Meshtastic Gateway

A Meshtastic gateway bridges your local mesh network to the internet. Environmental telemetry from nearby Meshtastic nodes flows through your gateway into WeSense automatically — and optionally to the public Meshtastic network and third-party maps as well.

Running a gateway is one of the most valuable infrastructure contributions you can make.

It gives your local mesh neighbourhood a reliable, community-controlled path to the WeSense network without depending on the public Meshtastic MQTT servers.

What You Need

• A Meshtastic node with internet connectivity — any Meshtastic-compatible board (Heltec V3, T-Beam, RAK WisBlock, etc.) connected to WiFi or Ethernet
• A WeSense station running the meshtastic Docker profile — this runs the ingester that decodes and stores the data
• Or, configure your gateway to forward MQTT to mqtt.wesense.earth directly

What a Gateway Does

Meshtastic Nodes (LoRa mesh)
        ↓ radio
Your Gateway (internet-connected Meshtastic node)
        ↓ MQTT
Your Local EMQX Broker (part of WeSense station)
        ↓
WeSense Meshtastic Ingester (decode, correlate, geocode)
        ↓
ClickHouse + Live Map
        ↓ (optional forwarding)
mqtt.meshtastic.org / Liam Cottle map / etc.

Your gateway receives mesh traffic over LoRa and publishes it to your local MQTT broker. The WeSense ingester subscribes, decodes the protobuf messages, decrypts them (AES-CTR with the standard Meshtastic key), correlates position with telemetry, geocodes the location, and stores the data.

MQTT Forwarding

Your gateway can forward mesh traffic to multiple destinations simultaneously. WeSense supports configurable forwarding slots in the .env file:

Destination	Purpose
WeSense (local ingester)	Primary — stores data in ClickHouse, appears on the WeSense map
mqtt.meshtastic.org	Optional — contributes to the public Meshtastic network
mqtt.meshtastic.liamcottle.net	Optional — contributes to Liam Cottle's Meshtastic map

This means running a gateway doesn't take data away from the Meshtastic community — you can feed WeSense and the public network at the same time.

Setup

1. Configure Your Meshtastic Node as a Gateway

In the Meshtastic app or web interface:

1. Go to Module Configuration → MQTT
2. Enable MQTT
3. Set the MQTT server to your local EMQX broker address (e.g. 192.168.1.100)
4. Set credentials (configured in your WeSense .env file)
5. Enable Encryption Enabled if your mesh uses encryption (default)

2. Enable the Meshtastic Profile on Your Station

In your WeSense station's .env file, enable the meshtastic profile:

COMPOSE_PROFILES=guardian,meshtastic

This starts the wesense-ingester-meshtastic container in community mode, which subscribes to your local EMQX broker for mesh traffic.

3. Configure Forwarding (Optional)

To also forward mesh traffic to the public Meshtastic network:

MESHTASTIC_FORWARDING_ENABLED=true
MESHTASTIC_FWD_1_ENABLED=true   # Liam Cottle map
MESHTASTIC_FWD_2_ENABLED=true   # mqtt.meshtastic.org

Forwarding is handled by EMQX bridge rules — your gateway publishes once to your local broker, and EMQX forwards to the configured destinations.

Community vs Downlink Mode

The WeSense Meshtastic ingester has two modes:

Mode	Environment Variable	What It Does
Community (default)	MESHTASTIC_MODE=community	Ingests from your local EMQX broker — traffic from your own gateway
Downlink	MESHTASTIC_MODE=downlink	Subscribes to mqtt.meshtastic.org directly and ingests public mesh traffic from 30+ regional feeds worldwide

Community mode is for gateway operators — you run a gateway and ingest your local mesh.

Downlink mode is for hub operators who want to ingest global Meshtastic data without running their own gateway. It uses the public Meshtastic MQTT credentials (meshdev / large4cats) and subscribes to regional topics like msh/ANZ/#, msh/US/#, msh/EU_868/#.

Downlink mode — use with caution

Downlink mode subscribes to the global public Meshtastic MQTT feed, which generates very high traffic volumes and significant deduplication overhead. Most operators should not enable this. Use community mode with a local gateway instead.

As the WeSense network grows, we plan to evolve downlink so that country nodes can subscribe to just their own country's feed — taking on responsibility for their region's Meshtastic data rather than every node pulling the entire world. This is a developing area.

Public MQTT instability

The public Meshtastic MQTT servers (mqtt.meshtastic.org) can experience instability and downtime. Running your own gateway with community mode is more reliable and gives you control over your data path.

Encryption

Meshtastic encrypts mesh traffic with AES-256 in CTR mode. The WeSense ingester decrypts automatically using the standard Meshtastic default key. If your mesh uses a custom channel key, set it via:

MESHTASTIC_CHANNEL_KEY=your_base64_key_here

The default key (AQ==) works for the standard Meshtastic public channel.