🥔 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
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):

• SITE_NAME - title and header shown in the ui (default: "Meshtastic Berlin")
• DEFAULT_CHANNEL - default channel shown in the ui (default: "#MediumFast")
• DEFAULT_FREQUENCY - default channel shown in the ui (default: "868MHz")
• MAP_CENTER_LAT / MAP_CENTER_LON - default map center coordinates (default: 52.502889 / 13.404194)
• MAX_NODE_DISTANCE_KM - hide nodes farther than this distance from the center (default: 137)
• MATRIX_ROOM - matrix room id for a footer link (default: #meshtastic-berlin:matrix.org)
• PRIVATE - set to 1 to hide the chat UI, disable message APIs, and exclude hidden clients (default: unset)
• PROM_REPORT_IDS - comma-separated list of Node IDs to report in prometheus metrics, * for all (default: unset)

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="Meshtastic Berlin" MAP_CENTER_LAT=52.502889 MAP_CENTER_LON=13.404194 MAX_NODE_DISTANCE_KM=137 MATRIX_ROOM="#meshtastic-berlin:matrix.org" ./app.sh

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 /metrics- prometheus endpoint
• 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.

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 MESH_SERIAL=/dev/ttyACM0 DEBUG=1 ./mesh.sh
Mesh daemon: nodes+messages → http://127.0.0.1 | port=41447 | channel=0
[...]
[debug] upserted node !849b7154 shortName='7154'
[debug] upserted node !ba653ae8 shortName='3ae8'
[debug] upserted node !16ced364 shortName='Pat'
[debug] stored message from '!9ee71c38' to '^all' ch=0 text='Guten Morgen!'

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 serial port with MESH_SERIAL (default /dev/ttyACM0) or set it to an IP address (for example 192.168.1.20:4403) to use the Meshtastic TCP interface. MESH_SERIAL also accepts Bluetooth device addresses (e.g., ED:4D:9E:95:CF:60) and attempts an BLE connection if available.

Demos

• https://potatomesh.net/
• https://vrs.kdd2105.ru/
• https://potatomesh.stratospire.com/
• https://es1tem.uk/

Docker

Docker images are published on Github for each release:

docker pull ghcr.io/l5yth/potato-mesh/web:latest
docker pull ghcr.io/l5yth/potato-mesh/ingestor:latest

See the Docker guide for more details and custome deployment instructions.

License

Apache v2.0, Contact COM0@l5y.tech

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