Messaging

Messaging is the heart of Mode-X Mesh. You can reach everyone nearby, a whole town or region, or one person privately - and know which of those you're doing at all times.

Communal messages

Post to a communal channel - General, your town, your region - and every node on that channel hears you. These are open conversations: anyone can join the channel and read along, and recent public messages also appear on the website.

Communal messages are perfect for "anyone around?", local notices, coordinating at an event, or just chatting.

Private messages

Send to a single person and the message is encrypted end to end. It's scrambled on your node before it's transmitted and only the recipient's node can unscramble it. The relays that carry it can't read it, and neither can any server. Private conversations never appear on the public site.

The network bot

There's a friendly bot on the communal channels that answers a few simple commands. It's the quickest way to check the network is healthy and that your node can reach it.

Send any of these on a communal channel:

ping - the bot replies pong with how long it's been running and how many nodes are active. A reply means your uplink to the network works.
nodes? - how many nodes are active in your area, and across the whole network.
weather? - the latest sensor readings reported to the mesh.
test - a quick acknowledgement that your message got through.

The app gives you a one-tap Ping the mesh button too, which sends a ping and shows you the round-trip time when the pong comes back.

The bot only ever responds to open, communal messages - it never sees or touches your private conversations.

Knowing your message got there

Mode-X Mesh finds a path for your message through whichever neighbours can carry it, hopping node to node until it arrives. On busy areas of the mesh there are usually several possible paths, so messages get through even as individual nodes come and go.

If you want to be sure of your reach, a quick ping is the simplest test - the bot's reply travels back the same way your messages do.