First time with MeshCore on the Tanmatsu? This page walks you from a fresh install to being visible on the mesh. It takes about two minutes.
When the app starts it lands on the home screen: a 4×3 grid of tiles. Move the focus with WSAD or the D-pad and press Enter to open a tile. The red X always steps back; ESC on the home screen returns to the launcher.
This is the single most important step. Your Advert name is what every other person on the mesh sees for you — in their Nodes list, in adverts, and as the sender of your channel messages. A fresh badge has no name set, so until you set one you show up as blank or unidentifiable, and nobody can tell who you are. Setting these two fields first prevents the large majority of "who is this?" and "why can't people see me?" questions.
- Owner name — your own local identity, shown in the home header. Use whatever you like (your name, handle, or callsign).
- Advert name — the public name broadcast to the mesh. Keep it short; the
common convention on the Dutch network is a region prefix, e.g.
NL-EHV-Alex(country-region-name). This is the name people will actually see.
- From home, open Settings (focus the Settings tile, press Enter).
- Open the Identity category (press Enter on the Identity tile).
- Select Owner name, press Enter, type your name, press Enter to save.
- Select Advert name, press Enter, type the name others will see, press Enter to save.
- Leave Role on Chat unless you are deliberately running a repeater or room server.
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| Enter | Enter edit mode on a field; press again to save (written to NVS) |
| Keyboard | Type to change the value; Backspace deletes |
| W / S or D-pad up/down | Move between rows |
| red X | Cancel the edit / step back a level |
| ESC | Back to the category grid (from a drilldown) |
The amber [EDIT] marker in the top-right and the amber row highlight tell you a
field is in edit mode. Your changes persist across restarts.
The category grid is where the rest of the setup lives. Focus a tile and press Enter to drill in.
- Regulatory → Country — set your country so the radio stays within the local frequency and power limits.
- Radio → LoRa preset — match the network you want to join. On the Dutch network that is EU/UK (Narrow): SF7, BW 62.5 kHz, CR 4/5, 869.618 MHz. If your local mesh uses different settings, adjust the individual radio fields to match — every node on a mesh must share the same radio parameters to hear each other.
- Region & Location → Region scope — set your regional scope (e.g.
nl-noord-brabant) so your channel messages are tagged for your area. - Announce yourself — from home, open the Advert tile and choose Send flood now. Your advert (with the name you just set) goes out so other nodes add you to their list.
- Nodes — see who else is on the mesh, with signal and distance.
- DM — end-to-end encrypted direct messages to a contact.
- Channel — join the public channel or add community/private channels.
- QR — show your contact card so someone can add you (
meshcore://contact/add). - Map — plot heard nodes on offline map tiles.
- Toolbox — packet log and repeater coverage test for diagnostics.
- UI-UX.md — every view, the key map, and the palettes
- GPS-Sources.md — the four ways to give the badge a position
- Screenshots.md — mock-ups of every screen