PULSEMelbourne Meshtastic · by The Clique online

Getting started

New to Meshtastic?

The short version, and where to find the official guides. Once you’re on the air, Grow the mesh is where the useful part starts.

What a node is

A Meshtastic node is a small, low-power LoRa radio. You usually pair it with your phone over Bluetooth and use the Meshtastic app to send text messages. Nodes pass messages along for each other, so a message can hop across several nodes to reach someone well beyond your own radio’s range. No phone network or internet is needed.

You don’t need a licence. In Australia these radios operate under the ACMA’s class licence for low-interference devices (the LIPD Class Licence 2025), which allows up to 1 watt EIRP in the 915–928 MHz band. EIRP includes your antenna’s gain, so a high-power radio paired with a high-gain antenna can go over the limit.

Meshtastic, not MeshCore

You may hear about MeshCore, and Victoria’s EastMesh community. MeshCore is a different LoRa messaging system that can’t talk to Meshtastic, even on the same hardware. This site, and Pulse, are about Meshtastic.

The settings that matter in Melbourne

  • Region: ANZ. This puts your radio on the Australian and New Zealand band, 915–928 MHz. A radio on the wrong region can’t talk to anyone here.
  • Modem preset: LongFast, the default. Melbourne’s public mesh runs on it, judging by the nodes that show up on public maps. Every node has to use the same preset to hear each other.
  • Keep the primary channel as it comes. Renaming it, even for privacy, moves your radio to a different frequency and cuts you off from everyone. For a private group, add a secondary channel instead.
  • A name: give your node a long name and a short name people will recognise. Avoid putting your street or address in it.
  • Position: sharing your position is optional. If you do share it, consider reducing its precision.
  • Firmware: use the current stable release. The documentation sometimes shows pre-release (alpha) versions first, so check which version a page is about.

Official guides

We don’t recommend particular devices or shops. The official documentation lists supported hardware.

Then say hello

Once you’re set up, send hello or radio check on the public channel. TheClique listens there, and Meet Pulse explains when and how it answers.