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Mesh Etiquette & Best Practices

In a shared radio frequency spectrum, cooperative behavior ensures that the mesh remains fast, reliable, and unpolluted.

1. Device Roles: Choosing the Right Role​

Setting the correct role on your node is critical to keeping the Armenian mesh fast and preventing packet storms:

  • CLIENT (Default): Standard role for handheld and portable mobile nodes. Participates in the mesh, forwards packets intelligently, and sleeps when appropriate.
  • CLIENT_MUTE (For Indoor Nodes): If your node is located indoors (in an apartment, on lower floors, or behind concrete walls), set it to CLIENT_MUTE. It can send and receive messages normally, but won't re-transmit packets that can't effectively escape your building, saving valuable airtime for the community.
  • CLIENT_BASE (For Home Stations): If you own both a stationary home node and a portable/pocket node, configure your home-based station as CLIENT_BASE.
  • ROUTER (High Elevation Only): Recommended ONLY if the node is installed on a high rooftop (floor 9 or higher) or on a mountain peak with unobstructed 360° line of sight and continuous power.
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  • The legacy REPEATER role is deprecated: Do not use REPEATER. In modern Meshtastic firmware, use ROUTER for high-elevation infrastructure.
  • Avoid ROUTER_CLIENT or SENSOR: These roles are not recommended for general community members.
  • Never set low-elevation or indoor nodes to ROUTER: It causes severe packet contention and degrades network performance for everyone across Yerevan and surrounding areas.

2. Node Naming Guidelines​

Keep your node identity simple, clean, and compatible:

  1. No Emojis: Emojis consume 4 or more bytes per character in LoRa packet payloads, causing packet truncation and rendering bugs on small OLED and E-Ink displays.
  2. English (ASCII) Characters Only: Avoid Cyrillic, Armenian letters, or special unicode symbols. Non-ASCII characters cause encoding issues across different client apps and older firmware versions.
  3. Keep Long Name Under 15 Characters: Shorter names minimize packet sizes and conserve channel airtime (e.g. Yundin Repeater, Tina DiPierro, kita home).
  4. Short Name (4 Characters Max): A 4-character abbreviation displayed in message previews (e.g. YRPT, TIV4, kitD, AKRZ).

3. Position & Telemetry Broadcast Intervals​

  • Position Updates: Set GPS broadcast interval to at least 15–30 minutes (900–1800 seconds) when stationary, or enable "Smart Position" with distance thresholds.
  • Node Info Broadcast: Set to 3–6 hours (10,800 to 21,600 seconds).
  • Broadcasting position every 60 seconds saturates the shared channel and drains node batteries across the city!

4. MQTT & Gateway Etiquette​

  1. Keep Downlink Disabled on Client Nodes: Unless you are a network operator managing an authorized bidirectional bridge, never enable Downlink on public MQTT. Downlink rebroadcasts internet packets over RF, easily saturating the local 868 MHz airtime.
  2. Respect ignore_mqtt: The community values privacy. Never configure custom ingestors or bridges to republish nodes that have opted out of internet tracking (ignore_mqtt = true).
  3. Use the Designated Regional Topic: Always use msh/AM to avoid polluting global MQTT channels or leaking regional telemetry.