What it is

Three different things have similar names. It helps to separate them first.

MeshCore, the network

MeshCore is a message network that travels by radio, with no carrier, subscription, or internet connection. Devices use long-range, low-bandwidth radios: a few kilometres in open country, a few hundred bytes per message, no photos.

It is a mesh network: every device can relay what it hears. A message leaves your radio, a repeater on high ground picks it up, another repeater farther away passes it on, and it reaches someone your radio cannot reach directly. Each device is a node, and each relay along the way is a hop.

There are two ways to write to someone:

• A direct message, encrypted for one recipient.
• A room, called a channel in Meshloom: a shared space where everyone with the same key — a string used to encrypt and decrypt — can read and write.

Nodes also announce themselves at regular intervals with an advert: a small packet saying “I am here”, along with a name, public key, and sometimes coordinates. That is how contacts appear without anyone entering them by hand.

The companion radio, the box on the desk

A MeshCore companion radio is the physical device: a small box with an antenna, sometimes a screen, usually powered by USB or a battery. It handles the radio work and little else. It has neither a comfortable keyboard nor a useful screen for reading a conversation.

It therefore needs a client: a phone, computer, or server. The client displays messages, chooses who to write to, and changes settings. The radio transmits, listens, and relays.

Its memory is small. It holds a few hundred contacts and a handful of rooms, no more. Once it is full, something has to make room.

Meshloom, the server and interface

Meshloom is a server installed on a Linux machine, plus a web interface. It connects to the radio over USB, TCP, or Bluetooth, and puts everything in a browser.

Two practical consequences:

• It keeps listening when the tab is closed. The server stays connected to the radio and writes every message and packet it hears to a database. Open the page tomorrow and the history is still there.
• It keeps more than the radio can. Contacts and rooms that do not fit in the radio remain on the server, along with raw packets. Add a room key next week and last week’s traffic can be decrypted, as long as those packets are still stored.

Meshloom also adds what a radio alone cannot: a map of heard nodes, a visualizer of the paths packets actually took, a raw packet feed, and outputs to MQTT, Home Assistant, a webhook, Apprise, or an SQS queue. Meshloom Community adds the shared directory — names for nodes you have not heard yet, radios that heard the same packet, a transmission test — and decryption of public channels you do not know yet, which then show up in Discovered channels. Repeaters can be polled at a regular interval, with an alert when a reading leaves the limits you set.

What Meshloom is not

It is not firmware: the radio keeps its own, and Meshloom does not replace it. The server runs on your machine. A new install joins Meshloom Community unless you opt out — that can publish overheard raw packets to the official Stats hosts. Existing databases stay as they were.

One thing to know before starting: Meshloom takes control of the radio’s contacts and rooms. It loads, unloads, and replaces them according to what it considers useful. That is how it gets past the device’s memory limit. It is a poor fit if you often switch radios and expect each device to keep its own favourites.

As for its origin: Meshloom started from the MeshCore web client written by Jack Kingsman, which Ian Langworth carried on for a while. The original copyright remains in the MIT licence.

Next: Install.