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Configuration Tips

Roles​

It is strongly recommended to keep your ROLE set to CLIENT. Only change this if you have a specific, well-understood reason to do so.

  • CLIENT nodes efficiently repeat and route packets as needed.
  • They use smart delays for rebroadcasting, improving network stability.

Avoid ROUTERand REPEATER​

Using ROUTER or REPEATER roles unnecessarily can cause serious network issues:

  • Increased risk of packet collision.
  • Reduced message delivery rates.
  • Decreased effective network range due to unnecessary hop consumption.

These roles are for very specific applications. Before changing from CLIENT, carefully review the documentation to understand the implications. Additionally, coordinating this with your local community to ensure its impact is a positive one rather than a negative one.

Remember: A network of CLIENT nodes with a small number of well-placed ROUTERS is usually the most efficient and stable configuration.

(Not) Sharing Your Location​

Telemetry is shared over your PRIMARY channel. This means that if your node has acquired GPS coordinates from an integrated GPS chip, or from your mobile device, your coordinates will be sent to the mesh over this channel, using it's defined encryption (if any).

By default the PRIMARY channel's name is LongFast with the encryption key "AQ==" (Base64 equivalent of Hex 0x01). If this is left unchanged, your location will be shared with all nodes in range that are also using the default channel.

Using Position Precision​

Meshtastic now supports the ability to control the precision of location data sent over a particular channel.

The position_precision setting allows control of the level of precision for location data that is sent over a particular channel. This can be useful for privacy reasons, where obfuscating the exact location may be desired when sending position data over certain channels.

For detailed information on position precision settings and how to configure them, please refer to the Position Precision documentation.

Creating a Private Primary with Default Secondary​

Alternatively, if you wish to only share your location with trusted parties, you may create a private PRIMARY channel and use the defaults for a SECONDARY channel.

  1. Ensure you have not changed the LoRa Modem Preset from the default unset / LONG_FAST.
  2. On your PRIMARY channel, set anything you'd like for the channel's name and choose a random PSK.
  3. Enable a SECONDARY channel named "LongFast" with PSK "AQ==".
  4. If your LoRa frequency slot is set to the default (0), the radio's transmit frequency will be automatically changed based on your PRIMARY channel's name. In this case, you will have to manually set it back to your region's default (in LoRa settings) in order to interface with users on the default slot:

Default Primary Frequency Slots by Region​

USEU_433EU_868CNJPANZKRTWRUINNZ_865THUA_433UA_868MY_433MY_919SG_923LORA_24
20413620201216244166241646

To quickly test this configuration, find and scan your region's QR from this repository. Remember to generate a new PSK for your private channel before sharing with your trusted nodes.

Rebroadcast "Public" Traffic​

Meshtastic nodes will rebroadcast all packets if they share LoRa modem settings, regardless of encryption (unless Rebroadcast mode is set to LOCAL_ONLY).

info

If you would like your nodes to include/expand the "public" mesh, you must use the default modem preset LONG_FAST. If you change your PRIMARY channel name, you must manually set the LoRa channel to the default for your region (see above).

Hop Count​

It is strongly recommended to leave your MAX HOPS set to 3 unless you're sure you need more (or less) to reach your destination node. Unnecessarily high hop counts often lead to network issues.

Chat Channels and LoRa Frequency Slots​

Previously, Meshtastic used the word "channels" to define two different configuration properties: Messaging Channels & LoRa Channel Numbers. However, this could lead to confusion since "channels" was being used to refer to two distinct concepts. To clarify the distinction, the decision was made to change "LoRa Channel Number" to "LoRa Frequency Slot".

Radio Config: Channels​

These configure "message groups" and include your PRIMARY and SECONDARY channels. All SECONDARY channels use the same LoRa modem config as your PRIMARY channel (including LoRa frequency slot).

There are 8 total messaging channels. Channel 0 is your PRIMARY channel, with channels 1-7 available for private group messaging and/or special channels such as admin.

Radio Config: LoRa Frequency Slot​

This property, formerly known as "LoRa Channel Number", configures the frequency the radio is set to. Check out the frequency calculator to view the relationship between "frequency slot" and radio frequency.

Best Practices​

  • If you are part of a large mesh and don't know what a setting does, don't change it (unless you're super curious).
  • TEST your settings and hardware before you install in hard-to-reach locations.
  • Connecting a node to the public MQTT server may publish the locations of all nodes in your mesh to the internet. This will also add every globally connected node to your node database and potentially flood your mesh with all types of packets.