State and Regional Meshtastic Channels
These are published here in order to spread awareness of our local and regional channels and to ensure compliance with amateur radio regulations regarding obfuscated traffic.
Some of these existed prior to the mesh network being built in the Muskegon area, others have been added and this is the official publication of those channels in case a user is electing part 97. Currently none of our infrastructure is part 97 election, so encrypted channels are permissible. Note that most of these are short keys, and none are intended at all for confidental communications. They should all be treated as in the clear. MA== is the base64 encoded way to say hexadecimal digits 30 and AQ== is 01 in hexadecimal. Not very secure, and that is not the intent! Note how the Chicago channel uses a full length encryption key.
| Channel Name | PSK | Purpose/Use |
|---|---|---|
| Muskegon | MA== | Muskegon Area Communication |
| WMI | MA== | Added after Muskegon to include users in surrounding counties |
| Michigan | MA== | This is the statewide channel, originally published on Michigan Meshtastic Network on Discord and https://michmesh.com |
| W8ZHO | AA== | Muskegon Area Amateur Radio Council Channel - This is good for field day or other events so as to not spam everyone else with traffic. |
| LongFast (Android) or Default | AQ== | This is the default channel. Most people everywhere will have this channel. This is the most likely channel to get a response on when out of the area. |
| Chicago | H1HDyEqg5W9XFilicVTIaoWYrs8URmWGo5fAYfbxQgo= | https://chicagolandmesh.com Rare traffic here in West MI, typically only during plane or balloon node flyovers or tropospheric ducting events. Good to monitor for ducting! |
You can easily add any or all of these by scanning this QR code within your app:
About Internet connected nodes:
I have a node that is one hop away from Downtown Mkg Router that has MQTT uplink and downlink turned on for these channels, so it should capture traffic on these channels, relaying from and publishing to the MichiganMesh MQTT server, which also forwards to the global public MQTT server, both under root topic msh/US/MI, which keeps most traffic limited to within Michigan while outside traffic is not relayed via internet gateways. If you are able to reach Downtown Mkg Router via one hop or less, you should be able to send and receive Internet linked traffic on all the channels above except Chicago and LongFast. LongFast purposely does not support this to keep traffic down on the network, and Chicago is not linked to MQTT topic msh/US/MI.
If you are regularly out of range of Downtown Mkg Router, you may wish to elect to enable the MQTT module on your own node. The node requires internet connection (can be through your phone) and in the channel settings you enable uplink and downlink. I would still suggest that you change your server to mqtt.michmesh.com and root topic to msh/US/MI to interact with the above channels and the Michmesh MQTT traffic. We are publishing to MQTT, so in connect to MQTT and enable upload and download for the channel if you can't reach the . You may also want to add Michigan and WMI, also with PSK MA==. This will allow your nodes to communicate with mesh users in the region and across the state!
**TL;DR: If you wish to talk to internet connected nodes, in LoRa Settings screen, you must select OK to MQTT and ensure Ignore MQTT is NOT selected. Conversely, if you want only RF originated traffic, you should select Ignore MQTT and turn of OK to MQTT. This is a global setting for all channels.
If you start messing with the default channel by moving one of the other channels to your primary slot in settings, a new frequency slot will be calculated for yoy and you be off frequency and not be part of the main mesh. Make sure to check that your devices are set for LoRa slot 20, which is 906.875MHz, or else you will be out on your own channel and no one will be able to hear you and you won't hear them! It's best for this reason to leave the default channel as primary unless you are really familiar with everything and have a specific reason to change things.