Transports
MeshSat supports 10 transport types across four categories. 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.