• Meshtastic Live Node List
  • Purpose and Goals
  • Acknowledgements
  • Requirements
    • Hardware
    • Software
    • Web Hosting
  • Setup Prerequisites
    • Local Host Hardware
    • Meshtastic node(s)
    • Meshtastic CLI
    • Web Hosting
  • Package Installation
    • Package contents
    • Configuration
      • Serial Port Identification
    • CRON job
  • Verifying Installation

This package assistants in periodic exporting of a Serial-over-USB connected Meshtastic node's list of nodes to a remote webserver in HTML format.

The initial goal was to write a quick-and-dirty script to periodically export the meshtastic --nodes ASCII-formatted table to a simple .txt file on a remote Linux webserver in order for me and others to diagnose mesh connectivity without constantly having to exchange screenshots over Discord.

The current version now generates static HTML pages that automatically refreshes, highlights various pre-defined nodes by name, and if a (UK) HAM callsign is detected a link is created to a (potential) page on QRZ.com.

I've spent sometime sharpening-up the script to be somewhat portable but in the early incaration it remains a project that requires an intermediate knowledge of Debian/Linux, SFTP+SSH keys, and Web hosting so naturally does not come with beginner-level support and it's expected you may need to adapt to your own requirements.

Future goals possibly include using a JSON-fed HTML page, Bluetooth-over-Serial connectivity, and other remote file transfers methods.

This site is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Meshtastic project

Uses the excellent RegExp by [email protected] from the package https://github.com/ge0rg/callsign-regex to indentify HAM callsigns.

Portions of this package was written with the help of ChatGPT so I'd like to acknowledge the original authors on whom this work is based.

All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

This package has been tested with the following:

• A Raspberry Pi 2 Model B Rev 1.1 running Raspberry Pi OS (Legacy, 32-bit) Lite (aka Debian 11/bullseye)
• 2x Heltec V3s connected via USB
• Web Hosting with Secure File Transfer Protocol/SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) access and public key authentication

A low-spec Debian/Linux PC or SBC like a Rasberry Pi to connect your Meshtastic nodes to. It's recommended NOT to older Pis as they may not provide enough consistent current over USB.

You can check an existing Raspberry Pi Model & OS with the follow commands:

$ cat /sys/firmware/devicetree/base/model
Raspberry Pi 2 Model B Rev 1.1

$ cat /etc/os-release
PRETTY_NAME="Raspbian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye)"
NAME="Raspbian GNU/Linux"
VERSION_ID="11"
VERSION="11 (bullseye)"
VERSION_CODENAME=bullseye
ID=raspbian
ID_LIKE=debian
HOME_URL="http://www.raspbian.org/"
SUPPORT_URL="http://www.raspbian.org/RaspbianForums"
BUG_REPORT_URL="http://www.raspbian.org/RaspbianBugs"

• The Meshtastic Python CLI

A Web Hosting package that allows uploading via SFTP with public key authentication. Currently username+password authentication is NOT supported.

In order for the Meshtastic Python CLI to communicate with your node(s) you must enable Serial output on each nodes via the mobile client:

• Device Config > Serial output enabled

Install the Meshtastic Python CLI to an unprivileged username (e.g.: pi): Meshtastic Python CLI for Linux.

Once installed, you can run meshtastic --nodes (or if multiple serial ports are detected, typically meshtastic --nodes --port /dev/ttyUSB0) to verify you're getting the ASCII-table output.

At minimum it's recommended you test the credentials on the command line:

$ sftp <username>@<hostname>
Connected to <hostname>
sftp>

Download & decompress the latest meshtastic-live-node-list package to your home directory, e.g.: /home/pi/meshtastic-live-node-list

curl -Lo $HOME/meshtastic-live-node-list.zip 'https://github.com/ethzero/meshtastic-live-node-list/archive/refs/heads/main.zip'
unzip $HOME/meshtastic-live-node-list.zip -d $HOME/

Take a copy of the package's .live-node-list.rc configuration and place in your home directory

cp -v $HOME/meshtastic-live-node-list/.live-node-list.rc $HOME/.live-node-list.rc

Edit the configuration file $HOME/.live-node-list.rc

You'll see most of the configuration file options are commented out as there are examples. It's good pratice to copy-paste those options then remove the preceeding '#', e.g.:

## Required to access web server and place the contents of upload_files
# REMOTE_USERNAME="example_user"
# REMOTE_HOST="example.com"
# REMOTE_PATH="/srv/httpd/htdocs/live-node-list"
REMOTE_USERNAME="real_user"
REMOTE_HOST="realhost.com"
REMOTE_PATH="/srv/httpd/htdocs/live-node-list"

The script supports multiple connected Meshtastic nodes.

If you only have a single node attached:

• NODE_NAME["MainStation"]
• LOCAL_NODE_DUMP_FILE["MainStation"]
• LOCAL_SERIAL_PORT["MainStation"]
• REMOTE_HTML_FILE["MainStation"]

If you have an additional node attached, create another set with a unique name:

• NODE_NAME["YagiNode"]
• LOCAL_NODE_DUMP_FILE["YagiNode"]
• LOCAL_SERIAL_PORT["YagiNode"]
• REMOTE_HTML_FILE["YagiNode"]

Heltec V3 use the cp210x chipset so running the following should confirm they are connected

$ lsusb -t
/:  Bus 01.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=dwc_otg/1p, 480M
    |__ Port 1: Dev 2, If 0, Class=Hub, Driver=hub/5p, 480M
        |__ Port 1: Dev 3, If 0, Class=Vendor Specific Class, Driver=smsc95xx, 480M
        |__ Port 2: Dev 4, If 0, Class=Vendor Specific Class, Driver=cp210x, 12M
        |__ Port 4: Dev 5, If 0, Class=Vendor Specific Class, Driver=cp210x, 12M
        |__ Port 5: Dev 6, If 0, Class=Vendor Specific Class, Driver=brcmfmac, 480M

The following confirm the which Com Ports are used. The last number in usb 1-1.2, "2" corresponds to the "Port" above:

$ dmesg | grep "ttyUSB"
[   12.338704] usb 1-1.2: cp210x converter now attached to ttyUSB0
[   12.346895] usb 1-1.4: cp210x converter now attached to ttyUSB1

Edit the $HOME/meshtastic-live-node-list/live-node-list_cron

Change the <username> to reflect the current username, as before, e.g.:

*/2 * * * * pi /home/pi/meshtastic-live-node-list/live-node-list.sh 2>&1 | logger -t live-node-list

$ sudo cp -v $HOME/meshtastic-live-node-list/live-node-list_cron /etc/cron.d/live-node-list_cron

Using tail -f /var/log/syslog, you should see something like the following:

Apr  1 12:34:02 rpi live-node-list: Updating Mesh Node List...
Apr  1 12:34:02 rpi live-node-list: Copying supporting web files to /home/pi/meshtastic-live-node-list/upload_files
Apr  1 12:34:02 rpi live-node-list: Gathering "Main Station" node list...
Apr  1 12:34:07 rpi live-node-list: Creating "Main Station" HTML pages...
Apr  1 12:34:07 rpi live-node-list: Uploading nodes-MainStation.html to example.com...
Apr  1 12:34:09 rpi live-node-list: sftp> put -r /home/pi/meshtastic-live-node-list/upload_files/*
Apr  1 12:34:09 rpi live-node-list: Completed: "Main Station"
Apr  1 12:34:09 rpi live-node-list: Completed updating nodes list.