Here is a feature that turns a boring drive into a game. Switch on wardriving, go about your day, and your MeshOS device quietly logs every mesh packet it hears together with your GPS position and how strong the signal was. Back home you have a coverage map of your area: red where the repeaters are close, fading out through orange, yellow and green to blue at the edges. Share it, and it lands on the community map alongside everyone else's.
It is completely passive. Nothing is transmitted to get a response, you are just listening, and on a busy mesh there is plenty to hear. It works from the car, on a bike, or walking the dog. Andy filmed a first outing with the M9 if you want the vibe before the how-to:
Start in thirty seconds on a T-Deck or M9
You need MeshOS 1.7 or later (1.7.2 is current, and the device will offer it to you over WiFi if you are behind). Then:
- Make sure GPS is turned on in Settings.
- Open Tools, then Wardrive.
- Set Wardriving mode to ON. That is it. Go for a drive.
Tools, then Wardrive. Everything lives in this one menu.
Choose View heatmap and the map shows what you have logged as you go, with a Logging chip at the bottom so you can pause and resume without leaving the map. The map buttons let you zoom, snap back to your position, cycle through the repeaters you have heard, and switch map style. The dark style is the one the heatmap looks best on.
Hertford on the M9 after a drive and a dog walk. Zoom in and you can see the individual cells logged.
Heatmap style in the same menu flips the view between dots, one cell per reading, and smooth, which blends neighbouring cells into blobs. Dots are handy up close, smooth is much easier to read when you zoom out to see the whole town.
Or just use your phone
If you use the MeshOS app with a companion radio, wardriving is one tap, and the app is free. Update to app 1.0.16 (Android APK or iOS via TestFlight), open the Map tab and press the Wardrive pill in the top right. The app uses the phone's own GPS, keeps logging with the screen off and the phone in your pocket, and uploads your cells to the community map every ten minutes by itself. The small button next to the pill flips between the blurred and dots views.
No radio connected? The pill still works, it just switches to view only: you can browse your own and everyone else's coverage, you simply cannot log new cells without a radio to hear with.
Zoomed right in, each square is one cell of roughly 100 metres. With no radio connected the pill goes amber and you can still browse.
The world button on the left switches on the Community Map layer: every node on the public MeshCore users map drawn as a blue disc, labelled with the first byte of its public key and nothing else. Nodes you have actually heard over RF are green. Zoom in and your own nodes get the same little badge, so you can match a disc on the map to a node in your Heard list at a glance.
Smooth view on the phone with the Community Map layer on. Green discs were heard over RF, blue ones are from the users map.
Share it, and see everyone else's
On a T-Deck or M9, go back into Tools, Wardrive and choose Share your heatmap. The device bins everything it has logged into cells of about 100 metres, keeps the strongest reading in each, and uploads them. The app does the same automatically while the pill is on.
Community heatmaps on the device lists the heatmaps other people have shared. Tick one and it draws on your map alongside your own, so you can see what coverage looks like from someone else's device before you even leave the house.
The coverage map on the website
Everything shared ends up on the Coverage Map, refreshed every few minutes. Here is the area around Hertford after a couple of outings, with the blue discs from the users map on top:
Zoom out and you get the bigger picture. The blue discs are the 60,000 or so nodes on the public MeshCore users map, labelled by the first byte of their public key only. The coverage cells will fill in as more of you get out there:
Reading the colours
- Red: 10 dB SNR and up. You are right next to a repeater.
- Orange: 5 to 10 dB. Solid.
- Yellow: 0 to 5 dB. Fine for messaging.
- Green: minus 5 to 0 dB. Getting marginal.
- Cyan and blue: below minus 5 dB. The edge of the mesh, where packets start to drop.
A few tips from the first few weeks
- Use a small antenna. An M9 with its internal antenna, or a T-Deck with a stubby one, gives you the honest worst case, which is what a handheld user will actually experience. Using a really high gain antenna may exaggerate the results.
- Busy meshes map fast. The feature logs every packet it hears, so on a lively mesh the cells fill in as quickly as you can drive them. On a quiet one, walk or drive slower and give each cell a minute.
- Look for the holes. If you are rolling out your own mesh, the gaps in the map are where the next repeater wants to be or in a suitably elevated position that would cover that cell from a distance. A morning's driving is cheaper than guessing.
- It is not just for cars. A good chunk of the map in the video above was logged walking the dog. Bikes and buses work too.
Privacy, in one paragraph
Logging is off until you turn it on, sharing is a deliberate action on the device and a visible pill in the app. The community map shows where the mesh is, not who is on it.
Go and have a play
Update your T-Deck or M9 to MeshOS 1.7.2 (or accept the update your device offers you), or grab the free MeshOS app if you use a companion radio. If you have not got a device yet, the Elecrow M9 with MeshOS is the one Andy used in the video. Then go and put your town on the map.