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mesh-cam → Home Assistant (MQTT bridge)

Goal: field nodes have no internet. One node at home with WiFi acts as the MQTT gateway, hears everything over LoRa, and relays it to Home Assistant.

   FIELD (no internet)                 HOME
 +---------------------+        +-----------------------+      +------------------+
 | Heltec V3 + XIAO    | LoRa   | Cardputer ADV         | WiFi | Home Assistant   |
 | camera node         |======> | (MQTT gateway: WiFi   |=====>| Mosquitto broker |
 | "MOTION at cam1"    | <===== |  + MQTT enabled)      |<=====| + Meshtastic HACS|
 +---------------------+        +-----------------------+ MQTT +------------------+
        ^                                                          |
        |   "snap" downlink: HA publishes -> ADV transmits -> field V3 -> XIAO snaps
        +----------------------------------------------------------+

Role split:

  • Heltec V3 (field) — paired with the XIAO camera (see main README). Plain Meshtastic, battery/solar, just needs its channel set to uplink enabled.
  • Cardputer ADV (home) — on house WiFi, MQTT enabled, pointed at HA's broker. It uplinks every packet it hears (including the field node's text) and forwards downlink commands back out over LoRa.
  • Home Assistant — Mosquitto broker add-on + the official meshtastic/home-assistant integration (auto-discovers nodes) + the custom motion sensor / snap button below.

1. Home Assistant: broker + integration

  1. Install the Mosquitto broker add-on (Settings → Add-ons), create an MQTT user/pass.
  2. Add MQTT integration if not present (it auto-detects Mosquitto).
  3. Install HACS, then add meshtastic/home-assistant as a custom repository and install it. It subscribes to the broker and auto-creates a device per node with battery / SNR / position / telemetry sensors — no extra YAML needed for those.

2. Cardputer ADV: turn it into the MQTT gateway

Plug the ADV in over USB and run (CLI: pip install meshtastic):

# Join house WiFi
meshtastic --set network.wifi_enabled true \
           --set network.wifi_ssid "YOUR_SSID" \
           --set network.wifi_psk  "YOUR_WIFI_PASSWORD"

# Point MQTT at the Home Assistant Mosquitto broker
meshtastic --set mqtt.enabled true \
           --set mqtt.address "192.168.1.50" \
           --set mqtt.username "mqtt_user" \
           --set mqtt.password "mqtt_pass" \
           --set mqtt.json_enabled true \
           --set mqtt.encryption_enabled false

# Enable uplink (and downlink, for the "snap" command) on the primary channel
meshtastic --ch-index 0 --ch-set uplink_enabled true
meshtastic --ch-index 0 --ch-set downlink_enabled true

Region must match on every node (e.g. meshtastic --set lora.region US). The MQTT root topic then becomes msh/US/.... Change US below to your region.

On the field Heltec V3, just make sure its channel uplinks too:

meshtastic --ch-index 0 --ch-set uplink_enabled true

3. Catch the motion alert + add a snap button

The camera node publishes the text MOTION at cam1. With json_enabled, the gateway publishes it to:

msh/US/2/json/LongFast/!<gateway_nodeid> (channel name = LongFast by default)

Add the entities in ha/ to your Home Assistant config (see those files), then reload.

  • binary_sensor cam1_motion flips on when a MOTION at cam1 text arrives.
  • button cam1_snap publishes a sendtext downlink so the field node tells the XIAO to take a photo.

Downlink note: HA publishes to msh/US/2/json/mqtt/ with this payload (the meshtastic/firmware JSON downlink format):

{ "from": 2130636288, "type": "sendtext", "payload": "snap", "channel": 0 }

from = the decimal node ID of the gateway (ADV). Get it with meshtastic --info (the num field) and put it in ha/automations.yaml.

4. Verify before you build

Before adding any HA entities, confirm packets are actually flowing with the MQTT client tools — see ha/mosquitto-cheatsheet.md. Subscribe to msh/#, watch the field node's text arrive, and test the snap downlink by hand. Only wire up HA once you see traffic.

5. Dashboard

ha/lovelace-card.yaml is a ready-to-paste card: motion indicator, last message, a "Take photo" button (calls the snap script), and the gateway's battery/SNR.