I’m looking for a way to monitor the positions of our family when riding motorbikes in remote terrain. When reading the docs the conclusion I’m coming to is that an android device is needed to send the message regarding the position to a paired device over BLE.
Can I do the same thing from hardware without the need for the android device? I cannot for the life of me see that from the help after a general poke around. A TT-GO m8n or similar has GPS onboard and a radio, so it makes sense that I should be able to get it to send a basic message with id, x, y, speed - for example.
There is a range testing plugin that does some of what you want, sends messages from one device to another on a time interval and saves the values to CSV.
By default the meshtastic device will report it’s position every 900 secs. It is possible to change this using the cli command ‘meshtastic’ that is installed along with the python api. Maybe you could change that to every 180 secs?
I don’t remember the exact parameter to set but you can list them all by meshtastic --set x x
Read more about the python api at
A device with a gps will report its location without a phone. (and a device without gps will get location from a phone if it is connected to one)
Basic info on other nodes can be seen directly on the device if it has a screen. To see other devices on a map and to be able to text other devices you need a phone.
A good device to start with is a TTGO TBeam.
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Thats good news then - I ordered three of those v1.1 just under 24 hours ago, along with a Heltec HT-M01s because I’d like to be able to test meshtastic and some other stuff that I hadn’t mentioned here via TTN.
Thanks for the advice re hardware and capabilities.