Meshtastic Messaging basics, how it works

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Meshtastic Messaging cloud icons mean

When you send messages using the android up the app will show status icons
Symbol Meaning
Meshtastic Cloud with Up Arrow Symbol Queued on the app to be sent to your node device.
Meshtastic Empty Cloud Symbol Queued on the device to be sent over the mesh. Meshtastic doesn't send messages until the radio channel is clear.
Meshtastic  Cloud with tick mark Symbol At least one other node on the mesh acknowledged the message
Meshtastic Person with tick mark Symbol The intended recipient of your direct message acknowledged the message (ACK).
Messages can sometimes get though if you just get the standard cloud tick or sometimes with no tick.
Meshtastic cloud strike through (crossed) Symbol Not acknowledged (NACK) or message error.

Meshtastic Message sending


  1. When your radio node 📻 sends a message If your node doesn't receive a confirmation from another node after a certain timeout, it will retransmit the message up to three times.
  2. When a receiving radio captures a packet, it checks to see if it has heard that message before. If it has it ignores the message. If it hasn't heard the message, it will rebroadcast it (if you role allows re-broadcast)
  3. For each message a radio rebroadcasts, it takes note of your set HOP MAX decrements HOP COUNT down by one. When a radio node receives a packet with a hop limit of zero, it will not rebroadcast the message further.
  4. Each radio node will store a small amount of packets (around 30) in its memory for when it's not connected to a client app. If it's full, it will replace the oldest packets with newly incoming text messages only.

Check out the last blog post: Hop Limit, Hop Count, Hops Away, Android & Python CLI 2.5.1 software

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