Meshtastic Notes

Very loose set of notes from playing around with my two SenseCAP T1000 Trackers (additional notes). When I first got them several months ago they both worked fine by connecting w/ Android/iPhone and communicating with each other.

Recently I've had an idea for a project where one will hook up to my linux box via the serial cable and publish messages to MQTT. Then I can take the other radio out with me and have a way to push messages into MQTT and, from there, can push notification to HomeAssistant and then to phones or devices.

This project ended up falling through due to the meshtastic CLI being somewhat incomplete; you can set all of these configurations, including asking it to proxy to MQTT, but it does not seem to happen. The CLI is currently without maintainer so one option will be to take a look and see about patching this functionality. The other option is to buy an antenna that can connect to wifi and connect to MQTT easier.

For now, here's some loose notes from the adventure.

sudo apt install pipx

# Got warning about `~/.local/bin` not being on $PATH
# But it is defined in ~/.profile, just `. .profile`

pipx install "meshtastic[cli]"

Try to establish connection through serial port

meshtastic --serial /dev/ttyACM0 --info

Permission error about not being in the dialout group:

sudo usermod -a -G dialout josh

Reboot (which I needed to do anyway) and try again

meshtastic --serial /dev/ttyACM0 --info

# Notification audio
meshtastic --serial /dev/ttyACM0 --set audio.codec2_enabled false
meshtastic --serial /dev/ttyACM0 --set external_notification.enabled false

Success!

For raw serioul output/debugging (use this if the radio seems to hang):

meshtastic --serial /dev/ttyACM0 --noproto

# Another option:
sudo cu -l /dev/ttyACM0 -s 1200

View Settings

meshtastic --serial /dev/ttyACM0 --get all

View table of nodes:

meshtastic --serial /dev/ttyACM0 --nodes

Currently, mine is rather large and shows old nodes from monthl ago. to reset:

meshtastic --serial /dev/ttyACM0 --reset-nodedb

Send message:

meshtastic --serial /dev/ttyACM0 --sendtext "Good morning from dining table"
meshtastic --serial /dev/ttyACM0 --sendtext "Good morning from dining table" --dest '!585cc61e'

Receive Message, though I do not know where they "go" on the local box, if anywhere:

meshtastic --serial /dev/ttyACM0 --listen

Set MTQQ:

I wasn't able to get this talking w/MQTT from the command line but these are the arguments for setting the radio config

meshtastic --serial /dev/ttyACM0 --set mqtt.address 192.168.0.100 --set mqtt.enabled true --set mqtt.json_enabled true

meshtastic --serial /dev/ttyACM0 \
  --set network.wifi_enabled false \
  --set mqtt.address 192.168.0.100 \
  --set mqtt.enabled true \
  --set mqtt.json_enabled false \
  --set mqtt.proxy_to_client_enabled true

Uplink/Downnlink channel:

meshtastic --serial /dev/ttyACM0 --ch-set name "LongFast" --ch-set uplink_enabled true --ch-set downlink_enabled true --ch-index 0

(Sometimes the node seems to have trouble waking back up after updating config, but sending an --info request seems to get it back online)

Attempts at Bluetooth, mostly didn't work but left the scratch here for now.

josh@nub:~$ meshtastic --ble-scan
INFO file:ble_interface.py scan line:129 Scanning for BLE devices (takes 10 seconds)...
Found: name='PBJ_c61e' address='FB:74:58:5C:C6:1E'
BLE scan finished
josh@nub:~$ meshtastic --help |less
josh@nub:~$ meshtastic --ble FB:74:58:5C:C6:1E

This kinda worked insofar as connecting to bluetooth: https://dustinrue.com/2025/12/connecting-to-a-meshtastic-node-using-bluetooth-from-linux/

• Hold button several seconds to turn on/off, different sound
• If stuck, hold button down while plugging in cable
• If meshtastic command can't connect, try using either the --noproto option or the cu command:
• Hooking up to android and enabling proxy for MQTT worked once, but then not a second time
• Proxying to MQTT does not seem to work with the meshtastic CLI
  • Note: If you want to fix this, poke around near the --listen command line arg