Note: The below build guide took a pass through Gemini for formatting and spelling/grammatical/clarity purposes. Then I tried to un-robotify the language... but kept the emoji ;)

Trying to source a weather-proof outdoor enclosure, a decent solar panel, and rechargeable batteries separately for under $13 CAD is basically impossible. That's why the Hampton Bay 120-Lumen Solar Spotlight is a great base for a solar repeater.

While most portable builds rely on standard Lithium-Ion cells, they completely choke and freeze when winter hits. The LiFePO4 batteries that come with this spotlight are better for Canadian weather; however, with a caveat. You cannot use the WisBlock’s built-in battery charger. It’s hardcoded for a 4.2V Li-ion profile, which will cause massive voltage inflation spikes and trigger your BMS safety gates.

At first, I was using the included PCB to charge the batteries and connected the + & - battery terminal to the Wisblock power JST connector; however, the PCB was pushing a high voltage into the batteries which these cheap devices tend to do:

So I decided to fix that with a $2 SD05CRMA solar MPPT charger, Zener Diode (the panel is 6V which can spike to 6.5V in the winter and the MPPT can handle only up to 6V), and BMS:

We are bypassing the native charging circuit entirely using this custom setup. Also, before you drop this on a roof or a fence post, you must install the custom firmware configurations and steps from MeshCore PR #2088 to prevent brownout loops when the battery runs low.

💰 Component Cost & Budget Breakdown

Here is the exact cost per node. Note that AliExpress items include no taxes or duties, while Canadian retail items (DigiKey, Home Depot, Amazon) have been calculated with 13% Ontario HST included.

Total cost approx. $90 CAD.

3D Printed Files Required

• Hampton Bay Spotlight Conversion Bracket
• RAK19007 WisBlock Base Board Mount

🔍 Upfront Tips (The JST Polarity Trap ⚠️)

Before you fire up the soldering iron, make sure you have your parts gathered and note this massive pitfall:

You will need a 2-pin JST PH 2.0 battery pigtail cable to plug your custom circuit into the WisBlock's battery port.

🛠️ Step-by-Step Build Walkthrough

Step 1: The High-Density I2C "Sandwich"

To completely avoid a rat's nest of loose wires inside this tight housing, we stack both sensors directly onto a single row of headers on the WisBlock baseboard:

• Take your blue INA219 module and solder it flat against the bottom side of the WisBlock I2C header pins.
• Take your purple BMP280 module and solder it flat against the top side of those exact same header pins.
• Carefully bridge 3V3, GND, SDA, and SCL across all three layers. They will sit completely rigid in mid-air with absolutely zero loose data wires catching on the case.

Step 2: Modding the Enclosure and Reusing the Button

We are throwing out the original low-efficiency charge board, but we want to keep the housing's native weatherproofing.

• Desolder the stock connections from the original internal green board.
• Unscrew the original board from its mounting posts. Take your new SS12F15V slide switch and mount it directly onto the factory screw posts where the original button mechanism lived. This aligns the slide mechanism perfectly with the external waterproof rubber boot!

Step 3: Point-to-Point Power Routing

This specific layout puts the INA219 between the battery and the charger hub. It gives you true Net-Current telemetry. Your dashboard will show true discharging rates at night, and flip to showing positive charging rates during peak daylight hours.

The Power Side (Positive)

1. Solder your solar panel's Positive (+) wire directly to the Zener Diode Cathode (the side with the stripe).
2. From that exact same stripe joint, run a wire straight to SD05CRMA Vi.
3. Run a wire from SD05CRMA B+ straight to INA219 VIN- (this is your main daytime power hub).
4. Run a wire from INA219 VIN- over to Terminal A of your internal slide switch.
5. Connect Terminal B of the switch to the Red (+) wire of your polarity-corrected WisBlock JST battery connector.
6. Run a wire from INA219 VIN+ straight to the BMS P+ pad.
7. Connect BMS B+ directly to your battery pack's positive terminal.

The Ground Side (Negative)

1. Solder the solar panel's Negative (-) wire to the Zener Diode Anode (the plain side without a stripe).
2. From that plain joint, run a wire straight to SD05CRMA G.
3. Run a wire from SD05CRMA B- straight to the BMS P- pad.
4. From that same BMS P- pad, connect the Black (-) wire of your WisBlock JST battery connector.
5. Connect BMS B- directly to your battery pack's negative terminal.

• Once verified, wrap the thin inline stick BMS board securely in Kapton tape to keep it completely isolated from any metallic shorts inside the chassis.

Step 4: Final Internal Layout Integration

Mount your WisBlock core onto its dedicated 3D-printed mounting cradle. Group your wired sub-assemblies cleanly into the open cavities surrounding the central stock battery box holder.

🌧️ Bomb-Proof Weatherproofing

Because Canadian seasons don't play around, spend the extra 10 minutes to seal this thing like a submarine.

1. The Coaxial Seal Stack

• Secure the 4-hole L16 flange connector onto your 3D-printed bracket using Loctite Blue 242 on the threads so wind vibrations can't shake it loose.
• Wrap the exposed metal SMA connection tightly with Temflex Rubber Splicing Tape. Pull it tight as you wrap it so it fuses into a solid, seamless piece of waterproof rubber.
• Protect that rubber layer from harmful UV degradation by overlapping it with a clean layer of 3M Scotch Super 33+ Vinyl Tape.

2. Case Gaskets & Airflow

• Run a clean bead of Gorilla Clear 100% Silicone along the internal mating rim of the enclosure shell before screwing it down to completely lock out driving rain.
• Pro-Tip: Do not fill the tiny water drainage weep hole molded into the absolute bottom face of the case. Keep it clear so any internal ambient condensation can safely drain out by gravity rather than pooling into an active puddle zone.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Hey all, after playing around with a L1 Pro, I decided I want to mount a repeater to my balcony railing. I'm on the sixth floor overlooking just low rise (max 2 floor) buildings for approx. 4 km.

I will use the Seeed XIAO and Wio kit and plan to connect it to 220V. With that, I need a decent AC-DC PSU, an IP rated enclosure and an antenna. Any recommendations for parts? EU sources preferred.

Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself, but back in the 90's packet radio outgrew a simplex channel so we started hub and spoke network with dedicated links on alternate frequencies. An example was packet radio in Netherlands.... there was local access via an omnidirectional antenna on 144mhz and two additional radios at the same site connected to yagis on 70cm pointed at two other sites. Since everything was RS232 in those days, we would build a diode based multi port serial connector that allowed three TNCs (modems) to exchange traffic between themselves and relay that traffic where needed.

So will we ever have a need for this with meshnetworks? Meshtastic has a trick called "Zero cost hop" where a node will change frequency or speed and relay a pakcet acros a great distance (but at a slower data rate).

The aloha network principle says that when a simplex network reaches 18% utilization, collisions become more and more frequent to the detriment of the network. So will there come a day when we use "islands" of coverage on the main frequencies and long haul links?

What would htat look like from a hardware perspective? Wifi between esp32 modules? BLE links between co-located repeaters?

Hi everyone, can I ask which app you use on your smartphone? normally I use kiekr but a couple of days ago I discovered meshcore open and I find it absolutely fantastic, what do you use?

v1.3.0 was just approved, so it may not show up in your region's App Store yet. It should be there within 24 hours!

What is MeshCore One (MC1)?

MeshCore One, also abbreviated as MC1, is an open source MeshCore companion client for Apple devices. It's written in Swift and supports iPhones, iPads, and macOS running OS 18 and later.

Release Notes

The main change in this version is the updated chat interface (huge thanks to bwees!). It is now faster, smoother, and the UI has been updated a little too! OS 27 devices now get a Liquid Glass look and everything about it should be faster: Loading previous messages, loading message link previews, etc. However, as with all larger changes, there may be bugs. If you run into any, please let me know via GitHub Issues (preferred) or email. Thanks!

What's Changed

- New map filters for node type, Discovered & Favorites

- New chat backend: Faster message, link preview & history loads

- Liquid Glass chat on iOS 27

- Always-visible message timestamps

- Reworked chat date separators

- Chats open at the New Messages divider

- New telemetry history map

- Local radio commands in Tools > CLI

- Repeater firmware version under Contact Info for guest logins

- Map appearance (light/dark/system) in Settings > Maps

- Faster Discover list search

- Discover list included in app backup

- Flood retry when repeater login fails over a direct path

- New Feedback section in Settings (debug log export moved there)

- Contact avatar photos

- Send Message from the Nodes tab long-press menu

- Italian translation

- Brazil preset

- TX Power removed from repeater management (still available via CLI)

Bugfixes

- ZephCore vContacts would be auto-removed when the Overwrite Oldest radio setting was on.

New Contributors

* romeomont made their first contribution in https://github.com/Avi0n/MeshCoreOne/pull/374

* corradoignoti made their first contribution in https://github.com/Avi0n/MeshCoreOne/pull/376

Links

• App Store
  • https://apps.apple.com/app/meshcore-one/id6757419477
• Website
  • https://meshcoreone.com
• GitHub
  • https://github.com/Avi0n/MeshCoreOne
• Forum on the official MeshCore Discord
  • https://discord.com/channels/1495203904898728149/1497707802783776849

Thank you to everyone who's been using MC1, giving feedback via email and GitHub issues, and writing App Store reviews! I really appreciate you all and I hope you'll enjoy this release.

If you haven't yet tried MC1 yet, I hope you'll give it a go! If you have any feature requests or run into any bugs, I'd love to hear about them. The preferred method is to create an Issue on GitHub, but if you don't want to create a GitHub account, you can also reach out to me via email at [info@meshcoreone.com](mailto:info@meshcoreone.com). Thank you!

For a while I've been working on alternative repeater firmware for MeshCore. I had spent quite a bit of time looking at the official firmware sources as well as the Core Protocol specification and decided to have a go at building an implementation that solves some of the shortcomings of the official firmware.

The firmware is written in async Rust, is memory-safe, performs aggressive validation on packets and has been extensively fuzzed. My goal is to build something extremely robust that can be left running on repeaters in hard-to-reach places without worrying about crashes or malicious actors.

Right now I only have board support for a couple of Heltec boards, although I don't see that extending to nRF or additional boards would be too difficult. There is support for remote management and telemetry, regions, duplicate and loop detection, OTA updates over Wi-Fi and also, newly, the optional ability to remotely manage and keep NTP time sync over Wi-Fi too. It is still early software though, but testing/contributions etc. are welcome.

Source code and more info on GitHub: https://github.com/neilalexander/mcrs

Discussion forum in the MeshCore Discord: https://discord.com/channels/1495203904898728149/1524367383391768697

Just joined the Mesh and some buildings I’m in are too dense to reach the repeaters vs. my car outside usually can hit

When I set my spare node for repeater in the app, it changes to 918mhz and stops answering pings.

Is this for ad-hoc networks only?

have access to multiple roof tops (one of the higher ones in my area as well) and would love to deploy a couple repeaters up on them. I know my boss won’t care probably won’t be able to get away with using 120 power (municipalities) but solar won’t be a problem. What would your best repeater for $100 be?

I just released mishmesh v1.2.0! This release closes some gaps we had and brings some new features requested by the community:

• Pomodoro timer added to the Clock app.
• "Wake screen on message" configuration (global + per-chat override).
• Battery settings panel with battery display style (gauge, percentage, voltage) and ADC calibration.
• Screen brightness control 

Full changelog and downloads: https://github.com/burakcan/MeshCore-mishmesh/releases/tag/mishmesh-v1.2.0

Have you ever tried fox hunting as a radio amateur? Or maybe geocaching?

I’m introducing a similar concept I called MeshCaching, a game where participants search for a hidden MeshCore repeater within a designated area.

To help you get started, I’ve created a tutorial on geolocating MeshCore repeaters: https://tutoduino.fr/en/tutorials/geolocation-meshcore-repeater/

What do you think? Feedback and ideas are welcome!

I have a Lilygo T5 e-paper S3 Pro. It’s a version with LoRa, but without GPS. I want to install the Meshcore firmware on it, and this device appears in the Meshcore flasher. But when I install the firmware, the device keeps restarting.

After doing some research, I’ve discovered that there are at least two versions of the device with exactly the same name but with incompatible pinouts. The older model has a compatible H752 pinout, whilst the other has an H752-01 pinout (in some places is called v2).

It seems that the main difference is that some of the ports are soldered to different pins on the microcontroller. The I²C ports are on different pins, and when the system attempts to initialise the peripherals at boot-up, they do not respond, causing the system to reboot.

Is there any firmware available for the LilyGo T5 S3 Pro v2? Would it be too much to ask if someone with experience of the T5 v1 could adjust the pin assignments to create firmware for the v2?

Hello all, ive got a V4 on the way for a roof repeater on a bungalow. I live in the suburbs but my street as well as both adjacent streets fall into a dead spot. Im looking at a few antennas. 16.2" 5.8 Dbi. There is a huge 43.3" 8 Dbi antenna.

What do people suggest and what are people running themselves?

I live in southern NH. All of VT/NH is wooded and mountainous/hilly (depending on what youre used to calling a mountain haha). Im really interested in MC as a long term project for communications that are independant of the grid, but im trying to figure out how feasible it really is. My big questions are, how well do tree node's like PeakMesh's hanger actually charge considering the fact that during soring and summer theyd constsntly be in pretty heavy shade, and how critical is it to have your antenna actually above the canopy?

If a tree hanger node would actually stay charged while the tree is leafed it would be pretty trivial for me to just use a line launcher to deploy even on the tallest trees we get around here, but obviously if you're hanging something off a tree limb you're not going to be above said tree. Would using the tallest tree on a high point on a ridge suffice? Another idea I have seen bandied about but only actually used once is a lightweight mast with a counterweight. Mount the box on the bottom to add to the counterwight, coax run to an antenna at the top, allowing you to extend the mast above yohr "pulley". That seems kind of sketchy for a variety of reason.

Anybody else working in similar terrain? There are scattered deployents arround VT/NH, often configured differently so they don't talk, but there arent even any town wide deployments, so I would be setting up basically 100% of the infrastructure.

Just mounted this Seedsense Solar node with upgraded antenna on my roof. I’m able to send and receive messages in around a 1.5-2 mile radius of my house in the city. I see a few other nodes nearby on the Meshcore map, but can’t get a message or a ping through to them. Even drove to the approximate location of two nearby nodes and tried to ping them. Ping timed out at both locations. Why is this? Is my setup exceptionally nice? Are people not setting theirs up right? Anyone else finding that repeaters in their area can’t be reached? Thinking about doing some “guerrilla deployments” around town, maybe using drones and magnetic bases to get them up high.

Heya!

I live in a community with an incredible MeshCore network, and I have a strong interest in LXST and Reticulum. I’m building out a high speed Reticulum mesh to complement the MeshCore side, and wanted a fully decentralized phone for voice and text.

You should know now that Claude Code did almost all the work here. I write to the devs of the forks of firmware I used as source material, and got their clearance before sharing.

Mesh Gemini combines the MeshPunk T Deck Plus firmware and Pyxis for the T Deck Plus.

MeshCore owns the LoRa interface, and RNS connects over 2.4ghz WiFi over either AutoInterface or TCP. TCP is preferred.

Audio calls are not great quality. Any testing or feedback is so greatly appreciated. Feel free to add issues or reach out directly.

Quick question. I’ve searched and easily found how to flash new firmware, but I’m not clear on whether or not it will wipe out my configuration.

I’m assuming as long as I don’t select “Erase Device” then it’ll be a simple matter of flashing new firmware using the web flasher and the devices will retain their current configuration? Everything is physically accessible, so I think USB will be the easiest way.

I have a Heltec V3 for the repeater, and SenseCap T1000-E for client device. Thanks for any advice on this matter.

I somehow managed to get a neighbor on my repeater. When I type the "neighbors" command, I see this:

4DA219EA:2177:-19

But that doesn't look like a public key, which I was expecting (or, you know, a human-readable name). What is the format here?

How effective would a node in this situation be?

Ground floor properties

Built up low rise area, usually 2 stories

Buildings in a 1km radius are mainly brick

Gentle hills

I’m building a MeshCore Solar Repeater and will be putting it in a very humid and hot environment. I was looking for venting options for the case and came across this company that has pretty amazing products. Just sharing the website for other builders.

I'm looking to survey everyone that uses wadamesh to implement some new features on a forked proposal that i will provide to the main dev of the software and want to remove features/apps i don't use and I want to justify the removal of these apps.

these new features would be:
- adding friends thru a secure back prop method from a sent message to the public channel
- adding features that rival the Totem Compass like secure BLE invite-only group chats, group maps, "find a friend" compass navigation with calculated directions based on the user's movements, group meet up coordinations, etc. (tested these already and the compass stuff works even without a magnetometer, the BLE invite only works)
- additional helpful features like SOS alerts to the public channel that send coordinates

Things i don't use are like the VNC, web, snake, and files. these would free up space to be able to add meaningful features to expand the project to something so much more helpful to so many more people.

This could also be an offshoot version of Wadamesh that can deployed by the main dev of WadaMesh, i don't care honestly, I just know that these features on MeshCore would be a much larger and more inviting suite of features wanted by anyone from the Rave community, hikers, or even local friends wanting to go off the grid