Companions¶

Companions are what connect you, the user, to the Mesh. They small circuitboards that have bluetooth and LoRa capabilities, some have WiFi, that connect to your smartphone via the MeshCore App (Google Play Store / Apple App Store) but there are also fully standalone devices if you want to rock the Blackberry look.

Starter Devices¶

Two currently easiest starting points are: - Heltec v3, cheap, bundles can be found on Amazon, but usually require assembly and lithium batteries means they don't always ship here - Wio Tracker L1 Pro, a little more expensive and have to wait longer, but everything you need - except replace the antenna

Connect to the Mesh¶

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1. Make sure you've installed the antenna
2. Flash the new device at the MeshCore installer webpage.
   • Plug your device into USB-C on your computer
   • Launch Google Chrome (if you're not browsing in it already)
   • Go to the flasher website
   • Select the Community Firmware for your device
   • Select Companion Bluetooth
   • Check Erase Device
   • Hit Flash and select the device with a name like /dev/tty.usbserial123 from the list
3. After flashing the firmware, launch the MeshCore App on the mobile device of your choice, and click Connect to select the local device from the Bluetooth list
4. When prompted, it will ask for a Pin, look at the screen of your device for the 6 digit pin. If your device doesn't have a screen, the default pin is 123456
5. Set a name for your device - the name of the device is the name that will show up as you in the group chat
6. Select EU/UK Band (Narrow)
7. Under Contacts:
   • Select Auto Add Selected
   • Select Auto Add Chat Users and Auto Add Repeaters
   • Set Audo Add Max Hops to a low number such as 3 or 4. For reference it only takes 5 - 6 to reach most cities here.
8. Under Experimental Settings:
   • Select Default Region, and manually add: ioi and sco, select ioi as your default
   • Set Default path hash size to 3-byte
9. Apply Settings
   • Just to be safe, go back to settings, and click "Export Settings", select all, and click Save. This lets you move devices without your friends needing to readd you to their contact list
10. Add these Public Hash channels
    • #test - region scope: ioi where everyone posts 'Test' to see if they can send messages, if you post Test or Ping see a response from Zoidberg it means that bot is working and you successfully sent a message to Belfast and the path back to you contains all properly configured loraproject.org repeaters
    • #norniron - region scope: ioi, where a lot of the BHD Mesh Radio Ireland folks will be
    • #ireland - region scope: ioi, all of the island's latest craic
    • #scotland - region scope: sco, what those wee scots are doing
    • ioi-test - region scope: iooi, for running a Health Check
    • Remember, you can just delete the default Public; with the removal of *, there should be a drop in the traffic from the greater area of the Islands of Ireland and Great Britain, this shouldn't be too chaotic, but still is the firehose of default users

Health Check¶

Once you've setup the companion, run a Health Check - get a code from that link and post it in the channel #ioi-test - it will show you how far it went across the mesh. If it doesn't go very far, check you have set the region scope for #ioi-test to be ioi.

Discord¶

Like everyone other group with more than 10 people, the LoRa Project operates out of the discord server named Mesh Radio Ireland (N&S). Feel free to ask questions and chat about nodes. You may find there's someone else in your region also trying to setup a repeater / connect to a wider mesh, even if you can't find the main group.

The primary MeshCore project has a separate server, named MeshCore, which is where you can find out information like latest MeshCore relases and see builds antics of MeshCore users from all over the world.