Common Scenarios

Each scenario below is a full walkthrough, combining the app, the repeater CLI, and CoreScope. If your symptom is listed on the main troubleshooting page, start there first: these are for problems that survive the quick fixes.

Contents

1. I just set up my node and nobody can see me

  1. Confirm the companion radio is actually connected to the app over BLE or USB.
  2. Check the radio settings. They must be 910.525 MHz, BW 62.5, SF7, CR5. Anything else and you are invisible to the network. Fix and reboot if wrong.
  3. Send a flood advert and wait 60 seconds.
  4. Look for your pubkey in CoreScope.

If your advert shows up in CoreScope: you are on the mesh. The network can see you. Ask contacts to search for you by name or share your QR code.

If it does not show up:

2. Contacts show "last seen" days ago

This is almost always a clock problem, not a radio problem.

  1. Check your phone's system clock. The app takes its time from the phone.
  2. On a T-Deck, the clock comes from GPS. Open the GPS Info screen and confirm the Sentences: counter is climbing. No GPS lock means no clock.
  3. For a repeater you administer, run Sync Clock from the app, or clock sync from the CLI. To set it by hand: 
    time 1720000000

    using the current epoch seconds from epochconverter.com.

  4. Once your own clock is right, send an advert to re-announce yourself with a correct timestamp.

Other people's contact lists will update their "last seen" for you when they next hear you advertise.

3. Messages go through sometimes but not always

Intermittent delivery almost always means a marginal link somewhere in the path.

  1. In CoreScope, look at several of your recent messages. Do they always travel the same path, or does it vary?
  2. Look for a hop where RSSI drops below -110 dBm or SNR drops below -5 dB. That is your weak link.
  3. Options, in rough order of cost:
    • Clear the stored path and let the app find a different route
    • Improve the antenna on the weak repeater, if it is yours
    • Raise your own antenna, which may let you reach a different repeater entirely
    • Propose a new repeater to bridge the gap. Bring your CoreScope evidence to Discord.
  4. If the path looks healthy but ACKs still fail, run stats-radio on the repeater nearest the destination and check for climbing receive errors.

4. I can see repeaters but my messages are never acknowledged

  1. Clear the stored path to that contact (⋮ menu in the chat), then send again. It will flood and rediscover a route. This alone fixes it more often than not, for the reasons in How Routing Actually Works.
  2. Still nothing? Open CoreScope and search your pubkey:
    • No packets at all means a TX problem. Go to scenario 1.
    • Packets at some repeaters but not others means the path is broken partway.
    • Packets arrive but no ACK comes back means the return path is broken, not the outbound one.
  3. If the destination node is clearly alive in CoreScope but its ACKs never reach you, ask that person to clear their path to you and send you a message. That rebuilds the return route from their side.

5. A repeater I operate is not forwarding

Work down this list over serial or remote admin:

  1. stats-packets — are the receive counters climbing? If not, the repeater hears nothing. Check antenna and frequency and stop here.
  2. get repeat — must be on.
  3. stats-radio — check the noise floor. Above -95 dBm, try the AGC fix: set agc.reset.interval 4. See Diagnosing Deafness.
  4. neighbors — an empty list on a repeater that should have neighbors confirms it is deaf.
  5. get dutycycle — if this is set very low, the repeater is throttling itself hard.
  6. get flood.max — if this is set very low, it will not relay traffic from further out in the network.
  7. Still stuck: log start, wait 10 minutes, log stop, then log over serial and bring the output to Discord.

6. I am in a fringe area

At the edge of coverage, the usual advice stops being optional.

  1. Antenna and height beat everything else. Elevation is the single biggest lever you have. Moving from ground level to a rooftop can add kilometres. A directional antenna aimed at the nearest repeater can turn a dead link into a working one.
  2. You cannot fix range by changing the spreading factor. A higher SF would be more sensitive, but the whole network runs SF7. Change yours and you simply leave the network. This trips people up, so it is worth saying plainly.
  3. Check the map. If there is no observer or repeater near you, CoreScope will be thin on data for your area, and you may simply be out of range of the mesh as it currently stands.
  4. Talk to people. Bring your location to Discord. Someone may know of a repeater that could be re-aimed, or a site that would close the gap. Fringe coverage is a network problem, not just yours.

Still stuck?

Head to the Still stuck section of the main troubleshooting page for what to include when you ask for help.