E1739: MeshCore App Deep Dive – contacts, channels, and more

Think the off-grid mesh world is just for hobbyists? Think again. In this deep dive, we’re breaking down MeshCore—the secure, decentralized LoRa platform designed for professional-grade stability and massive 64-hop range.

MeshCore is rapidly becoming the go-to alternative for those who find traditional mesh networks too "noisy." Unlike other platforms where every device spams the network, MeshCore uses a structured routing system with dedicated repeaters. This means better battery life, predictable delivery, and the ability to scale across entire cities.

Today's video is sponsored by Spec5 - get 5% off with code HAMRADIO2.0 at this link - https://geni.us/lVGX

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Speaker 1: Meshcre and mesh Tastic. Both are taken off a lot recently,

and I've been using a lot of Meshtastic for a

couple of years now, but Meshcre I'm fairly new to it.

So I wanted to do a deep dive through the

mesh Core app and look at all the features, the highlights,

the options, the menus and everything it has. Let's go,

all right, thanks for joining the channel. HAMM Radio two

point zero. We do reviews, news and how two's of

off grid communications devices and that includes any type of

mesh networking. Been talking about mesh networking for several years

in the form of Arden and broadband hamnet, but been

doing mesh Tastic for the last two or three years.

Meshcor is a newer one on the scene, newer to

me anyway, and I wanted to go through this app

on the phone. We're going to look at this app

here in just a minute. But the official Meshcre app

on Android we're going to be playing with Android today

is a clean, lightweight, cross platform Flutter client. It's designed

exclusively as a companion for Laura devices running Boe Companion firmware.

It was deliberately designed as a simpler app than the

mesh Tastic app. It has no plugins, no heavy maps

by default, and it's focused on fast, secure, off grid

text messaging, no discovery and repeater control. The UI is

identical across Android iOS and the web version at app

dot meshcre dot NZ. Various versions of Android iOS might

vary a little bit with that, but they try to

keep it as even as they can get it. Everything

we're going to talk about today applies pretty much everywhere,

not just on the Android app. It does require a

paired Laura radio like a Helltech, a Lilygo or the

Treker Delta from Spec five that we're going to be

talking about today as well. So let's dive into this

and let's take a look at this meshcre app. I've

got it connected to my zoom here real quick. This

is what the app looks like right here, and I

actually have this connected. I have the app connected to

the Treker Delta from Spec five and it is running.

I loaded the latest version of Meshcore on the trekor

Delta a couple weeks ago, so it's been my go

to app right now for mesh Core. So this is

what it looks like when it's connected. You can see

the contacts up there at the center of the screen

there and at the top left there's the battery indicator

and that's the name of the device I'm connected to.

K C five HBB Treker Delta. That's the name of

the device I'm connected to. If I tap the screen,

it changes between three point ninety seven volts and eighty

one percent battery life, so you can always look and

see how many many volts you have left in which

are percentages left on that as well. The left the

devices down the left side are the devices that I

have connected to are recently seen, and then the right

side icons from left to right, there is a there's

a Bluetooth icon there right now. If I was not

connected at all of this Bluetooth icon here, it would

just be a connect butt instead of this. But since

we are connected, that's the options you have in there

are ADVERT zero hop, advert flood routed, and advert to clipboard.

Now we're going to talk about those in a minute.

We're going through the menus right now. The next is

the gear icon. It opens device and app preferences. Most

important icon after pairing, we're going to go through there.

Here in just a minute as well, and then the

signal wave icon. The advert button is what's considered the

single most important feature in the entire app. You tap

this to broadcast your presence, et cetera. And again we'll

get to that in a minute. And then of course

you've got a three button menu map right there with

add of contact at channel, discover contacts, my contact code,

and interactive Mac tools. We're going to be talking about

the tools section a minute, and about meshcre You can

go in there and find out what version you're running.

That kind of good stuff there. As far as the

adverts there, the zero hop advert is local only, so

it will advertise you as being somewhere right now, but

it will not route through a repeater advert flood routed

will route through repeater. That's the next one down. And

then advert to clipboard has like manual sharing if you

want to, I guess, if you want to text your

presence to somebody else that you're in a room with,

say hey, let's trade information something like that. But that's

what that does. So zero hop is basically offline, no repeaters,

and flood routed advertises your location to the repeater nearby

you if you have one, and of course the three

dot menu is the more global options that we looked

at just a minute ago. The main navigation on the bottom. Here,

you've got three tabs down here at the bottom. You

make sure I can see that in the screen. Yeah, okay,

so you got three tabs at the bottom. Sometimes you'll

have a fourth tab down there. This one has three

on this version that I'm running right now. The contacts

is the default in home tab. That's where we are

right now. Which are seeing on the screen right now,

it's a list of all the discovered nodes. Each entry

shows name, handle, last HERD time, distance, position of shared

signal bars, and path info. That's all the information underneath

where you see neural mesh tx rack and the node

runner Solar is the second one down in neural mesh

tx on my screen right now, and then it shows

the name and the handle. I don't know what that

parentheses that bracket is underneath that, but the time, the distance,

how it was the path info which you see. All

of these were flooded, so these came from a repeater,

and that's what I'm seeing right now. There's actually not

very much mesh core activity in my area there I

have found three repeaters near me, and I'm working on

putting up a repeater that Probably the next video I'm

going to make about mesh Core on this channel is

to put up a mesh Core repeater here at my house.

We're going to be using one a solar node for that,

but more to come on that later. That'll be another video.

If you tap a contact, it goes into the direct chat.

You can direct message someone right there and it manage

favorite to lemtry share right there across the top. Contact

type was repeater right there on the screen that was

it showed. Last advert heard was thirty three minutes ago.

At the time of this recording, it was flooded. Hops

the outpath. You can remove the contact, you can view

it on the map, share it to the map, remote

manage it if it's a node that you own. You

can't remote management if it's not your node, unless they

just really have it set up wrong. But those are

all the options inside of the contact app, and go

back out here in the channels tab at the bottom.

These are all the public channels, or these are all

the private challenge you might have set up. I haven't

really done much with channels myself. The public channel is

the only one that I have ever talked in. There

was quite a bit of activity in this channel when

we were in Connecticut last month, really good mesh Core

group of guys up there. So the public channel is

the only one that I have ever actually used. So

I'd like to see if if anybody, especially in the

North Texas area, has more channels that I'm unaware of.

This will show messages bubbles with every three reports heard

by three repeats. If you can long press a message

inside of this right here, and you can do retry,

copy or delete locally hold down that go from there,

so a lot of options in there, reply directly to

that person, et cetera like that. And then the map,

which is the third one at the bottom here. This

opens the public mesh Core coverage map, which is also

available at mesh core dot co, dot UK, slash map,

dot html. It talks in here about add me to

the map, which I've already done. That I've already done

add me to the map, but if I hadn't done that,

there would be a three dot menu in here again

that you tap on that and click add me to

the map, and it uploads your position to the node.

Info publicly if you want to share it publicly. It

does not do that by default, or at least mine

didn't do it by default. So there's that neural mesh

router that's close to me right there, a little bit

south of me. I've already added my node to the map,

so that's why we're not seeing the three dot menu

on the screen here. If we come back out of

the map, go back to the main menu over here,

we go down to the tool icon. This is one

of the most used menus in here. This has an

RX receive log. You can go in here and see

what's been received. Direct control, direct advert flood response, direct

text message right there. Different things inside of that menu.

It has a trace path tool and can be used

manually or map based, and it sends test packets to

analyze routing. And you can discover nearby note has a

discover nearby nodes button right there. Click on discover repeaters

and it will scan. There's the neural mesh tx rack

repeater that I've already seen. I've already discovered that myself,

but it discovered again once I went into that menu.

So going to be using that at the more expo

a little bit later this month as well. And there's

several more things of here. A line of sight check

a line of sight on the map, noise floor you

get see what kind of noise floor you've got. Antenna coverage.

Check intenna coverage on a map. You have to put

in the parameters of your antenna on your node. There.

So a lot of really cool tools inside of that

app is there. So now we're going to come out here.

We're going to go to the setting screen, which is

right here. This this is going to be where you

spend the first five minutes when you set up a

new node. My identity obviously that's your long name right there.

The public key is displayed there. They highly recommend that

you set this first line your name or your call sign,

your handle, whatever you want to call it right there.

Position is either GPS if you have GPS enabled on

your Laura device, position lat long or map picker. Toggle

between the two and include position on adverts, share position

on adverts. You can see that box is not checked

for me there. And like I said, I named this

one the Treker Delta because that is the device that

we are using today. This Treker Delta from Spec five

is great I've been carrying this for maybe maybe about

a year. I used to run Meshtastic on it, but

now I've got meshcre on it again. This is going

to be my mesh Core router that I will have

at the MORE Expo in April of twenty twenty six

April of this year. The Treker Delta is a compact

off grid mesh radio with up to five days of

battery life using a replaceable eighteen six point fifty cell.

It includes a high gain antenna ten DBI intenna this

one right here, ten kickstand right there, belt clip and

it works with Meshtastic ATAC mesh Core and right out

of the box. I didn't have to do anything special

to it to load mesh Core on it. I just

flashed it from the website. Spec five is the sponsor

today's video. You can save a five percent discount off

of all of their devices on the website link in

the description below coupon code of ham Radio two point zero.

Thank you Spec five for supporting the channel. So that's

why I called that Treker Delta. Right there the name

share my position and advert under the radio settings. It

has a choose preset button over here on the right side,

and it has this drop down list with all the

countries in it. Obviously I selected United States for mine.

USA Canada recommended uses the GPS, so it knows where

I am anyway, pretty cool. So it sets your frequency

and megaherts and your bandwidth right there. We're on nine

ten dot five to five megahertz had a sixty two

point five kilohertz bandwidth. It has advanced manual settings for frequency, bandwidth,

spreading factor, coding rate, and transmit power. You can see

all that right there. This is the default settings. I

did not I did not change any of this, so

this is just what it came up with default after

I chose USA and Canada. You can turn it into

a repeater by checking the box there that says enable

repeat mode. Manage identity key that's right there. You can

import a private key or export your private key right there.

I've never messed with that. I don't know why you'd

want to. Bluetooth settings. Inside of that Contact settings auto

ad all you can auto ad select it. You can

choose who you want to see on your contact list

right there. Message settings a lot of different things to

set inside the message keep screen on Jump to oldest

message mark deliver faster safe draft message Show channel message hops.

That might be a good one. Show channel message hops.

I like that. Only turn that one on. Notification settings.

Everything's checked. This is default. I didn't change anything on this,

but you can turn this off if it gets too

much for you. Contact messages, channel messages, Room new messages

with while disconnected contacts full list that kind of thing

that's under the notifications. Position settings enable mesh cores device

GPS will be enabled and your position will be updated automatically.

This setting persists across reboots and firmware V one, dot twelve,

dot zero and higher. So there we go. Not every

mesh core node will have GPS enabled. Some of the

lesser expensive device that don't have a GPS module built in.

This one does, of course, so I have that option

available to me. Telemetry settings allow tenlemetry requests no by default.

Include location in your telemetry no by default, And include

environment in your telemetry no by default. You can add

environment sensors to that if you wanted to have like

a repeater up with like a temperature sensor or weather

sensor on it. Experimental settings. Under experimental settings, this is

the part here. That has path hash size. Default path

is one byte max of sixty four hops. Faster channel sinking.

Use Companion clocks for DMS and use Companion clocks for

command line. Those are all unchecked by default. I didn't

change anything in here. Probably more settings that I'll ever

deal with myself. Theme. You can have a light and

dark theme. I always keep mine on the dark theme.

Language is device language English. Of course, you can change

it language in there all you want to. And then

extra tools Import configuration. If you want to save configure

from another device, you can export this configuration to use

on another device. Purge data delete all contacts from the

app your Mesh Core device. I am unaware this purge

data is the way it's worded is kind of like

a node database reset. I don't know if that means

it resets everything. I mean it says deletes all contacts.

So if I do that, purge all keep okay, So

that's going to be like node contact database reset, because

it's got an option for purge all or keep favorites. So,

and that's what it says. When you go to cleaning

the node database and Meshtastic, that's what we'll ask you.

Do you want to keep your favorites, so you can

do either one of those there, Okay, we might do

that in a second. I've never cleaned anything. I've had

this since I was in Connecticut last month, and all

of the a lot of these nodes that are still

in my list are from the Connecticut from being out

of state, purge data, bug reporting, debug logs, factory reset, reboot,

and then under that has channels one out of forty.

Move that up a bit storage capacity, and then view

telemetry is the last one down there. One of the

things I don't really care for about mesh Core in

general the app is that you can reboot the device,

but you can't really shut it down. There's a way

to shut down into reboot the device. In Meshtastic it's

a little bit more tricky, and mesh Core it's not

next to the reboot, which to me means it's not intuitive.

So I don't really like that part. I was like,

you know, if you're gonna have a reboot section, go

down here. When I click on reboot, I should be

able to shut the node down if I want to

shut it off and save battery power. If I'm going

to be driving from point A to point B, and

I want to use the node when I get to

point B, and I don't want it to bring down

my battery between now and then. But it doesn't have that.

That's one of the things that's different about it. I'm

not saying it's good or bad, right or wrong. I'm

just it's different. It's different. I wish it did have

a shut down prompt right there next to the reboot,

so that it was a little bit easier to see,

a little bit easier to read, and just easier to

shut down the note. A lot of these nodes have

a shut down option on the hardware key or maybe

a switch. This one actually has a switch on it too,

so it's easy to shut this down for this note

for this Treker Delta from Spec five. But in the

app you should have a shutdown also. And again I

think it's in here somewhere. I'm just not seeing it

in the menu right now. But that's pretty much the

whole menu for Mesh Core. I am going to wipe

the database and I'm going to set that up for

when IM going to go to the more expo here

in a couple of weeks. But very very lightweight app

and one of the cool things about meshcre in general

is this. I told you we would talk about this

a little bit more. These adverts, the zero hop, the

flooded routed, and the advert to clipboard here. So this

is how the mesh discovers you. Zero hop is local only,

like we said, flood routed propagates network wide, and you

must choose one of these before anyone else will see you.

So that's one of the cool things about it. You

don't have to wait for the device to discover somebody

or reach out and wait for some other node to

find you. You can tap one of these two features

flood routed or zero hop. Use flood routed if there's

a repeater near you, and you can advertise your node.

You can also add it to the map manually. So

that's one of the really cool things about meshcor that

Mestastic does. But it does it automatically for you, and

there is a way to go in there and do

it manually as well, but I think meshcre a little

bit easier way to do that. Meshcre also has repeater

and room server management, so we talked about that a

minute ago as well. When you're connected to your own

companion radio. In other words, if I owned one of

these other devices, which I don't, okay, I could remotely

log into any repeater via this three dot menu. I

could set the frequency of the latitude, longitude, start over

the air firmware updates, set the password, and all that

kind of stuff. So it has remote management built in

to the app by default. You can totally do that

with mesh Tastic. I set up Mesastic to do that

a long time ago, back when it wasn't default in

the app. These days, I think it's default in the app.

I think over the air firmware updates is default in

the app now, but Meshcore has had it since day one. Also,

encryption is end to end by default. HAMD mode equivalent

is just not using encryption if you want to do that.

Most of us keep encryption on HAMD mode. I don't

use it in Meshtastic, I don't plan to use it

in Meshcore either. Meshcore has an Internet map integration. One

tap add me to the map from the three dot

menu or repeater options message retry, long press any failed

message to rescind. What do you guys think about the

Meshcore app? What do you think about meshcor. Do you

have Meshcore near you? That's the question. Meshcore is finally

starting to pop up near me. Meshtastic's been around here

for a long time. Meshcre is finally starting to pop

up near me. I'm looking forward to using it. I'm

gonna set up one of my own I'm gonna set

up a mesh Core repeater at my home and put

it on a solar note and put it up high

on top of my two story house. And I'm looking

forward to seeing what else we can find with it.

So probably do some videos about chatting on the app

and seeing what we can see, and that I might

even record myself on the roof one of these days

to see what kind of line of sight we can

get up there. So really enjoying the Meshcre and Meshtastic

stuff right now. Hope that you guys are too. Put

a comment below let me know if I missed anything

on this app, if I missed any really important features

on this app that you'd like to see, if there's

other stuff you'd like to see done with meshcor on

this channel later, put a comment in the video blow

and if you like this video, check these out. Up

here because YouTube thinks you want to watch those next

seventy three guys. We'll talk to you next time.