Can I build a web page of my own to talk via HTTP to my LoRa

Support
1

Hello to all.
Sorry for the vague topic but what I want to do is build my own web site, that is told about my local LoRa Meshtastic device (which is working) and communicate with it via an api of some sorts.
Does the LoRa have such a thing. I have looked on the meshtastic site and although it seems to have api ability I am not sure it is what I want.
Ideally I would set my web site with the local IP of my device and the api route then want to make calls to it so I can retrieve messages/traffic/connections and show it on my page. My intention is to use this data in some further way.
Thanks in anticipation of some guidence.
Neil

2

While as I understand it we mostly can’t communicate HTTP over LoRa (there are experiments documented elsewhere on this forum, maybe UDP kinda works?) if you have a device that has both an Internet connection and a LoRa radio you can easily use that to either host the site or act as a bridge.

Depending what you want from it and your familiarity, you could do a number of things. First would be deciding what’s hosting the website - it could be a conventional site deployed however you’re comfortable, or you could host it directly on the device if the device is battery powered, you’re thinking it’d basically just be you using it, and you’re up for a little pain.

If you go the conventional web server route, then either it or another device would have to be directly connected to the bridging LoRa device. Broadly speaking, clicking a button on the site would:

  • go from your browser to the web server
  • the web server would figure out what that means with regards to interacting with the mesh
  • instruct the bridging device to do the action or retrieve the data, returning the result
  • web server returns the outcome of the mesh to the client

Another option is to publish and consume MQTT messages, so getting the data off the mesh is “handled” by Meshtastic and you just have to worry about storing and representing it.

It’s also worth considering whether your use case lines up with the broader community, perhaps it’d make sense to build functionality in https://client.meshtastic.org/ (code on GitHub).

If you can share the specific functionality you’re looking to get out of it, it may be easier to offer guidance.