Help & glossary

New to NWIMesh.net HopWatch or to mesh radio? Start with About, then use the glossary and FAQ below.

Add a node / join the mesh

Get a Meshtastic-compatible LoRa board for your region's frequency and flash the Meshtastic firmware (meshtastic.org).
Join the region's primary channel so your node talks to everyone else.
Optionally enable MQTT uplink on a gateway node so your traffic reaches this map.
Say hello in the community below and ask where coverage is needed.

Node: A single Meshtastic radio (usually an ESP32 or nRF52 board). Every dot on the map is a node.
Gateway: A node that also relays the mesh to the internet over MQTT. Gateways are how this site sees traffic; a node only appears here once a gateway has heard it.
Reception: One gateway hearing one packet. The same message heard by three gateways is three receptions of one packet. Coverage and signal stats are built from receptions, not raw packets.
Hop: One relay step. 0 hops (direct) means a gateway heard the node's own transmission over the air; 2 hops means two nodes relayed it along the way.
Direct vs relayed: Direct = heard over the air with no relay (green). Relayed = reached the gateway through one or more other nodes (yellow). Only direct receptions tell you about a node's real range.
RSSI: Received Signal Strength, in dBm. Closer to 0 is stronger; -60 is a strong signal, -120 is barely heard.
SNR: Signal-to-Noise Ratio, in dB. Higher is cleaner. LoRa can still decode well below 0 dB SNR.
Estimated position: A node with no GPS whose location is inferred from which gateways heard it. Drawn as a dashed marker with a confidence circle; it is a guess, not a fix.
Channel: A named, usually-encrypted group that nodes talk on (e.g. LongFast). This site can only read channels it has been given the key for.

Why is my node not on the map?: It only shows up once a gateway hears it AND it has reported a position (or enough gateways heard it to estimate one). If it has no GPS and only one gateway hears it, there is not enough information to place it.
Why does my node show as more hops than I expect?: Hop count is the fewest hops any gateway used to hear you in the last 24h. If your nearest gateway is several relays away, that is your hop distance from the internet-connected part of the mesh, not a fault.
Is the data live?: The live map animates receptions in real time. Other pages refresh on load or on a short timer. Everything is best-effort: gaps happen when gateways drop offline.
Can I trust the positions exactly?: No. Positions are self-reported and may be rounded for privacy. Estimated (dashed) positions are inferred and can be off by a wide margin.