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Troubleshooting ​

Things that go wrong on real hardware, and what they usually mean.

No devices detected on startup ​

Check the operating system sees them at all:

bash
ls /dev/ttyACM* /dev/ttyUSB*
lsusb

If the device is missing from lsusb, the problem is below MeshSat: cable, port or power. USB cables are the usual culprit, and a surprising number of them are charge-only with no data lines. Try a different cable before anything else.

If the device appears in lsusb but not as a tty, the kernel has no driver bound for it. On a minimal host install the CH340, CP210x and FTDI modules may not be present.

Meshtastic connects but shows 0 nodes ​

The configuration handshake takes 5 to 10 seconds. Wait for config complete in the log. If it never arrives, the radio is probably answering on a different baud rate or the port is claimed by another process.

The radio is connected but nothing arrives ​

Check that both ends share a channel and a pre-shared key. Two radios on the same frequency with different keys look connected and exchange nothing readable.

Iridium shows 0 bars ​

The antenna needs a genuinely clear view of the sky. A window is not enough, and neither is a skylight at an angle. Check the antenna connector is seated, then take the antenna outside.

For the 9603N, also check the GPIO pins if you have configured any. A sleep pin left asserted holds the modem off.

ZigBee dongle detected as Meshtastic ​

The SONOFF dongle shares a VID:PID with some Meshtastic boards. Pin it explicitly:

MESHSAT_ZIGBEE_PORT=/dev/ttyUSB1

The full detection cascade is described under Hardware Setup.

A serial device goes silent and a reboot does not fix it ​

On many single-board computers USB VBUS stays powered across a warm reboot, so the device firmware never resets. The host reboots, the device does not, and it comes back in the same wedged state.

Cut power properly instead. A switchable USB hub, the power switch on the device, or unplugging it. If you have a per-port switchable hub, MeshSat can do this for you as part of the device health ladder.

Messages queue but never leave ​

Look at the delivery ledger rather than the log. Every outbound message becomes a row with a status, a retry count and a backoff, and the dashboard shows it:

bash
curl -s http://localhost:6050/api/deliveries | jq .

A row stuck at retry usually means the bearer is up but the far side is not acknowledging. A row stuck at queued means the worker for that interface is not running, which is a gateway problem, not a routing one.

A message arrives twice ​

Check whether two rules match it. Rules do not stop at the first match by design, because fan-out to several bearers is a normal thing to want, so two overlapping rules deliver two copies. Add a filter or an object group to make them exclusive.

The dashboard loads but the API returns 404 ​

The API is served under /api, not /api/v1. There is no versioned prefix.

Nothing in this list matches ​

Collect the log and the interface state before asking:

bash
docker logs --tail 200 meshsat
curl -s http://localhost:6050/api/interfaces | jq .
curl -s http://localhost:6050/api/devices/health | jq .

Then open an issue on github.com/meshsat/meshsat with the hardware you are using. The supported-devices table is short because it only lists what has actually been run, so a report about untested hardware is useful rather than unwelcome.

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