MeshDeck OS

Your own standalone MeshCore firmware for the LilyGo T-Deck — a free, open alternative to MeshOS, built on the MIT-licensed MeshCore stack. No licence fee, no serial number, fully yours to modify.

Default preset is 868 MHz UK/EU (MeshCore EU/UK (Narrow) — 869.618 MHz / BW 62.5 / SF 8 / CR 8), and a first-boot picker lets you set your node name and choose any regional preset.

Flash it in your browser

One-click web flasher: https://meshdeck-os.github.io/meshdeck/

Open that page in Chrome or Edge, plug the T-Deck in with a USB-C data cable, click Flash MeshDeck and pick the serial port. No install, nothing to build. (Full details and offline/command-line methods are in FLASHING.md.)

Screenshots

Rendered at the T-Deck's native 320×240 display resolution.

Home — 12-app grid, clock, mesh bars	Chat — bubbles, channels, delivery ticks
Map — offline vector map with live nodes	Radio diagnostics — freq/SF/BW/CR, RSSI, packets
First-boot onboarding — pick a radio preset	Heard / Discover — recently seen stations
Settings — radio, display, GPS, adverts	SOS beacon — repeating location broadcast

Features

Chat

• Speech-bubble chat UI at full 320x240 resolution, touch & trackball scrolling
• Tabbed channels + DM threads, colour-coded usernames
• Delivery reports (double ticks), send-failure marks, message timestamps
• Tap a message to quote-reply; tap a message containing a link to show it as a QR code for your phone
• Emoji rendering (smilies, heart, thumbs-up, fire...)
• Message history survives reboots (saved to flash)
• New-message popups, wake-on-message, alert tones with volume control
• One-tap quick canned messages ("On my way", "OK", "SOS"...) — click the empty compose bar

Map

• Built-in offline vector map - no tile files or SD card needed
• Worldwide coastlines + extra detail for UK/Europe, 285 city labels, 9 zoom levels
• Shows your contacts, repeaters (orange diamonds) and your own position live
• Pan with trackball or touch-drag, +/- zoom, u = UK view, w = world
• SD map packs: drop .mdm files in /meshdeck-maps/ on an SD card for extra high-detail regions - a ready-made UK+Ireland pack is included in sdcard/, and tools/gen_sdmap.py builds packs for any region on Earth

Mesh power tools

• Last heard list: signal, RSSI, hops, age and distance of recent stations
• Noise floor monitor: realtime 80-second graph, min/max/avg, last-RX readout
• Trace route with per-hop SNR bars
• Repeater manager: separate repeater list, login, one-key stats / neighbors / advert / clock sync
• Full terminal: every mesh event streams into a colour terminal; send DMs, channel messages, repeater CLI commands, change radio settings - also mirrored to USB serial so you can use it from a computer
• Home screen with big clock, mesh signal bars, battery and unread badge

Discovery, diagnostics & safety

• First-boot setup: choose your node name, then pick a regional radio preset from a built-in list (EU/UK, US, AU, NZ and more) so you match your local mesh
• Discover: one tap sends a flood advert and jumps to the Heard list
• Radio diagnostics: live frequency / SF / bandwidth / coding rate, time since last packet, RSSI & SNR, and a received-packet counter — the fast way to check you're hearing other nodes
• Auto-advert: optional periodic advert (5/15/30/60 min) so nearby nodes keep discovering you hands-free
• SOS beacon: repeatedly broadcasts your location on the public channel until cancelled — won't arm without a GPS fix or a manual position set
• GPS ready: plug an external UART/Grove GPS module into the T-Deck and enable it in Settings → GPS for live position in adverts, the map and SOS

Extras MeshOS doesn't have

• BLE companion mode still works - pair the official MeshCore phone app any time (PIN 123456)
• Open source: every feature is editable C++
• Firmware update from SD card (firmware.bin on card → Settings → Update)

Layout

firmware/              the firmware source (drops into MeshCore's examples/)
  main.cpp             entry point
  MyMesh.cpp/.h        MeshCore companion core + MeshDeck event hooks
  ui/                  the MeshDeck UI (screens, drivers, map data)
platformio.local.ini   build environment (MeshDeck_TDeck_868)
build.sh / flash.sh    one-command build + flash
webflasher/            your own browser-based flasher page (GitHub Pages)
sdcard/meshdeck-maps/  ready-made UK+Ireland high-detail map pack (uk.mdm)
.github/workflows/     cloud build + web flasher deploy (GitHub Actions)
tools/gen_mapdata.py   regenerates the built-in map from Natural Earth data
tools/gen_sdmap.py     builds SD map packs (.mdm) for any region

Quick start

./build.sh     # compile (first run ~10 min)
./flash.sh     # flash over USB

Full beginner instructions, download-mode steps and a no-install cloud build path are in FLASHING.md.

Controls

Input	Action
Trackball	move / scroll / pan
Trackball click	select / send
Trackball long-press	back
Keyboard	type; enter = send/confirm; backspace/delete edits text; backspace on empty = back
Touch	tap = select, drag = scroll/pan, swipe right = back
Home screen keys 1-9	quick-launch apps

Credits & licences

• MeshCore mesh stack - MIT, (c) meshcore-dev contributors
• Map data: Natural Earth - public domain
• QR encoding: qrcodegen - MIT, (c) Project Nayuki
• MeshDeck UI written for this project - MIT. Not affiliated with the MeshCore store or MeshOS; "MeshOS" is used only to describe feature parity.