New alpha 1.2.25 to test the MQTT gateway feature

geeksville · April 10, 2021, 4:59am

This release (for alpha testers only) is mainly so that I can get some brave early users of the MQTT gateway feature. If you have a node that can connect to some sort of wifi, your help would be appreciated. Instructions are below. But first some caveats:

These instructions will result in your default text message and position packets to be sent to the public internet, where they will be decoded and available for anyone to read. This requirement to make the messages public will go away after we’ve done some more development.
You need at least one node with access to a wifi lan (multiple nodes are fine, but as long as there is one, it will route for the entire mesh)

Steps to enable:

Install this build
Update your python tool “pip install --upgrade meshtastic”
Run “meshtastic --set wifi_ssid YOURNETNAME --set wifi_password YOURWIFIPASSWORD --ch-set uplink_enabled true”
Reboot the device

It will now be sending any traffic from your default/primary channel to the internet. Currently you don’t have much “benefit” from this, but soonish there will be a crude world map view (somehow) and soon after that the riot.im global messaging bridge. If you are able to run nodws now that start uploading data it will help us because real test data is super useful.

If you have linux (or are on a machine where can install the mosquito command line tools): You can see the packets all the nodes are sending up (which currently is just a couple of my testing nodes):

sudo apt install mosquitto-clients
mosquitto_sub -h mqtt.meshtastic.org -v -t \$SYS/\# -t msh/+/stat/\# -t msh/+/json/\#
msh/1/json/LongSlow/!28979058/NODEINFO_APP {"channelId":"LongSlow","gatewayId":"!28979058","packet":{"from":681021528,"to":4294967295,"channel":177,"decoded":{"id":"!28979058","long_name":"Im Remote","short_name":"IR","macaddr":"$o(ﾗﾐX","hw_model":"TBEAM"},"id":428119695,"rx_time":1618028671,"hop_limit":3,"priority":"BACKGROUND"}}
msh/1/json/LongSlow/!28979058/POSITION_APP {"channelId":"LongSlow","gatewayId":"!28979058","packet":{"from":681021528,"to":4294967295,"channel":177,"decoded":{"latitude_i":250422513,"longitude_i":1215770222,"altitude":-1008,"time":1618028702},"id":428119696,"rx_time":1618028702,"hop_limit":3,"priority":"BACKGROUND"}}
msh/1/json/LongSlow/!abf84098/NODEINFO_APP {"channelId":"LongSlow","gatewayId":"!28979058","packet":{"from":2885173400,"to":4294967295,"channel":177,"decoded":{"id":"!abf84098","long_name":"Main Node","short_name":"MN","macaddr":"$bﾫ￸@ﾘ","hw_model":"TBEAM"},"id":363563234,"rx_time":1618028924,"rx_snr":3.25,"hop_limit":2}}
msh/1/json/LongSlow/!abf84098/POSITION_APP {"channelId":"LongSlow","gatewayId":"!28979058","packet":{"from":2885173400,"to":4294967295,"channel":177,"decoded":{"latitude_i":250382527,"longitude_i":1215732725,"altitude":26,"battery_level":100},"id":363563235,"rx_time":1618028953,"rx_snr":2.5,"hop_limit":2}}
msh/1/json/LongSlow/!28979058/NODEINFO_APP {"channelId":"LongSlow","gatewayId":"!28979058","packet":{"from":681021528,"to":4294967295,"channel":177,"decoded":{"id":"!28979058","long_name":"Im Remote","short_name":"IR","macaddr":"$o(ﾗﾐX","hw_model":"TBEAM"},"id":428119697,"rx_time":1618029572,"hop_limit":3,"priority":"BACKGROUND"}}
msh/1/json/LongSlow/!28979058/POSITION_APP {"channelId":"LongSlow","gatewayId":"!28979058","packet":{"from":681021528,"to":4294967295,"channel":177,"decoded":{"latitude_i":250381170,"longitude_i":1215726458,"altitude":134,"time":1618029602},"id":428119698,"rx_time":1618029602,"hop_limit":3,"priority":"BACKGROUND"}}
msh/1/json/LongSlow/!abf84098/NODEINFO_APP {"channelId":"LongSlow","gatewayId":"!28979058","packet":{"from":2885173400,"to":4294967295,"channel":177,"decoded":{"id":"!abf84098","long_name":"Main Node","short_name":"MN","macaddr":"$bﾫ￸@ﾘ","hw_model":"TBEAM"},"id":363563236,"rx_time":1618029824,"rx_snr":-1.75,"hop_limit":2}}
msh/1/json/LongSlow/!abf84098/POSITION_APP {"channelId":"LongSlow","gatewayId":"!28979058","packet":{"from":2885173400,"to":4294967295,"channel":177,"decoded":{"latitude_i":250382565,"longitude_i":1215731772,"altitude":26,"battery_level":100},"id":363563237,"rx_time":1618029852,"rx_snr":-3.75,"hop_limit":2}}

Other changes in the release:

@timgunter improved the install scripts and how they find python.

Havealoha · April 10, 2021, 5:15am

Does the channel or is-router matter?

Avron · April 10, 2021, 5:27am

Done. I’ve got our 8-node test network from Sydney, connected.

geeksville · April 10, 2021, 5:30am

the forwarding to/from MQTT is channel specific, though for simplicity now the instructions I just gave are setting (with --ch-set) “uplink_enabled” on the primary channel. So any message seen on that particlar channel would be also sent to the MQTT server. I’m intentionally asking people to not set downlink_enabled (yet).

For any node doing this internet gateway feature, probably best to not set is_router, becuase router nodes sleep a lot and we want to keep a link open to the internet server. But you did point out a bug - if we are talking mqtt we should suppress sleep (thanks!)

geeksville · April 10, 2021, 5:32am

ooh cool! you’ve got the first node connected that wasn’t one of mine, from the mqtt log:

msh/1/json/LongSlow/!050c330c/NODEINFO_APP {"channelId":"LongSlow","gatewayId":"!050c330c","packet":{"from":84685580,"to":4294967295,"channel":177,"decoded":{"id":"!050c330c","long_name":"Node Red 330c","short_name":"NR3","macaddr":"<a\u0005\f3\f","hw_model":"TBEAM"},"id":160894754,"rx_time":1618032386,"hop_limit":3,"priority":"BACKGROUND"}}
msh/1/json/LongSlow/!050c330c/TEXT_MESSAGE_APP {"channelId":"LongSlow","gatewayId":"!050c330c","packet":{"from":84685580,"to":4294967295,"channel":177,"decoded":"Partly cloudy throughout the day. H:22.93, L:14.95, 15% rain, 44% cloud","id":1410477404,"rx_time":1618032502,"hop_limit":3}}

b8b8 · April 10, 2021, 5:46am

Installed on one of my nodes. I haven’s used the Python tool yet but I’m sure @Chiumanfu will upgrade his as well.

Avron · April 10, 2021, 5:52am

Yep, that weather report is mine, and the occasional Bitcoin price in Australian dollars.

Havealoha · April 10, 2021, 6:21am

I dont like that when I set a gps using --setlat 45.4887545 --setlon -122.6964613 --setalt 344 that the Android app overrides it.

I got mqtt to work, I wasnt aware that the SSID is case sensitive.

This is amazing! traditional computer mqtt subscribers get quicker messages than most of the nodes!

Will there be some type of feature to throttle uplinks or block IP’s if they abuse the server? Of course we get to use whatever mqtt server we choose but I really like the global bridge.

Noki · April 10, 2021, 8:08am

If you have jq installed (sudo apt install jq) you can do the following to filter only text messages and get them in a form <from>@<gatewayId>: <decoded text>

mosquitto_sub -h mqtt.meshtastic.org -t msh/+/json/+/+/TEXT_MESSAGE_APP | jq --unbuffered '(.packet.from|tostring) + "@" + (.gatewayId|tostring) + ": " + (.packet.decoded|tostring)'

It’s like a very poor chat than.

Raipat · April 10, 2021, 12:09pm

good timing, yesterday, I got a shipment of 5 T-Beams. One is now participating in this experiment
It already said meh and hi.

ajorg · April 10, 2021, 6:26pm

I notice that macaddr seems to be encoded in a way that’s probably not safe for JSON. I think it should be an integer maybe? I’m not sure if this is an artifact of MQTT.

msh/1/json/LongSlow/!abddd8c4/NODEINFO_APP {"channelId":"LongSlow","gatewayId":"!abddd8c4","packet":{"from":2883442884,"to":4294967295,"channel":177,"decoded":{"id":"!abddd8c4","long_name":"KC7RBW","short_name":"KC7","macaddr":"$bﾫ￝￘ￄ","hw_model":"TBEAM"},"id":260478057,"rx_time":1618078699,"hop_limit":3,"priority":"BACKGROUND"}}

zebus · April 10, 2021, 8:12pm

Checking in from North Bend!

Noki · April 10, 2021, 9:05pm

Why wouldn’t it be safe? Usually characters that would break the JSON will just be escaped.

ajorg · April 10, 2021, 10:48pm

Good point - I was assuming that non-printable characters should be escaped in JSON, but I see now that they don’t have to be. Still it’s odd to see a MAC address represented that way, but you’re right - it’s fine.

Havealoha · April 11, 2021, 1:09am

Im not sure if this is post 1.2.25 but I noticed that depending on power, reset and screen attached, Im getting weird lights behaviour. It seems under normal operation I can detach the screen and all is fine. But if I then reboot with the screen still detached, only certain lights come back up. Everything appears to work correctly, just not all the lights. Is it supported to run headless or does that mess up i2c axp?

Havealoha · April 11, 2021, 1:37am

Im digging the new look of the meshtastic-web @sachaw !

sachaw · April 11, 2021, 1:38am

Still early days, but the foundation is pretty good

Havealoha · April 11, 2021, 2:00am

Wow, I got it to work!

Avron · April 11, 2021, 2:24am

Is this now in the 1.2.25 build?

Havealoha · April 11, 2021, 2:29am

No, I got it from GitHub - sachaw/meshtastic-client and edited /src/App.tsx with the ip of my node. Then run npm start.

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New alpha 1.2.25 to test the MQTT gateway feature

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