Transports
MeshSat runs eight transport bearers on nine Reticulum interfaces, and routes to TAK, MQTT and webhooks as destinations. Iridium counts twice, on the 9603N and the 9704. The pages below cover each one; Reticulum itself is covered under Reticulum, and direct serial needs no configuration beyond a port. Each transport handles the protocol-specific details of sending and receiving messages, while the policy engine handles routing between them.
Mesh Networks
| Transport | Interface | Status | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Meshtastic | Serial / USB | Stable | LoRa mesh radios (T-Echo, Heltec, RAK, etc.) |
| ZigBee | Serial / USB | Beta | IEEE 802.15.4 mesh via ZigBee coordinator dongles |
Satellite
| Transport | Interface | Status | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Iridium SBD | Serial | Stable | Short Burst Data via RockBLOCK 9603N |
| Iridium IMT | Serial | Beta | Internet Modem Transceiver via RockBLOCK 9704 |
Cellular
| Transport | Interface | Status | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cellular | Serial / USB | Stable | SMS and data via USB cellular modems (Huawei E220, etc.) |
IP Networks
| Transport | Interface | Status | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| MQTT | TCP/TLS | Stable | Publish/subscribe messaging over MQTT brokers |
| Webhooks | HTTP/HTTPS | Stable | Incoming and outgoing HTTP webhooks |
| APRS | TCP (APRS-IS) | Beta | Amateur Packet Reporting System for position and telemetry |
| TAK | TCP/TLS | Beta | Team Awareness Kit (ATAK/WinTAK) CoT integration |
Transport Lifecycle
Every transport follows the same lifecycle:
- Init — Transport is created with its configuration
- Connect — Underlying connection is established (serial port opened, TCP connected, etc.)
- Run — Transport listens for incoming messages and accepts outgoing sends
- Reconnect — On connection loss, transport automatically retries with exponential backoff
- Shutdown — Graceful disconnect on process exit
Common Features
All transports share these capabilities:
- Auto-detection — Serial transports can auto-detect device ports on USB hotplug
- Health checks — Each transport reports its connection status via the API
- Metrics — Per-transport message counts, latency, and error rates
- Dead letter queue — Failed sends are queued for retry with configurable TTL
- Message transforms — Payloads can be transformed before sending (compression, encoding, format conversion)
Next Steps
Select a transport above for detailed configuration and usage instructions, or see the Architecture section to understand how transports interact with the policy engine.