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meshcore-bot/docs
agessaman ebc66992dd feat(neighbors): zero-hop neighbour discovery in packet capture
Port the observer firmware's neighbours feature into the bot's packet capture
service, by way of meshcore-packet-capture (upstream PRs #42/#43). On a long
interval the bot asks which repeaters it hears directly and records each
confirmed link with its measured SNR.

This is the strongest link evidence the bot collects: a first-party RF
measurement between two full 32-byte public keys. Path inference works from
1-3 byte prefixes with no keys, and complete_contact_tracking.hop_count
over-claims zero-hop (800 claimed vs 68 corroborated on the live database).

modules/neighbors_discovery.py keeps upstream's public names so its fixes and
tests stay portable. Two deliberate divergences:

- No command_lock plumbing. _SerializedCommands in modules/core.py already
  serialises and paces every radio command, strictly more than upstream's
  reentrant lock did.
- neighbors_collect_scopes defaults off. Upstream's zero-hop scope probe
  relies on a neighbour not being a known contact; this bot tracks contacts,
  and for a repeater with no stored path the library reaches zero-hop by
  calling change_contact_path() then reset_path() -- mutating the device's
  contact table per neighbour. Scope requests also hold the radio lock for
  their whole round trip (~25s), stalling bot replies. The default cycle is
  one command plus a passive listen window, during which the bot stays
  responsive.

Evidence lands in neighbor_links and neighbor_observations (migration 22)
rather than mesh_connections, which cannot persist provenance. The viewer
exposes it as evidence=neighbors on /api/mesh/edges and a Neighbours Only
mode on the mesh page, with populated public keys and real SNR; confirmed
neighbours also relabel edges in the combined view and count as
provenance-trusted when framing the initial map.

neighbors_enabled is the single switch. Every enabled broker publishes once
it is on (mqttN_neighbors defaults true; set false to hold one back). The
topic derives from each broker's packets topic with the last segment swapped,
so a templated broker gets meshcore/{IATA}/{PUBLIC_KEY}/neighbors -- the
topic the firmware uses -- instead of an unrelated flat one. A derived
location-routed topic is skipped with a warning when no iata is set, rather
than publishing into meshcore/XYZ/... on a shared namespace. Snapshots are
non-retained: heard_secs_ago is relative to publish time, so a retained copy
would read as current days later.

Also adds a DM-gated `neighbors` command (the 12h interval floor makes
waiting for the scheduler impractical), which acks immediately and reports in
a second message once the window closes.

Requires meshcore >= 2.3.8 for send_node_discover_req / req_regions_sync.
2026-08-04 19:24:18 -07:00
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