inw-mesh

Name: inw-mesh
Author: bambam1121

Mesh View the repo

17 stars · 5 forksGitHub repo · as of 2026-11-11 19:07 UTC

Maintainer: bambam1121
Capabilities: loramesh
Chip families: esp32-s3

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T-DeckUnverifiedLILYGO
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README

Squatch Mesh

Free, open-source MeshCore firmware for the LilyGo T-Lora Pager and the T-Deck. Made in the Inland Northwest, usable on any MeshCore network.

The pager runs a full MeshCore companion node: it works on its own (keyboard, wheel, screen) and still pairs with the MeshCore phone app over Bluetooth like stock firmware.

Website: https://squatchmesh.com · Install from your browser: https://squatchmesh.com/install · T-Deck: https://squatchmesh.com/t-deck · Help: https://squatchmesh.com/help

Themes

Each theme changes the colours, the lock-screen scene and its character, the screen changes, the card style, the sounds, the vibration and the charging splash. (Lock screens are the firmware's own drawing; home screens are screenshots.)

You can also make your own: squatchmesh.com/theme-maker lets you pick the colours and a name, shows the real screens as you go, and sends the theme to the device over USB. It shows up in Settings with the built-in ones (up to four of your own), and never leaves your computer and device.

| | Lock screen | Home | |---|---|---| | Squatch | | | | Blocks | | | | Hero | | | | Aurora | | | | Halloween | | |

In Halloween the sasquatch wears a different costume every time the screen comes on (zombie, witch, vampire, ghost, pumpkin head, skeleton, mummy) and walks somewhere different: a street, a graveyard, a pumpkin patch or the woods. It has its own screen changes too: slime, bats, creaking doors, a jack-o'-lantern and lightning.

Features

Messages: channels, DMs and room servers. Delivery ticks, retries, how many repeaters were heard passing a post on, @mentions, quick replies and colour emoji. A red NEW line marks where unread messages start. Message details name the repeaters a message came through, and hop counts show the repeater id size (4h 2B).
Per-chat notifications: any channel, contact or room can follow the global settings or be set to all, @mentions only, silent or muted.
Region scopes, as in the MeshCore app: a region per channel or a default for everything, and "discover regions" asks the repeaters in range what they carry.
Contacts: up to 2000, searchable, sortable by recency, name or distance. Repeater and room admin with login, status, telemetry, trace and a console.
Map: offline tiles from the SD card, with every contact that shares a position. Missing tiles download while you're on Wi-Fi.
Tools: discover nearby repeaters, recently heard nodes, radio stats, a packet sniffer, GPS status, screenshots to SD, and field tools: a range test, an SOS beacon (with a 20 s countdown to cancel) and a breadcrumb trail.
The talking sasquatch: the lock screen's character has a speech bubble. He reacts to a real shake (and hops), says hello for the time of day when you pick the pager up, and speaks up for a new message, the charger and a low battery. 165 lines, no repeats until he's said them all. The 1.2.4 beta redraws him with fur, a face, blinking and a mouth that moves as he talks, waving, yawning and more.
Motion sensor: raise to wake, quiet when face down, and a man-down alarm; the lock scene leans as you tip the pager. The 1.2.4 beta adds stay on while held: held up to be read, the screen doesn't time out.
Updates install by themselves: on Wi-Fi it checks every six hours and puts a new official release in when the pager is idle. Betas always ask. Releases are signed; the pager verifies the signature and the download before switching, and keeps the old version if anything goes wrong. Contacts, keys and settings are untouched.
Problem reports: after a crash or an error the pager sends the developer a short report over Wi-Fi with the pager's mesh name on it, and checks in once a day with just its board and version. Never messages, contacts, keys or your position. Settings > System turns both off; the privacy page has the details.
First start: radio region presets, a named time zone with daylight saving, 12/24 h and miles/km.
Wi-Fi: saved networks, says why it won't join, internet time, map tiles, and it backs off when none of your networks is around.
Top header: plug-in I2C sensors (BME280, BMP280, SHT3x, SHT4x, AHT20, BH1750) shown under Tools and sent as telemetry, and IO9 as a message LED or buzzer.
NFC: read and write tags, share your contact or a channel invite by tapping a phone to the pager.
Lock screen: the time once, the date, and a rotating one-liner under the clock, a few hundred of them: jokes, mesh tips, per-theme lines and live ones from your own contact list.
Battery: an accurate percentage from the fuel gauge, optimised charging that holds at 80% until shortly before you usually unplug, and a battery saver that turns off GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and the motion sensor at 20%.
Reliability: contact and channel saves are crash-safe and fast, backups run daily to flash and SD with a progress screen, and a torn store is restored on boot.
Settings: radio presets, client repeat, auto-add rules, notifications with quiet hours, vibration strength, Bluetooth PIN, backups.

T-Deck

The same firmware for the LilyGo T-Deck and T-Deck Plus, made for the touchscreen: a dashboard home, swipe up to unlock, notifications you can tap to open, and a sasquatch you can poke. Install it from https://squatchmesh.com/t-deck; its updates come over Wi-Fi while it charges. The source is on the tdeck branch, with the board's own drivers in src/tdeck/.

Keys (pager)

| | | |---|---| | wheel turn / press | move / select | | Backspace | back (or delete while typing) | | Enter | send, or select | | orange key (hold) | numbers and symbols | | side button | tap: screen off and lock; hold: power off prompt; five fast taps: SOS | | on the home screen | m messages, c contacts, p map, t tools, s settings, n NFC, l lock | | in a chat | press the wheel for emoji and quick replies | | on the map | wheel zooms, wasd pans, n next node, c centre on me |

Install

Use the web installer in Chrome or Edge. Both options write the bootloader, partition table and app, so either one can bring back a pager that won't start. Neither erases the flash; don't tick "erase device", which wipes contacts and channels too.

Update keeps settings, contacts and messages.
First install is for a pager coming from other firmware. The first boot then formats the data store, which takes a few minutes. If the SD card holds a MeshCore export (meshcore-backup.json) or a Wadamesh data folder, contacts and channels are imported from it.
Coming from 1.0.x? Wi-Fi updates need the newer two-slot layout, so do one First install. Back up to SD first (Settings > System > how to enable wi-fi updates does it for you): everything comes back from the card. Without a card your keys, channels and settings are still kept; contacts refill from adverts.
Starting over? From 1.2.5 the installer has two tick boxes under START. Start fresh clears contacts, channels and messages and keeps your keys, name and Wi-Fi. Reset everything clears the keys and settings too, and the pager comes up as new. Exports and dated backups on the SD card are left alone.
After that, updates install themselves over Wi-Fi (Settings > System > install updates by itself turns that off, and then it asks first).
Installer can't connect? On the pager, Settings > System > usb flash mode, then click install. (On 1.1.5 or older: hold BOOT, tap RESET, let go of BOOT.)
Pager won't start? Hold BOOT, tap RESET, let go of BOOT, and run First install again. It works even on a completely blank chip.
Stuck? Ask on Discussions or see https://squatchmesh.com/help.

Building

PlatformIO:

pio run -e t-lora-pager           # full firmware, what the releases are built from
pio run -e t-lora-pager-public    # without NFC
pio run -e t-lora-pager-dev       # a developer build with USB test commands (never released)

Flash the app only:

esptool.py --chip esp32s3 write_flash 0x10000 .pio/build/t-lora-pager/firmware.bin

Don't use erase_flash and don't write address 0x0. The pager needs the bootloader it already has.

To pre-load a node identity at first boot, create src/identity_seed.h with SEED_PRV64_HEX, SEED_PUB_HEX and SEED_NAME. The file is gitignored. Don't commit a private key.

NFC and ST's licence

The NFC chip is driven by ST's RFAL library (via LilyGo's ST25R3916-NFC-RFAL), which is under ST's own licence, SLA0052, included in licenses/. The rest of the firmware is GPL-3.0. If you'd rather have a build with no ST code in it, use the t-lora-pager-public environment.

Layout

| | | |---|---| | src/node.* | MeshCore companion node (MyMesh) with hooks for the UI | | src/history.* | on-device message history | | src/dataio.* | restore, backup, export | | src/ui.* | view stack, menus, prompts, text and emoji rendering | | src/home.cpp, chats.cpp, contacts.cpp, mapview.cpp, tools.cpp, settings_ui.cpp, nfcapp.cpp | the screens | | src/scenes.h, mascot.h, squatch_talk.h, fx*.cpp | the lock scenes, the sasquatch and what he says, the screen changes | | src/regions.*, regional.* | region scopes; region presets and time zones | | src/motion.* | the motion sensor: raise to wake, stay on while held, man-down | | src/netwifi.*, ota.*, bugreport.* | Wi-Fi, NTP and tile downloads; updates; problem reports | | variants/inw_pager/ | board definition for MeshCore | | web/, helpdesk/ | squatchmesh.com and its help desk | | docs/hardware.md | pinout and hardware notes |

Licence

GPL-3.0. See THIRD_PARTY.md for the code and assets this builds on.

Read the full README on GitHub

source github.com/BamBam1121/inw-mesh