🥔 PotatoMesh

A simple Meshtastic-powered node dashboard for your local community. No MQTT clutter, just local LoRa aether.

• Web app with chat window and map view showing nodes, neighbors, telemetry, and messages.
• API to POST (authenticated) and to GET nodes and messages.
• Supplemental Python ingestor to feed the POST APIs of the Web app with data remotely.
• Shows new node notifications (first seen) in chat.
• Allows searching and filtering for nodes in map and table view.

Live demo for Berlin #MediumFast: potatomesh.net

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" \
exec ruby app.rb -p 41447 -o 0.0.0.0

• RACK_ENV and APP_ENV must be set to production to 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_TOKEN value to authorize POST requests against the API.
• Configure INSTANCE_DOMAIN with the public URL of your deployment so vanity links and generated metadata resolve correctly.

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.
CHANNEL	"#LongFast"	Default channel name displayed in the UI.
FREQUENCY	"915MHz"	Default frequency description displayed in the UI.
CONTACT_LINK	"#potatomesh:dod.ngo"	Chat link or Matrix alias rendered in the footer and overlays.
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 and ingestor 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.
CONNECTION	/dev/ttyACM0	Serial device, TCP endpoint, or Bluetooth target used by the ingestor to reach the Meshtastic radio.

The application derives SEO-friendly document titles, descriptions, and social preview tags from these existing configuration values and reuses the bundled logo for Open Graph and Twitter cards.

Example:

SITE_NAME="PotatoMesh Demo" 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.

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—federation requests will be ignored and the ingestor will skip discovery tasks. 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 - returns the latest 100 messages (disabled when PRIVATE=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/instances - returns known potato-mesh instances in other locations
• 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 (requires Authorization: Bearer <API_TOKEN>)
• POST /api/positions - appends positions provided as a JSON object or array (requires Authorization: Bearer <API_TOKEN>)
• POST /api/messages - appends messages provided as a JSON object or array (requires Authorization: Bearer <API_TOKEN>; disabled when PRIVATE=1)
• POST /api/telemetry - appends telemetry provided as a JSON object or array (requires Authorization: Bearer <API_TOKEN>)
• POST /api/neighbors - appends neighbor tuples provided as a JSON object or array (requires Authorization: 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.

Observability

PotatoMesh ships with a Prometheus exporter mounted at /metrics. Consult PROMETHEUS.md for deployment guidance, metric details, and scrape configuration examples.

Python Ingestor

The web app is not meant to be run locally connected to a Meshtastic node but rather on a remote host without access to a physical Meshtastic 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 Meshtastic node via serial port or to a remote device that exposes the Meshtastic 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 -U meshtastic

It uses the Meshtastic 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.

POTATOMESH_INSTANCE=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 POTATOMESH_INSTANCE 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 (e.g., ED:4D:9E:95:CF:60) and the script attempts a BLE connection if available.

Demos

Post your nodes here:

• https://github.com/l5yth/potato-mesh/discussions/258

Docker

Docker images are published on Github for each release:

docker pull ghcr.io/l5yth/potato-mesh/web:latest    # newest release
docker pull ghcr.io/l5yth/potato-mesh/web:v3.0      # pinned historical release
docker pull ghcr.io/l5yth/potato-mesh/ingestor:latest

Set POTATOMESH_IMAGE_TAG in your .env (or environment) to deploy a specific tagged release with Docker Compose. See the Docker guide for more details and custom deployment instructions.

License

Apache v2.0, Contact COM0@l5y.tech

Join our community chat to discuss the dashboard or ask for technical support: #potatomesh:dod.ngo