* web: add reticulum frontend support * docs: update readme * web: address ui review comments
🥔 PotatoMesh
A federated Meshtastic, Meshcore, and Reticulum node dashboard for your local community. No MQTT clutter, just local LoRa aether.
- Web dashboard with chat window and map view showing nodes, positions, neighbors,
trace routes, telemetry, and messages.
- API to POST (authenticated) and to GET nodes, messages, and telemetry.
- Shows new node notifications (first seen) and telemetry logs in chat.
- Allows searching and filtering for nodes in map and table view.
- Federated: automatically froms a federation with other communities running Potato Mesh!
- Supports Meshtastic, Meshcore, and Reticulum.
- Supplemental Python ingestor to feed the POST APIs of the Web app with data remotely.
- Supports multiple ingestors per instance.
- Supports Meshtastic, Meshcore, and Reticulum protocols.
- Matrix bridge that posts Meshtastic messages to a defined matrix channel (no radio required).
- Mobile app to read messages on your local aether (no radio required).
Live demo for Berlin: potatomesh.net
Jump to Contents:
- Web App - configuration, running, deploying, monitoring, etc.
- Ingestor - configuration, running, transmitting, etc.
- Nix - nix deployment
- Docker - docker deployment
- Matrix Bridge - configuration and deployment
Web App
Requires Ruby for the Sinatra web app and SQLite3 for the app's database.
pacman -S ruby sqlite3
gem install sinatra sqlite3 rackup puma rspec rack-test rufo prometheus-client
cd ./web
bundle install
Run
Check out the app.sh run script in ./web directory.
API_TOKEN="1eb140fd-cab4-40be-b862-41c607762246" ./app.sh
== Sinatra (v4.1.1) has taken the stage on 41447 for development with backup from Puma
Puma starting in single mode...
[...]
* Environment: development
* PID: 188487
* Listening on http://127.0.0.1:41447
Check 127.0.0.1:41447 for the development preview
of the node map. Set API_TOKEN required for authorizations on the API's POST endpoints.
Production
When promoting the app to production, run the server with the minimum required configuration to ensure secure access and proper routing:
RACK_ENV="production" \
APP_ENV="production" \
API_TOKEN="SuperSecureTokenReally" \
INSTANCE_DOMAIN="https://potatomesh.net" \
MAP_CENTER="53.55,13.42" \
exec ruby app.rb -p 41447 -o 0.0.0.0
RACK_ENVandAPP_ENVmust be set toproductionto enable optimized settings suited for live deployments.- Bind the server to a production port and all interfaces (
-p 41447 -o 0.0.0.0) so that clients can reach the dashboard over the network. - Provide a strong
API_TOKENvalue to authorize POST requests against the API. - Configure
INSTANCE_DOMAINwith the public URL of your deployment so vanity links and generated metadata resolve correctly. - Don't forget to set a
MAP_CENTERto point to your local region.
The web app can be configured with environment variables (defaults shown):
| Variable | Default | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
API_TOKEN |
required | Shared secret that authorizes ingestors and API clients making POST requests. |
INSTANCE_DOMAIN |
auto-detected | Public hostname (optionally with port) used for metadata, federation, and generated API links. |
SITE_NAME |
"PotatoMesh Demo" |
Title and header displayed in the UI. |
MESHTASTIC_PRESET |
"#LongFast" |
Meshtastic radio preset shown in the join strip, meta description, and federation directory (e.g. MediumFast). |
MESHTASTIC_FREQ |
"915MHz" |
Meshtastic frequency shown alongside the preset. |
MESHCORE_PRESET |
unset | Meshcore radio preset for the join strip; the Meshcore line is hidden until both MESHCORE_* values are set. |
MESHCORE_FREQ |
unset | Meshcore frequency for the join strip. |
CONTACT_LINK |
"#potatomesh:dod.ngo" |
Chat link or Matrix alias rendered in the footer and overlays. |
ANNOUNCEMENT |
unset | Optional announcement banner text rendered above the header on every page. |
MAP_CENTER |
38.761944,-27.090833 |
Latitude and longitude that centre the map on load. |
MAP_ZOOM |
unset | Fixed Leaflet zoom applied on first load; disables auto-fit when provided. |
MAX_DISTANCE |
42 |
Maximum distance (km) before node relationships are hidden on the map. |
DEBUG |
0 |
Set to 1 for verbose logging in the web services. |
FEDERATION |
1 |
Set to 1 to announce your instance and crawl peers, or 0 to disable federation. Private mode overrides this. |
PRIVATE |
0 |
Set to 1 to hide the chat UI, disable message APIs, and exclude hidden clients from public listings. |
EVENTS |
1 |
Set to 0 to disable the live-update SSE stream (GET /api/events); clients then fall back to polling at the refresh interval. |
MIN_THREADS |
16 |
Minimum Puma worker threads kept warm. |
MAX_THREADS |
96 |
Maximum Puma worker threads. Each active /api/events SSE stream pins one thread, so keep this above your peak concurrent SSE clients plus API/ingest headroom. |
OG_IMAGE_URL |
unset | Optional absolute URL for the social preview image. Must use an http:// or https:// scheme; values with other schemes are ignored. Most social platforms (Facebook, LinkedIn, Slack, iMessage) require HTTPS to render the card. When set, replaces the runtime-generated /og-image.png so deployments without Chromium (or with size-conscious images) can point at a CDN. |
PAGES_DIR |
./pages |
The directory for static, custom-content pages. |
The application derives SEO-friendly document titles, descriptions, and social
preview tags from these existing configuration values. /robots.txt and
/sitemap.xml are generated automatically and respect PRIVATE/FEDERATION
toggles; markdown files in pages/ may declare optional YAML frontmatter
(title, description, image, noindex) for per-page overrides. The
image: frontmatter must be an absolute http(s):// URL; other schemes are
silently dropped to keep operators from accidentally leaking data: or
javascript: URIs into Open Graph tags.
If INSTANCE_DOMAIN is unset in production the app emits a one-time WARN
at startup; canonical URLs and sitemap entries fall back to the inbound
Host header, which can be cache-poisoned by a misconfigured proxy. Set
INSTANCE_DOMAIN to your public hostname to silence the warning.
Example:
SITE_NAME="PotatoMesh Demo" INSTANCE_DOMAIN="https://potatomesh.net" MAP_CENTER=38.761944,-27.090833 MAP_ZOOM=11 MAX_DISTANCE=42 CONTACT_LINK="#potatomesh:dod.ngo" ./app.sh
Configuration & Storage
PotatoMesh stores its runtime assets using the XDG base directory specification. When XDG directories are not provided the application falls back to the repository root.
The key is written to $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/potato-mesh/keyfile and the
well-known document is staged in
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/potato-mesh/well-known/potato-mesh.
The database can be found in $XDG_DATA_HOME/potato-mesh.
Custom Pages
Instance operators can publish static content pages (contact details, mesh
protocol information, legal notices, etc.) by placing Markdown files in the
pages/ directory inside web/. Each .md file automatically becomes a nav
entry and a route under /pages/<slug>.
Files are named <sort-prefix>-<slug>.md: the numeric prefix controls
navigation order and the slug becomes the URL path and nav label:
| Filename | Nav Label | URL |
|---|---|---|
1-about.md |
About | /pages/about |
5-rules.md |
Rules | /pages/rules |
9-contact.md |
Contact | /pages/contact |
20-impressum.md |
Impressum | /pages/impressum |
A default 1-about.md ships with the app. In Docker deployments the directory
is exposed as the potatomesh_pages volume (mounted at /app/pages) so you can
add or edit pages without rebuilding the image. The pages directory can also be
overridden with the PAGES_DIR environment variable.
Federation
PotatoMesh instances can optionally federate by publishing signed metadata and
discovering peers. Federation is enabled by default and controlled with the
FEDERATION environment variable. Set FEDERATION=1 (default) to announce your
instance, respond to remote crawlers, and crawl the wider network. Set
FEDERATION=0 to keep your deployment isolated. Private mode still takes
precedence; when PRIVATE=1, federation features remain disabled regardless of
the FEDERATION value.
When federation is enabled, PotatoMesh automatically refreshes entries from known peers every eight hours to keep the directory current. Instances that stop responding are considered stale and are removed from the web frontend after 72 hours, ensuring visitors only see active deployments in the public directory.
API
The web app contains an API:
- GET
/api/nodes?limit=100- returns the latest 100 nodes reported to the app - GET
/api/positions?limit=100- returns the latest 100 position data - GET
/api/messages?limit=100&encrypted=false&since=0- returns the latest 100 messages newer than the provided unix timestamp (defaults tosince=0to return full history; disabled whenPRIVATE=1) - GET
/api/telemetry?limit=100- returns the latest 100 telemetry data - GET
/api/neighbors?limit=100- returns the latest 100 neighbor tuples - GET
/api/traces?limit=100- returns the latest 100 trace-routes caught - GET
/api/instances- returns known potato-mesh instances in other locations - GET
/api/ingestors- returns active potato-mesh python ingestors that feed data - GET
/metrics- metrics for the prometheus endpoint - GET
/version- information about the potato-mesh instance - POST
/api/nodes- upserts nodes provided as JSON object mapping node ids to node data (requiresAuthorization: Bearer <API_TOKEN>) - POST
/api/positions- appends positions provided as a JSON object or array (requiresAuthorization: Bearer <API_TOKEN>) - POST
/api/messages- appends messages provided as a JSON object or array (requiresAuthorization: Bearer <API_TOKEN>; disabled whenPRIVATE=1) - POST
/api/telemetry- appends telemetry provided as a JSON object or array (requiresAuthorization: Bearer <API_TOKEN>) - POST
/api/neighbors- appends neighbor tuples provided as a JSON object or array (requiresAuthorization: Bearer <API_TOKEN>) - POST
/api/traces- appends caught traces routes provided as a JSON object or array (requiresAuthorization: Bearer <API_TOKEN>)
The API_TOKEN environment variable must be set to a non-empty value and match the token supplied in the Authorization header for POST requests.
Monitoring
PotatoMesh ships with a Prometheus exporter mounted at /metrics. Consult
PROMETHEUS.md for deployment guidance, metric details, and
scrape configuration examples.
Ingestor
The web app is not meant to be run locally connected to a LoRa node but rather on a remote host without access to a physical LoRa device. Therefore, it only accepts data through the API POST endpoints. Benefit is, here multiple nodes across the community can feed the dashboard with data. The web app handles messages and nodes by ID and there will be no duplication.
For convenience, the directory ./data contains a Python ingestor. It connects to a
LoRa node via serial port or to a remote device that exposes the LoRa TCP
or Bluetooth (BLE) interfaces to gather nodes and messages seen by the node.
pacman -S python
cd ./data
python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -r "requirements.txt
It uses the respective Python library to ingest mesh data and post nodes and messages to the configured potato-mesh instance.
Check out mesh.sh ingestor script in the ./data directory.
INSTANCE_DOMAIN=http://127.0.0.1:41447 API_TOKEN=1eb140fd-cab4-40be-b862-41c607762246 CONNECTION=/dev/ttyACM0 DEBUG=1 ./mesh.sh
[2025-02-20T12:34:56.789012Z] [potato-mesh] [info] channel=0 context=daemon.main port='41447' target='http://127.0.0.1' Mesh daemon starting
[...]
[2025-02-20T12:34:57.012345Z] [potato-mesh] [debug] context=handlers.upsert_node node_id=!849b7154 short_name='7154' long_name='7154' Queued node upsert payload
[2025-02-20T12:34:57.456789Z] [potato-mesh] [debug] context=handlers.upsert_node node_id=!ba653ae8 short_name='3ae8' long_name='3ae8' Queued node upsert payload
[2025-02-20T12:34:58.001122Z] [potato-mesh] [debug] context=handlers.store_packet_dict channel=0 from_id='!9ee71c38' payload='Guten Morgen!' to_id='^all' Queued message payload
Run the script with INSTANCE_DOMAIN and API_TOKEN to keep updating
node records and parsing new incoming messages. Enable debug output with DEBUG=1,
specify the connection target with CONNECTION (default /dev/ttyACM0) or set it to
an IP address (for example 192.168.1.20:4403) to use the Meshtastic TCP
interface. CONNECTION also accepts Bluetooth device addresses in MAC format (e.g.,
ED:4D:9E:95:CF:60) or UUID format for macOS (e.g., C0AEA92F-045E-9B82-C9A6-A1FD822B3A9E)
and the script attempts a BLE connection if available. To keep
ingestion limited, set ALLOWED_CHANNELS to a comma-separated whitelist (for
example ALLOWED_CHANNELS="Chat,Ops"); packets on other channels are discarded.
Use HIDDEN_CHANNELS to block specific channels from the web UI even when they
appear in the allowlist.
| Variable | Default | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
API_TOKEN |
required | Shared secret that authorizes ingestors and API clients making POST requests. |
INSTANCE_DOMAIN |
required | Public hostname (optionally with port) used for feeding the API with data. |
PROTOCOL |
meshtastic |
Which protocol are we ingesting? One of meshtastic, meshcore, or reticulum. |
CONNECTION |
/dev/ttyACM0 |
Where do we talk to the node? Accepts serial ports, TCP connections, and bluetooth addresses (BLE mac). |
DEBUG |
0 |
Set to 1 for verbose logging in the ingestor services. |
ALLOWED_CHANNELS |
unset | Comma-separated channel names the ingestor accepts; when set, all other channels are skipped before hidden filters. |
HIDDEN_CHANNELS |
unset | Comma-separated channel names the ingestor will ignore when forwarding packets. |
TRANSPORT |
api |
Ingestor transport: api (Meshtastic library over serial/TCP/BLE) or udp (passive LAN multicast; see Passive UDP transport). |
PRIMARY_CHANNEL_ONLY |
0 |
Set to 1 to ingest only the primary channel (index 0) and drop all other channels. In UDP transport this requires PRIMARY_CHANNEL_NAME; without it, every packet is dropped (fail closed). |
PRIMARY_CHANNEL_KEY |
AQ== |
Base64 PSK used to decrypt the primary channel in UDP transport (default = Meshtastic default key). |
PRIMARY_CHANNEL_NAME |
unset | Name of channel 0 (e.g. MediumFast/LongFast: the preset name the firmware uses when the channel name is blank, as shown by meshtastic --info). Used to compute the channel hash that identifies primary traffic on the UDP multicast. Required by UDP PRIMARY_CHANNEL_ONLY=1, because a secondary channel can share the default AQ== key: only the per-channel hash of (name, key) distinguishes them. |
MESH_UDP_GROUP |
224.0.0.69 |
Multicast group joined in UDP transport. |
MESH_UDP_PORT |
4403 |
Multicast port joined in UDP transport. |
INGESTOR_NODE_ID |
unset | !xxxxxxxx id used for the ingestor heartbeat on the transports that cannot auto-detect "self": UDP transport and PROTOCOL=reticulum. Without it the heartbeat never registers and that protocol's packets/hour stats stay at zero. |
RETICULUM_CONFIG_DIR |
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/potato-mesh/reticulum, else ~/.config/potato-mesh/reticulum |
Which Reticulum config the ingestor uses, and so where it looks for available interfaces. App-owned by default: it never adopts the operator's own ~/.reticulum. Set it only to deliberately share an existing RNS stack. See Reticulum. |
RETICULUM_INTERFACES |
unset | Which RNS interfaces to ingest announces from: name your local LoRa interface, e.g. RNode or BerlinMesh. Comma-separated and matched as a case-insensitive substring of the interface name. Empty ingests every interface. See Reticulum. |
MESHCORE_TELEMETRY_POLL_SECONDS |
300 |
Requires TX_ENABLED=1 (polling other nodes is a transmission). Seconds between Meshcore contact telemetry polls (one on-air request per interval, round-robin over the roster; each contact is additionally polled at most once per 24 h: when every contact is fresh the tick sends nothing). Set 0 to disable on-air polling. |
MESHCORE_SELF_TELEMETRY_SECONDS |
3600 |
Seconds between Meshcore host self-telemetry reads (battery/sensors over the companion link, no airtime). Set 0 to disable. |
TX_ENABLED |
0 |
Master switch for everything the ingestor puts on the air Off by default: the ingestor is a listener. Set to 1 to allow transmitting; this is what enables Meshcore on-air contact telemetry polling. Does not by itself enable announcements. See Transmitting on the mesh. |
TX_ANNOUNCE |
0 |
Set to 1 (with TX_ENABLED=1) to broadcast a one-line activity summary on the default channel: at most once per 24 h, never in the first 24 h after start. Off by default: it is unsolicited automated traffic on a channel people read. See Transmitting on the mesh. |
Transmitting on the mesh
By default a PotatoMesh ingestor never transmits. It listens, and forwards what it hears to your dashboard. Nothing below happens unless you turn it on.
That default is deliberate. Airtime on a LoRa mesh is a shared, scarce resource, and whether automated traffic belongs on a community's channels is that community's decision: not a default we get to make for you.
| Variable | Default | What turning it on means |
|---|---|---|
TX_ENABLED |
0 |
The ingestor may transmit. On its own this enables Meshcore on-air telemetry polling: round-robin requests to other nodes for their battery/sensor readings, at most one request per MESHCORE_TELEMETRY_POLL_SECONDS (default 300 s) and at most once per 24 h per node. This is how other nodes' telemetry reaches your dashboard. Meshtastic ingestion needs no transmission at all. |
TX_ANNOUNCE |
0 |
Requires TX_ENABLED=1. Broadcasts one line on your default channel, at most once every 24 h, and never in the first 24 h after the ingestor starts. |
The announcement looks like this:
Meshtastic activity in the last 24h: 42 active nodes, 118 packets/hour. https://mesh.example.org
The numbers are read back from your own instance's public API, so they reflect
the whole mesh your dashboard sees rather than the one radio doing the talking.
It is suppressed automatically when your instance runs with PRIVATE=1, and
that check fails closed: if the ingestor cannot reach your instance to ask, it
does not transmit.
Both flags must be on for an announcement to go out:
TX_ENABLED |
TX_ANNOUNCE |
Result |
|---|---|---|
0 |
0 |
Receive only. The default. |
0 |
1 |
Receive only: TX_ENABLED=0 wins. |
1 |
0 |
Telemetry polling on, no announcements. |
1 |
1 |
Telemetry polling on, one announcement per 24 h. |
The ingestor states the resolved policy in its
log at startup, without needing DEBUG=1:
[2026-08-24T09:12:44.117Z] [potato-mesh] [info] context=tx.policy announcements_permitted=False rx_only=False transmit_permitted=False tx_announce=False tx_enabled=False Transmit policy resolved
If you set a flag and nothing happens, that line tells you what the ingestor actually resolved: including a flag that never reached the container.
Meshcore
Set PROTOCOL=meshcore to ingest from a Meshcore companion-firmware node
instead (serial, TCP, or BLE via the same CONNECTION formats). Alongside
contacts and messages, the ingestor captures RF metrics: per-message SNR and
hop counts, per-channel-message RSSI and repeater path (decoded from the
radio's RX log), and per-advert SNR/RSSI/hops for every node heard on air:
including nodes the radio's contact roster has no room for.
Note: the ingestor writes one radio setting. At startup it enables the
firmware's overwrite-oldest-contact flag (autoadd_config bit 0x01,
firmware ≥ 1.16) so a full contact roster evicts its oldest non-favourite
entry instead of rejecting new nodes. The write happens only when the bit is
not already set, preserves all other auto-add settings, persists on the
device, and never evicts favourites. Older firmware without the command is
left untouched. Evicted contacts remain in the dashboard's database: only
the radio's local roster rotates.
Reticulum
Set PROTOCOL=reticulum to ingest from a Reticulum (RNS) network. This is a
passive announce listener: it registers announce handlers for the
lxmf.delivery, nomadnetwork.node and lxmf.propagation destination aspects
and files every announce it hears as a node. Which aspects a peer announces on
is the only signal Reticulum gives about what it is, so the node's role is
derived from them and ranked: PROPAGATION > NODE > PEER: rather than taken
from whichever announce arrived last.
Announces carry no SNR, battery, or position, so those columns render as dashes
and Reticulum nodes stay off the map. One peer is one node row: the canonical
!xxxxxxxx id derives from the peer's identity hash, so a peer announcing on
several destination aspects merges into a single row rather than appearing once
per aspect.
Set INGESTOR_NODE_ID. Reticulum has no handshake revealing "our" node id.
Without it the ingestor heartbeat never registers and the Reticulum
packets/hour figure stays at zero even while announces are being ingested. The
ingestor warns about this at startup.
Two things worth configuring:
RETICULUM_CONFIG_DIR defaults to an app-owned directory
($XDG_CONFIG_HOME/potato-mesh/reticulum, else ~/.config/potato-mesh/reticulum)
rather than RNS's user default ~/.reticulum. Installing a dashboard ingestor
should not silently adopt the transport-node configuration you run for yourself
— including whatever enable_transport and interfaces it defines. Point the
variable at your own directory if sharing a stack is what you want.
What the config dir starts with, and it differs by whether you scoped it.
Without RETICULUM_INTERFACES, RNS writes its own stock config, whose only
interface is a link-local IPv6 AutoInterface. That hears the Reticulum peers on
your LAN — the "ingests everything" default above — and the packaged ingestor
service runs network_mode: host, so it behaves the same in Docker as on bare
metal. (The opt-in ingestor-bridge profile is not on the host network and hears
nothing there.)
With RETICULUM_INTERFACES set, the ingestor seeds the file itself, with
share_instance = No and no interface enabled. Both parts are deliberate.
Sharing is off because an allowlist can only be honoured on its own RNS stack:
attached to a shared rnsd, every announce arrives over a single
LocalInterface and the allowlist cannot tell them apart. And no interface is
enabled because a stock AutoInterface is named AutoInterface[Default Interface], which matches no sensible allowlist — the listener would connect and
ingest nothing. So a freshly scoped ingestor hears nothing until you add the
interfaces you named; it warns about exactly that at startup, and the seeded
file carries a commented RNodeInterface example to copy.
Two consequences worth stating plainly. A scoped ingestor does not inherit your
rnsd's interfaces, so any radio you want it to hear has to be configured in
its own file. And an AutoInterface never reaches a LoRa radio in any network
mode — that always needs an RNodeInterface pointing at the device, or a
TCPClientInterface pointing at a hub.
Edit the config file on the potatomesh_reticulum volume (Linux images;
--no-deps stops it starting the web stack too):
docker compose run --rm --no-deps --entrypoint sh ingestor \
-c 'vi /app/.config/potato-mesh/reticulum/config'
An existing config is never overwritten, so if you would rather share the stack, write the file yourself and the ingestor leaves it alone. The allowlist then cannot be honoured, so it admits every announce rather than none — and warns once that it is doing so.
RETICULUM_INTERFACES bounds what gets ingested. An RNS stack can carry LoRa
and IP interfaces at once, and RNS's stock config enables an AutoInterface
(IPv6 link-local multicast): so an unscoped listener files every announce on
your LAN, not just your LoRa peers. Setting e.g. RETICULUM_INTERFACES=rnode
restricts ingestion to announces whose path arrived on a matching interface.
Leaving it empty ingests everything, which is the default. Reticulum exposes no
"this peer is on LoRa" marker, so the interface a path arrived on is the only
signal available.
Note that the RNS stack itself is not silent at the interface layer even though
the ingestor is: an AutoInterface multicasts peer discovery, and a config with
enable_transport set relays other nodes' traffic.
Passive UDP transport
The Meshtastic node radio accepts only one API client at a time (serial or
TCP), so an ingestor connected over CONNECTION monopolizes the node: the
phone app, CLI, and message sending fight it for the single slot. Setting
TRANSPORT=udp switches the ingestor to a passive listener that never
connects to the node's API at all: it joins the node's LAN multicast group
(Meshtastic "Mesh via UDP", 224.0.0.69:4403) and decodes packets off the wire,
leaving the node's API slot completely free.
Enable "Mesh via UDP" on the node first (meshtastic --set network.enabled_protocols 1). The ingestor decrypts the primary channel with
PRIMARY_CHANNEL_KEY (the Meshtastic default key AQ== by default). Private
channels with their own secret keys are cryptographically unreadable and
dropped. To guarantee only channel 0 is ingested, set
PRIMARY_CHANNEL_ONLY=1 and PRIMARY_CHANNEL_NAME (e.g. MediumFast): each
packet advertises the hash of its channel (name + key), and only packets whose
hash matches the primary channel's are accepted. This is stricter than decrypting
with the primary key: a secondary channel created with the default AQ== key
would decrypt too, but has a different name and therefore a different hash, so it
is dropped. If PRIMARY_CHANNEL_NAME is not set while PRIMARY_CHANNEL_ONLY=1,
the ingestor fails closed and drops everything. Because there is no API
connection, the node's bulk node database is not read: the node list rebuilds
over the air from observed packets, and payloads (position, telemetry,
traceroute, …) are decoded into the exact same shape the API/serial transport
produces, so the collector receives identical records.
TRANSPORT=udp requires host networking so the container can receive LAN
multicast (network_mode: host). A ready-to-use Raspberry Pi (arm64) deployment
is provided in data/tools/compose.udp.pi.yml.
Capture live packets for testing with
data/tools/capture_udp_fixtures.py.
Nix
For the dev shell, run:
nix develop
The shell provides Ruby plus the Python ingestor dependencies (including meshtastic
and protobuf). To sanity-check that the ingestor starts, run python -m data.mesh
with the usual environment variables (INSTANCE_DOMAIN, API_TOKEN, CONNECTION).
To run the packaged apps directly:
nix run .#web
nix run .#ingestor
Minimal NixOS module snippet:
services.potato-mesh = {
enable = true;
apiTokenFile = config.sops.secrets.potato-mesh-api-token.path;
dataDir = "/var/lib/potato-mesh";
port = 41447;
instanceDomain = "https://mesh.me";
siteName = "Nix Mesh";
contactLink = "homeserver.mx";
mapCenter = "28.96,-13.56";
frequency = "868MHz";
ingestor = {
enable = true;
connection = "192.168.X.Y:4403";
};
};
Docker
Docker images are published on GitHub Container Registry for each release.
Image names and tags follow the workflow format:
${IMAGE_PREFIX}-${service}-${architecture}:${tag} (see .github/workflows/docker.yml).
docker pull ghcr.io/l5yth/potato-mesh-web-linux-amd64:latest
docker pull ghcr.io/l5yth/potato-mesh-web-linux-arm64:latest
docker pull ghcr.io/l5yth/potato-mesh-web-linux-armv7:latest
docker pull ghcr.io/l5yth/potato-mesh-ingestor-linux-amd64:latest
docker pull ghcr.io/l5yth/potato-mesh-ingestor-linux-arm64:latest
docker pull ghcr.io/l5yth/potato-mesh-ingestor-linux-armv7:latest
docker pull ghcr.io/l5yth/potato-mesh-matrix-bridge-linux-amd64:latest
docker pull ghcr.io/l5yth/potato-mesh-matrix-bridge-linux-arm64:latest
docker pull ghcr.io/l5yth/potato-mesh-matrix-bridge-linux-armv7:latest
# version-pinned examples
docker pull ghcr.io/l5yth/potato-mesh-web-linux-amd64:v0.7.5
docker pull ghcr.io/l5yth/potato-mesh-ingestor-linux-amd64:v0.7.5
docker pull ghcr.io/l5yth/potato-mesh-matrix-bridge-linux-amd64:v0.7.5
Note: latest is only published for non-prerelease versions. Pre-release tags
such as -rc, -beta, -alpha, or -dev are version-tagged only.
When using Compose, set POTATOMESH_IMAGE_ARCH in docker-compose.yml (or via
environment) so service images resolve to the correct architecture variant and
you avoid manual tag mistakes.
Feel free to run the configure.sh script to set up your environment. See the Docker guide for more details and custom deployment instructions.
Matrix Bridge
A matrix bridge is currently being worked on. It requests messages from a configured potato-mesh instance and forwards it to a specified matrix channel; see matrix/README.md.
Mobile App
A mobile reader app is currently being worked on. Stay tuned for releases and updates.
Demos
Post your nodes and screenshots here:
License
Apache v2.0, Contact COM0@l5y.tech
Join our community chat to discuss the dashboard or ask for technical support: #potatomesh:dod.ngo

