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Using the Mesh

Once your Meshtastic device is connected and your off-grid group is set up, using Flaresat feels nearly identical to a cloud group — but everything is transmitted over LoRa radio.

Dropping pins​

Drop a pin exactly as you would in a cloud group:

  1. Long-press on the map
  2. Fill in the label, icon, and color
  3. Tap Create

Flaresat encodes the pin into a compact binary format and transmits it over the mesh. Teammates with their devices in range will see the pin appear on their map within seconds.

Drawing routes and areas​

Works the same as cloud groups. After you finish drawing:

  1. Name and style the route/area
  2. Tap Create

Large routes (many points) are automatically split into fragments and reassembled by receiving devices. If the mesh is congested or packets are lost, Flaresat uses erasure coding to reconstruct the data even if some fragments don't arrive.

Sending messages​

Open the chat panel and type a message just like in a cloud group. Messages are transmitted over the mesh and appear in teammates' chat feeds.

Note: Voice notes are not supported in off-grid mode — LoRa bandwidth is too limited for audio data.

Location sharing​

Turn on Share my location in Group Settings. Your GPS coordinates are broadcast over the mesh roughly every 8 seconds (more conservative than cloud mode to preserve bandwidth).

Teammates see your dot on their map, labeled with your name, updating as you move.

Node information​

When other Meshtastic devices join your mesh, Flaresat can display information from them:

  • Node ID — the device's unique mesh identifier
  • Battery level — if the device reports it
  • Name — set in the Meshtastic firmware config

Devices that are pure Meshtastic nodes (not running Flaresat) appear as unnamed nodes on the map. They still relay your packets — they're part of the mesh backbone.

Range and reliability​

LoRa is a long-range, low-bandwidth radio protocol. Key things to understand:

  • Range varies a lot — open terrain gives you miles; dense forest or buildings reduce it significantly
  • Mesh = automatic relaying — packets hop between nodes, extending total coverage beyond any single device's range
  • Latency — a message might take 2–15 seconds to propagate through several hops, depending on hop count and congestion
  • Bandwidth is limited — large amounts of data (like a route with hundreds of points) take more time to transmit

What happens if a packet is lost?​

Flaresat's FlareMesh protocol includes erasure coding — a technique where additional redundancy data is sent alongside the main payload. This means even if some fragments of a large item (route, area) are lost in transit, the receiving device can still reconstruct the full item from the remaining fragments.

For small items (pins, short messages), a single packet is usually sufficient.

Mesh without internet​

The mesh works entirely independently of any internet connection. As long as Meshtastic devices are in radio range of each other — directly or through intermediate nodes — the network functions.

This makes it suitable for situations where internet is unavailable, restricted, or deliberately avoided.