Meshpoint
Open-source software that turns retired LoRa gateway hardware into a browser-managed Meshtastic and MeshCore base station that hears everything in range and can transmit too.
Note: Smart relay is experimental.
Problem
Thousands of Helium-era LoRa gateways were retired, each one a Raspberry Pi with an eight-channel concentrator headed for e-waste. Meanwhile, a standard mesh node only sees its own traffic and has to be managed from a phone.
Contribution
- Built the full operational stack, from radio capture and multi-protocol decoding to Linux services, hardware autodetection, and install tooling.
- Built the browser dashboard, with chat, node discovery, radio configuration, a live packet feed, and a map.
- Added storage, APIs, GPS support, a dual-protocol MQTT gateway, and optional cloud sync to Meshradar.
Implementation
Hearing the whole channel
A normal node has a single transceiver and takes part in the mesh only as a participant. Meshpoint drives an SX1302/SX1303 concentrator, which decodes spreading factors SF7 through SF12 in parallel on one tuned frequency. That lets it observe everything in range and still transmit natively with the same sync word and encryption as the rest of the network.
Managed from a browser
Settings that used to require SSH are now in the dashboard: region, modem preset, frequency, TX power, duty cycle, and channels with custom keys. The dashboard also has conversations by channel and DM, signal data on each message, node cards with signal history, a live map, and traffic charts. SQLite stores the data with retention.
Two protocols, one box
The concentrator handles Meshtastic traffic, and an optional USB companion covers MeshCore on its own frequency. Captured packets can be published to community MQTT brokers and Home Assistant, as protobuf for Meshtastic and JSON for MeshCore. A two-gate privacy model keeps private-channel data from leaking.
Demonstrated outcome
- Public open-source repository with 300+ GitHub stars as of November 2026.
- Runs on several retired-miner platforms, including RAK Hotspot V2 and SenseCap M1. Other boards are community-validated.
- Decodes 14 Meshtastic port types and 6 MeshCore message types across 6 frequency regions.
Known limits
- Requires a Raspberry Pi 4 or CM4 on a 64-bit OS. Pi 5 is unvalidated.
- Identity-preserving smart relay is experimental.