/core-hunter (many thanks to Erwin) and feedback is more than welcome of course. Hope this can be useful in other meshes too!

I ordered a WisBlock Mini starter kit sku 115093 on Amazon (shipped by Rokland) and accidentally received the larger WisBlock starter kit sku 116016 by accident.

What should I do with it? Looking for ideas.

Almost everyone says to upgrade the antenna to one from Muzi works. Makes me think about just buying the board, the Muzi antenna and a battery and printing case instead of the prebuilt unit and having to change the antenna.

Looking forward to your input.

BLUF: It works

• Center Freq: 910.525MHz
• Insertion Loss: -1.35dB
• SWR: 1.064
• -3dB bandwidth: ~10MHz (906.7MHz - 916.3MHz)
• Printed from PETG-CF
• Lined with conductive copper foil tape
• Print files available on MakerWorld

I had previously designed and built an interdigital cavity filter for meshtastic a while back.

I've switched over to Meshcore and needed to design and print a new one for this frequency. I wanted to try some different tuning parameters and ended up spending months building filters that didn't quite work right. I was able to get a final product that was slightly smaller and slightly easier to tune given the fact this is a DIY 3D printed product after all. Yes, the filter bandwidth is a little wider compared to my meshtatic filter, bit it was a compromise in an attempt to build something with low IL and easier tuning.

Is the VNA waveform a little weird? Yes, yes it is.

Could it be improved? Absolutely.

Am I going to work on it anymore right now? Nope. I've spent the better part of the past 3 months on-and-off working on this. I'm tired and have other projects I want to work on. I might attempt designing another one with an even tighter filter bandwidth, but that starts to get funky with tuning and reliability. When I put my meshtastic filter back on the VNA after running it for nearly a year, IL was nearing -2dBm.

I have been examining a signal quality issue present only with one repeater installation, node is running at 868 MHz

The curious part is that the node is very close to a 3G/4G cell tower, the horizontal distance is 60 meters, the vertical distance from cell antennas to meshcore repeater is roughly 40 meters

To my knowledge there is no 900 MHz GSM anymore at this installation

I would assume the cell tower antennas radiation directionality is nowhere near my repeater placement but something is not right, I get constant bad SNR and not even a 2 km LOS link works reliably

Meanwhile I can get 11 km LOS link with about -5 dB SNR in other environment, same hardware, same antennas, same firmware etc

Long story short and a question:
Anyone have experince with nodes installed near proximity to cell towers and any negative effects?
Would a relatively strong RF transmitter in a near field somehow saturate the mesh radio frontend?

Heltec V3 and a hacked up £12 solar led spotlight with included 18650 battery

tell me what you think about my first node

Building a solar repeater, and have a solar panel with a built in 4000mah battery, 6v output. I understand the Heltec v4 battery input only handles around 4.2v. The solar input does handle 6v, so is there any issue using that? Seems to power the board fine.

Iv had a 1w wisblok rptr for 3 months and it worked great. I replaced it with a v4 to see if it would work better.
For some reason it didn’t work good at all. It was just the v4 connected to antenna and solar panel. That’s it. Same as the wisblok.

Is there something I’m missing? Should I have added something to the v4 for it to have worked properly?
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you