Repeater management

Overview

Repeater Management provides tools for administering MeshCore repeater and room server nodes. It includes device status monitoring, CLI access, telemetry reading, neighbor discovery, and remote configuration.

How to Access

From the Contacts screen:

1. Long-press a Repeater or Room contact
2. Select “Manage Repeater” or “Room Management”
3. Enter the admin password in the login dialog
4. Navigate to the Repeater Hub Screen

Login Dialog

• Password field with show/hide toggle. It accepts up to 20 characters so longer passwords from a password manager can be pasted, but MeshCore firmware only uses the first 15 characters of a login password (and stores only 15 when a password is set), so the first 15 must match
• “Save password” checkbox (persists for future logins). If a saved password exists, it is pre-filled and the checkbox is pre-checked, making login one-tap
• Routing mode selector and “Manage Paths” link are available directly in the dialog (configure routing before login)
• Auto-retries up to 5 times on timeout, showing progress (“Attempt 2 of 5”). A wrong password (explicit failure response) stops immediately — only timeouts trigger retries
• CLI commands to a repeater are matched to their reply by a short prefix. A reply that arrives late for an earlier attempt still completes the command, and no further attempts are sent
• If auto-clock-sync is enabled for this repeater (configured in Repeater Settings), a clock sync command is sent automatically on successful login

---

Repeater Hub Screen

The central management screen showing:

• Header card: Repeater name, short public key, path label, GPS coordinates (if known)
• Battery chemistry selector: NMC / LiFePO4 / LiPo (saved per repeater)
• Management tool cards (full-width cards with chevron arrows, not a grid). Title dynamically shows “Repeater Management” or “Room Management” (admin) or “Repeater Guest” / “Room Guest” (guest) based on contact type and login result:

Card	Destination	Visibility
Status	Repeater Status Screen	All users
Telemetry	Telemetry Screen	All users
Neighbors	Neighbors Screen	All users
CLI	Repeater CLI Screen	Admin only
Settings	Repeater Settings Screen	Admin only

The battery chemistry selector and CLI/Settings cards are hidden from guest users.

---

Repeater Status

What the User Sees

Three information cards:

System Information:

• Battery percentage and voltage (e.g. “85% / 3.95V”), using the battery chemistry set in the hub screen
• Clock at login time
• Uptime (days/hours/minutes/seconds)
• Queue length
• Debug flags (error event count)

Radio Statistics:

• Last RSSI and SNR
• Noise floor
• TX airtime and RX airtime

Packet Statistics:

• Packets sent and received, each broken down by flood vs. direct
• Duplicates, broken down by flood vs. direct
• Channel utilization (% of uptime used by TX + RX)

Key Interactions

• Auto-queries the repeater on open; shows a loading spinner until data arrives
• On timeout: red snackbar error. On success: data appears in-place (no extra snackbar)
• Pull-to-refresh or refresh button in the app bar to re-query
• Routing mode popup and path management dialog in app bar (these controls appear on all management sub-screens, not just Status)
• Accepts both binary RESP_CODE_STATUS_RESPONSE frames and legacy JSON text responses

---

Repeater CLI

A terminal-style interface for sending commands directly to the repeater.

What the User Sees

• Quick-command bar (horizontal scroll): Shortcut buttons for 9 common commands (advert, get name, get radio, get tx, discover.neighbors, neighbors, ver, clock, clock sync)
• Command history list: Sent commands in primary color, responses in secondary color
• Input bar: Up/down history arrows, monospace text field with > prefix, send button

Key Interactions

• Type a command and press send (or Enter on desktop)
• Up/down arrows navigate through command history
• Quick-command buttons populate and send common commands
• Overflow menu (three-dot icon): “Debug next command” option shows raw frame debug info for the next typed command (shows error snackbar if input field is empty)
• Help icon: Opens a scrollable reference of all known CLI commands. Tapping any command populates the input field immediately
• Clear icon: Wipes the command/response history
• Failed/timed-out commands are automatically retried once

Available CLI Commands

The in-app help reference (help icon) documents all known commands. Categories:

General: advert, advert.zerohop, reboot, clock, clock sync, password, ver, clear stats, erase, poweroff, shutdown, clkreboot, start ota, time, board, discover.neighbors, powersaving, stats-packets, stats-radio, stats-core

Get: get name, get role, get public.key, get prv.key, get repeat, get tx, get freq, get radio, get radio.rxgain, get af, get dutycycle, get int.thresh, get agc.reset.interval, get multi.acks, get allow.read.only, get advert.interval, get flood.advert.interval, get guest.password, get lat, get lon, get rxdelay, get txdelay, get direct.txdelay, get flood.max, get owner.info, get path.hash.mode, get loop.detect, get acl, get bridge.*, get adc.multiplier, get bootloader.ver

Set: set name, set af, set tx, set repeat, set allow.read.only, set flood.max, set int.thresh, set agc.reset.interval, set multi.acks, set advert.interval, set flood.advert.interval, set guest.password, set lat, set lon, set freq, set radio, set rxdelay, set txdelay, set direct.txdelay, set radio.rxgain, set dutycycle, set loop.detect, set path.hash.mode, set owner.info, set prv.key, set bridge.*, set adc.multiplier, tempradio, setperm

Bridge: get bridge.type

Logging: log start, log stop, log erase

Neighbors: neighbors, neighbor.remove

Power Management: get pwrmgt.support, get pwrmgt.source, get pwrmgt.bootreason, get pwrmgt.bootmv

Sensors: sensor get {key}, sensor set {key} {value}, sensor list [start]

GPS Management: gps, gps {on|off}, gps sync, gps setloc, gps advert, gps advert {none|share|prefs}

Region Management: region, region load, region get, region put, region remove, region allowf, region denyf, region home, region save, region default, region list allowed, region list denied

---

Telemetry

What the User Sees

A list of Cayenne LPP sensor channel cards:

• Channel 1 (special): Battery voltage (shown as percentage or raw mV) and MCU temperature
• Other channels: Raw sensor values with appropriate labels

Shows “No data” until a response arrives from the repeater.

Key Interactions

• Auto-queries on open
• Pull-to-refresh
• Temperature respects metric/imperial setting
• Battery readings are stored for the repeater’s battery snapshot

---

Neighbors

What the User Sees

A card titled “Repeater’s Neighbors - N” listing each neighbor as:

• Repeater name (or hex key prefix if unknown)
• Time since last heard
• SNR quality icon with color coding and label

Key Interactions

• Auto-queries up to 15 neighbors on open
• Matches public key prefixes against known contacts to show names
• Pull-to-refresh

---

Repeater Settings

What the User Sees

Most settings are declared once in repeaterSettingSpecs (lib/models/repeater_setting_spec.dart): the CLI key, section, input type (toggle, slider, number, choice or text), range, step and labels. The screen builds each control, its refresh button (get <key>) and its save command (set <key> <value>) from that list, so a new setting only needs a new entry. The radio parameters, passwords and identity keys are hand-built.

1. Basic Settings

• Name (set name)
• Admin password field (write-only; always sent when non-empty)
• Guest password field (write-only; always sent when non-empty)

2. Radio Settings

• Frequency (MHz), bandwidth, spreading factor (SF5–SF12) and coding rate (4/5–4/8), sent together as set radio freq,bw,sf,cr. The firmware only accepts set freq over serial, so when the radio hasn’t been fetched all four must be filled in before saving
• TX power (−9 to 30 dBm; set tx)
• Boosted RX gain toggle (set radio.rxgain)

3. Location Settings

• Latitude and longitude (set lat, set lon)

4. Features

• Packet forwarding toggle (set repeat)
• Guest access toggle (set allow.read.only)
• Multi-ACKs toggle (set multi.acks)
• Auto clock sync after login toggle (local app setting only, not sent to repeater)

5. Network Health

• Loop detection dropdown (off / minimal / moderate / strict; set loop.detect)
• Duty cycle slider (1–100%; set dutycycle)
• Receive delay (0–20; set rxdelay)

6. Advertisement Settings

• Local advert interval slider (60–240 minutes) with enable/disable toggle
• Flood advert interval slider (3–168 hours) with enable/disable toggle
• Flood max hops slider (0–64; set flood.max)
• Advert flood max hops slider (0–64, default 8; set flood.max.advert)
• Unscoped flood max hops slider (0–64, default 64; set flood.max.unscoped). The firmware reports 255 while it is unset and follows flood.max; the screen shows that as “Same as flood max”

7. Operator Info

• Multi-line text field for operator contact info (set owner.info); newlines sent as |

8. Actions (one-tap, no save needed)

• Send Advertisement (advert)
• Send Zero-Hop Advertisement (advert.zerohop)
• Clock Sync (clock sync)

9. Advanced (collapsed by default)

• Path hash mode dropdown (0–2; set path.hash.mode)
• TX delay and direct TX delay (0–2; set txdelay, set direct.txdelay)
• Interference threshold (0–255; set int.thresh)
• Channel activity detection toggle (set cad)
• AGC reset interval slider (0–1020 s in multiples of 4; set agc.reset.interval)
• Battery voltage calibration (0–10, 0 = board default; set adc.multiplier). Not every board supports it; the screen notes this
• Extra spreading factors (up to 3, comma separated; set extra.sf). Only LR2021 builds have this setting; the screen notes this. Its get reply has no > prefix

10. Change Identity Keys (collapsed by default)

• Private key field (set prv.key, reboot to apply), with a generator that can search for a chosen public-key prefix

Danger Zone (red-styled card)

• Reboot repeater (sends reboot with confirmation dialog)
• Erase filesystem (serial-only; shown disabled with an explanation — no command is sent over the air)

Key Interactions

• Settings are not fetched on open by default. Each get is a separate LoRa round trip, so fetching everything is slow and uses airtime. Turn on Auto-fetch repeater settings in App Settings to fetch everything when the screen opens; otherwise use Refresh all or the per-setting refresh buttons. Name and location are pre-filled from cached contact data
• Every control can be edited before its value has been fetched. Unfetched values show as ”—” (or off) until fetched or edited, and only edited settings are sent on save
• Save button in app bar appears when any change is detected; failed commands keep those settings dirty for retry, and a saved value counts as the repeater’s current value
• Settings are sent sequentially with 200ms delays between commands; firmware responses are checked and partial failures are reported in a snackbar
• Some changes (e.g. radio parameters) require a reboot; the firmware response triggers an orange “reboot needed” snackbar
• Advertisement interval sliders reset to their minimum when re-enabled (local: 60 min, flood: 3 hours)

Region configuration and companion statistics

Repeater region commands configure the relay’s forwarding policy. The app’s region list and channel selector choose scopes for outgoing channel floods; adding a name locally does not configure a repeater. Companion radio statistics describe your paired radio rather than the remote repeater shown here.