This is the multi-page printable view of this section. Click here to print.
News
Tri-Cities Mesh is moving to MeshCore
Tri-Cities Mesh is moving from Meshtastic to MeshCore.
Why
Meshtastic got this community started, and we’re grateful for it. As the local mesh grew, its design, where nearly every radio rebroadcasts what it hears, started to work against us in our hilly terrain.
MeshCore takes a different approach. Only dedicated repeaters relay traffic. Personal radios, called companions, don’t. Direct messages travel along a learned path instead of flooding the whole network. That keeps the airwaves quieter and lets the network grow without slowing down.
What you need to do
- Reflash your radio with MeshCore using the web flasher. Most Meshtastic hardware is supported.
- Install the MeshCore app and pair it with your radio.
- Choose the USA/Canada (Recommended) preset (910.525 MHz, BW 62.5, SF7, CR5).
- Send an advert and say hi on the Public channel.
The Getting Started guide covers every step, and Coming from Meshtastic explains what’s different.
Hosting a fixed node?
If you run a Meshtastic router on a roof, tower, or hilltop, please consider reflashing it as a MeshCore repeater. That’s the single most helpful thing you can do during the switch. Submit it once it’s converted, and ask in the Discord if you’d like a hand.
Installing a node on Bays Mountain
Bays Mountain is one of the best vantage points in the Tri-Cities, and the Kingsport Amateur Radio Club’s tower up there is an obvious home for a mesh node. Getting one working has been harder than expected.
The short version
- July 2024. The first node went up but wasn’t working when installed.
- January 2025. We brought it down and found the battery had died before install. The RAK board didn’t power itself back on when the battery recovered.
- February 2025. After a reset and reinstall it sent telemetry fine, but it wouldn’t receive or relay messages.
- Summer 2025. We tested other hardware. A node at another corner of the mountain worked fine, which pointed to RF noise at the tower site.
- October 2025. We reinstalled with a new RAK node, a new enclosure, and a 900 MHz cavity filter. Next we’ll try mounting it a few feet off the tower.
The full history, with photos, is on the Bays Mountain node page.
What we’ve learned
High sites near other transmitters are noisy. Filtering and physical separation from the other antennas matter as much as height. A board that powers itself back on after a battery recovers is worth a lot when the node is up a tower.