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WADAMESH user guide

WADAMESH turns a LilyGo T-Deck — its landscape screen, BlackBerry-style keyboard and trackball — into a complete front-end for your MeshCore radio: chat, channels, contacts, a live map and deep radio settings, all on the device. (It also runs on the Heltec V4 and Tanmatsu.) Every screen below is a real screenshot from the device.

No phone required LoRa + Wi-Fi + Bluetooth Keyboard + touch

Home

The home tab is your app launcher — a grid of everything on the device:

  • Cmdr — the command centre overview.
  • Chats, Contacts, Map, Mentions — jump straight to those.
  • Advertise — announce yourself to the mesh (manual or on a timer).
  • Signal and Monitor — live RX signal and a repeater-style RF activity view.
  • Spectrum — sweep the LoRa band for interference.
  • Settings, Terminal (MeshCore CLI), Files (microSD).

The bar along the bottom is always there — it switches the five main tabs (Chat, Contacts, Home, Map, Settings) from anywhere. The top bar shows unread count, time, signal and battery.

Home app launcher
Home — app launcher

Chat

Every conversation in one list, newest first — both channels (group chats like #wadamesh, Public) and direct messages. An unread badge shows the count.

On each row

  • Tap a row to open the conversation, then type on the keyboard to reply.
  • The gear on the right opens that chat's settings — mute, region & scope, share secret, blocked users, remove — the same screen as the cog inside a chat.

The top-right buttons add a contact, mark everything read, and show your QR code.

Chat channel list
Chat — channels & DMs

Contacts

Everyone your node knows — name, type and how recently you heard them. Tap a contact to message it or open its details: signal history, a route trace, telemetry, and share/favourite options.

The overflow menu (top right) holds Search, the Discovered list (nodes heard but not yet added), Add contact, Auto-add settings, and the Blocked list. Auto-add can pull new nodes in from their adverts, or you can add them by hand.

Contacts list
Contacts

Map

An OpenStreetMap / OpenTopoMap view with your position and your contacts plotted as markers, plus link lines from you to each node. Tiles are fetched over Wi-Fi through the wadamesh proxy and cached to flash (or microSD), so areas you've viewed work offline.

It also has a line-of-sight analyzer: pick a contact and it uses SRTM elevation to show whether terrain blocks the path.

Map
Map

Settings

A tile for each category. Tap one to open its page; the title bar carries a back chevron. The full set is in Settings pages below.

  • Profile — your name and node identity.
  • Radio & Mesh — frequency, spreading factor, region scope, high-gain receiver, signal probe, auto-advert.
  • Auto-add, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS — discovery and connectivity.
  • Clock, Battery, Sensors, Display, Keyboard, Sound, Quick replies, Lock screen — the device experience.
  • Language (twelve UI languages), Backups, and About (firmware version, update check, diagnostics).
Settings categories
Settings categories

Companion mode

WADAMESH runs everything on its own, but it can also be the radio for the official MeshCore app on your phone (iOS and Android). Your phone brings the big screen and full keyboard; the device does the LoRa. Best of all it works alongside the on-device UI — you can keep using the touch screen while your phone is connected, and your contacts, channels and messages stay in sync between them.

Three ways to connect

  • USB — plug the device into an Android phone or a computer; the app connects over the cable. Nothing to set up on the device.
  • Bluetooth — turn on Bluetooth in Settings → Bluetooth. The device appears in the app as MeshCore-<your node name>; pair with the 6-digit code (default 123456, changeable on the same page).
  • Wi-Fi — put the device on your network in Settings → Wi-Fi. On the same Wi-Fi, the app connects to the device's IP address on port 5000 (the Wi-Fi page shows the IP).
Run Bluetooth and Wi-Fi together only when you need to

Bluetooth and Wi-Fi can be on at the same time, but each one reserves a good chunk of RAM. On the Heltec V4 especially — it has the least free memory of the three boards — keeping both on at once leaves little headroom and can lead to instability or odd behaviour. If you only want the phone app, pick one transport (Bluetooth or Wi-Fi) and leave the other off; if you mostly use the device on its own, keep both off.

Bluetooth pairing page
Bluetooth — pairing code

Settings pages

WADAMESH splits its settings into eighteen pages. Here is what each one does and the controls you will find on it. Open any page from the Settings tab; a back chevron in the title bar returns you to the grid.

Identity & radio
Profile settings

Profile

Who you are on the mesh.
  • Node name — your callsign on the network
  • Advert location plus a share-in-advert toggle
  • Identity key and Share QR to hand out your contact
  • Export / Import your whole setup as a JSON backup
Radio and Mesh settings

Radio & Mesh

Every LoRa and mesh parameter, split into RADIO / MESH / SIGNAL.
  • Radio — preset, frequency, bandwidth, spreading factor, coding rate, TX power, with a live duty-cycle and airtime-per-packet readout
  • Mesh — answer-telemetry, path-hash size, region scope tag, scope direct messages
  • Signal — high-gain receiver (Heltec V4.3), signal probe, and a shortcut to the Advertise app
  • Experimental — multi-ACKs, client repeat, RX boost, duty meter
Auto-add settings

Auto-add

Which nodes join Contacts automatically from their adverts.
  • Per-type toggles: chat, repeater, room, sensor
  • Overwrite oldest when the contact list is full
  • Notify when a new contact is added
  • Max hops filter for how far away a node can be
Connectivity
Wi-Fi settings

Wi-Fi

For map tiles, clock sync and update checks.
  • On / off with a live status line (IP, signal)
  • Scan and tap an SSID, or type one in by hand
  • Save & reconnect applies live — no reboot
  • Saved network slots for one-tap quick-connect
Bluetooth settings

Bluetooth

Pair with the MeshCore phone app over BLE.
  • Enable Bluetooth with a live mode status line
  • Set a 6-digit pairing code (applies after a reboot)
GPS settings

GPS

The on-board GPS receiver.
  • On / off with a live fix status (acquiring, 2D/3D, age)
  • Serial baud rate (applies after a reboot)
  • Reads "no GPS module" on devices without one
Time & power
Clock and time settings

Clock & time

Keep the clock right.
  • Sync clock from the system / NTP
  • Time zone picker, or a custom UTC offset with steppers
  • 12-hour clock toggle
Battery settings

Battery

Power readouts and tuning.
  • Battery & power history chart
  • Calibrate — tap to set 100% at the current voltage
  • Battery saver throttles the CPU when idle (T-Deck)
Sensors settings

Sensors Heltec V4

For the V4 Expansion Kit.
  • Expansion Kit configuration
  • Show Sensors tab in the bottom bar (applies after restart)
Experience
Display settings

Display

Look and feel.
  • Screen timeout before it sleeps
  • UI size — Normal / Large / Huge
  • Colourful chat bubbles, distance in miles, hide device name
  • Theme colour picker
Keyboard settings

Keyboard

Typing and on-device input.
  • Secondary layouts — Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic, French, German and more
  • Accent popups — long-press for accented letters
  • Enter sends the message (T-Deck)
  • Flash the screen and keys on a new message (T-Deck)
Sound settings

Sound

Notification audio.
  • Master sound plus per-type toggles: message, DM, @mention
  • Custom sound files from microSD where supported
  • Volume control (T-Deck / Tanmatsu)
Quick replies settings

Quick replies

One-tap canned messages.
  • Edit six short replies
  • Pick them from the composer to send instantly
Lock screen settings

Lock screen T-Deck

A simple lock when idle.
  • Wallpaper picker and lock text colour
  • Lock when screen off, then hold to unlock
System
Screenshot pending

General

Device housekeeping.
  • Send advert now
  • Store data on SD (reboot)
  • Run setup again from scratch
  • Reboot device
Backups settings

Backups

Save and restore your whole config.
  • Export a new JSON backup
  • Restore from the saved list
  • Factory reset in the danger zone
Language settings

Language

Twelve UI languages.
  • Tap a language; the device reboots to apply
About settings

About

Version, updates and diagnostics.
  • Firmware version plus update check / install
  • Full system diagnostics — uptime, chip, memory, flash, storage
  • Device ID and crash-report export

Apps

Tools from the home launcher. RF Monitor is a repeater-style view of recent packets and radio stats; Spectrum sweeps the band so you can spot interference or find a clear frequency.