drewmccal/summitmesh

SummitMesh turns a MeshCore radio mesh network into a sensor system for a mountain range. MeshCore is an existing project that lets small radio devices called LoRa nodes relay messages to each other across long distances without needing cell service or the internet. SummitMesh builds on top of it to let sensor readings, like temperature or battery level from a device sitting on a mountain, spread automatically to anyone nearby with the standard MeshCore app. The README explains the problem this solves: normally, checking a MeshCore sensor means connecting directly to that specific node and asking it for its data, which does not scale well if you want to see conditions across many summits at once. SummitMesh flips this around so each node regularly broadcasts its own readings out onto the mesh, and the existing relay devices pass that broadcast along, so the information can reach a hiker anywhere in range without any extra setup on their end. Each node sends two kinds of messages: a plain, human-readable text summary like a location name, temperature, and battery percentage that anyone can read, and a separate, cryptographically signed technical version meant for an optional home collector program to verify and store. That collector, written in Python, checks the signed data is genuine and not a replayed copy, decodes it, and can feed it into a smart home system, a time-series database, or a graphing tool. Nodes can be built in one of two roles from the same firmware: as a relay that helps pass along other nodes' messages, or as a sensor-only node that does not relay. Which sensors a node can read depends on what MeshCore itself already supports for that hardware board. According to the README, the collector software is finished and tested, while the device firmware is written but has not yet been tried on real hardware. The project is released under the MIT license, matching the MeshCore project it depends on.