2026-01-19 | [meshtastic]
Proponents of the Meshtastic hobbyist mesh network loudly tout the "decentralized" and "off-grid" nature of the project. This is strictly true; once your Meshtastic node is set up and the app is installed on your phone, you can communicate on the Meshtastic network in a completely off-grid fashion, with no need for internet or anything else apart from a power supply for your devices.
However, if you need to be able to maintain the network - perhaps change out a node or add a new one, or access the web client, or read the documentation, you'll probably have difficulty doing so without internet access. You might say, "Well, it's all on the github!" which is exactly what I was told when I asked about this, but there are 118 repositories on there and unless you're a developer on the project, it's not super obvious what you'll need before you lose internet access. Even at that, you could be blocked by a git clone, pip install or apt-get halfway through, and be SOL. The project makes the most sense in situations where the internet fails, but also relies heavily on it.
This isn't really Meshtastic's fault; it's just how modern open source projects go these days, but even so there doesn't seem to be a how to host this project offline section in the docs. Development and discussion takes place mainly on Github, Discord, Reddit, and Youtube. In a real emergency, you will not have access to these and will be merely alone with your accumulated knowledge, perhaps with others who will turn to you for answers.
Or, maybe you are simply somewhere without reliable internet access, and want to learn about and test out Meshtastic. This is how I first became aware of this shortcoming, and it instantly turns something that was supposed to be fun into a frustrating experience.
Most Meshtastic tutorials cover how to take your hardware, flash the firmware, setup the client, and start talking on the network. This is not one of those guides; here, we'll be setting up your computer with all the prerequisites needed to be able to do those tasks without access to the internet. This author might assume you have some familiarity with networking, installing Linux, and working with ESP32s and electronics, but maybe not so much knowledge about modern web dev stacks, because that describes me pretty well.
I'm going to be targeting the Raspberry Pi 3B+ as our target computer of choice. This board is quite old now, but there's a good chance that someone reading this guide already has one. The Raspberry Pis (at least the earlier ones) are well known for their low power consumption, which may be helpful in an off-grid scenario. You could power one with a bicycle easily. The Pis also have the advantage that you can easily remove the SD card and make a backup of it. But, you will need a display of some kind, and a USB keyboard and mouse, which you probably also have on hand. I'll be starting with a fresh install of the full desktop Raspberry Pi OS.
If not, you should be able to do most of the same steps on an old laptop or a virtual machine. I tend to use regular Debian with the XFCE desktop environment installed when asked during install time.
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install chromium nmap
The raspberry Pi OS supports a vnc server out of the box. Do sudo raspi-config and it will be under Interface Options --> VNC.
#tips and tricks
Suppose you have a home server that your normal everyday-carrying phone can access using some kind of vpn (like Tailscale). But, you have your meshtastic node set up on the server's local network where only the server but not your phone can reach it. Just use the server to forward the TCP connection like so:
socat TCP-LISTEN:4403,fork,reuseaddr TCP:<mt_node's IP address>:4403 &
and in the app on your phone, use <server's vpn IP address> under Connection -> Network. Now, you can access your base station from anywhere provided you have internet.
to be continued