A retro-futuristic operations console for MeshCore LoRa mesh repeaters.
Quick start · Tour · Install · Releases · Troubleshooting · Development
waev:outpost turns the live API and packet stream of an openHop Repeater into one browser workspace: a map of the mesh, a packet lab, RF and noise-floor analytics, host telemetry, and a companion chat. It is a static web application that the repeater serves itself. Nothing else to run, nothing to patch.
waev:outpost was pyMC Console and then openHop Console. New versions are delivered through the waev:outpost Repeater plugin. v0.9.394 is the final legacy standalone release from pymc_console-dist; existing files under /opt/pymc_console can stay in place while you move to the plugin.
| Retro-futuristic UI | Keycaps, seven-segment readouts, LED meters and amber screen wells. Every page is an instrument, not a form. Dark and light, desktop and phone. |
| Advanced mesh mapping | 3D terrain, live traces, hop meters, and Viterbi path disambiguation that resolves colliding two-character prefixes to real nodes. |
| Robust system stats | Load, storage, heat and I/O on the front plate; CPU, memory, NVMe and sensor envelopes underneath, live. |
| Local network I/O | TX and RX rate scopes with peak hold, plus bytes and packets since boot. |
| Noise-floor visualization and anomaly detection | A density scatter of the floor across days, with tunable percentile thresholds that flag interference bursts. |
| Robust packet filtering | Type, route, status, signal, node class, free text and a time slider, all stacking. |
| Mesh analytics with packet throughput | Forwarded versus dropped by packet type over time, with duplicate rate, CRC failures and LBT wait. |
| Public hash channel detection | Hashed group channels recognised and named as they appear on air, decrypted where the key is known. |
| Packet parsing with duplicate scanning | A byte-level Wire Inspector that maps every field to its bytes, resolves the path on a map, and walks the copies of a flood. |
| Companion chat | Message the mesh straight from your repeater through a companion identity: channels and DMs, bot cards, reply, and an outbound queue meter. |
- In the built-in Repeater interface, open System → Plugins → Catalogue.
- Find waev:outpost and press Install. Catalogue installation enables it automatically. If the Installed tab shows it as disabled, press Enable.
- Use Open UI, or open
http://<repeater-ip>:8000/plugins/waev.outpost/, and sign in with your existing Repeater credentials.
To serve waev:outpost at http://<repeater-ip>:8000/, return to the built-in interface and open System → Configuration → Access → Web Options → Web Frontend. Select waev:outpost; the built-in interface applies the choice immediately. The direct plugin address remains available.
For updates, use System → Plugins → Catalogue → Refresh, then Update when offered. In waev:outpost, the version badge also offers What's new → Update when the repeater reports an available plugin update. Updates need your confirmation and become available after catalogue approval.
Already using the standalone console? Start with Migrate from the standalone install. If your repeater has no Plugins page, upgrade Repeater first.
The console is built as hardware. Node classes are keycaps with their own counters. Zoom, view and basemap are keys on the right rail. Hop distribution is an LED column meter. The screen well carries the map with a CRT-style bezel, and the whole plate carries the identity of the node it is bolted to. The same parts kit, the TUI Kit, builds every other page, so once you have learned one panel you have learned them all.
- MapLibre GL rendering with CARTO basemaps and 3D terrain from elevation tiles
- Repeaters, hubs, neighbours, rooms and your own node, filtered by class and link quality
- Deep Analysis: a Viterbi hidden Markov model picks the most probable path when a two-character prefix matches several nodes, weighing recency, co-occurrence, position, geography and measured edges
- Live Trace: packets animate along their resolved path as they arrive
- Ghost-node discovery for prefixes that never resolve, with RF-constrained location estimates
- Wardrive replay, GPS diagnostics, and a searchable contact inventory in the same workspace
The throughput chart splits traffic into what the repeater forwarded and what it dropped, per packet type, across the selected window. The counters above it are the ones that matter for a repeater: forwarded, dropped, duplicate rate, CRC failures, and mean listen-before-talk wait.
Filters stack. Pick a node class, a route type, a delivery status and a signal band, then narrow to a node by name and scrub the time slider. The same filter engine drives the Packets page and the Statistics analyzer, so a selection means the same thing everywhere.
The Wire Inspector opens any packet down to its bytes. Header, hashes, path and payload are colour-mapped, and clicking a decoded field highlights the bytes that produced it. The path is resolved and drawn on a map with a confidence score per hop. When a flood arrives more than once, the copies are listed together so you can compare the routes they took.
The noise floor is sampled continuously and drawn as a density scatter, so a week of readings shows its shape rather than a smeared average. Daily bands make diurnal patterns obvious.
Anomaly detection watches the floor for sustained rises above a baseline. Baseline and spike percentiles, merge gap, minimum sequence length and similarity tolerance are sliders, and the resulting configuration is printed so it can be shared. Detected anomalies are counted and overlaid on the packet analyzer, which plots every packet by type across the window, as totals or as airtime.
Group text on MeshCore travels under a channel hash. The console recognises the hashes that appear on air, names the ones it knows from its curated geographic and community channel list, and decrypts traffic for any channel whose key it holds. The dashboard shows chat activity per channel over the selected window.
Create a companion identity on the repeater and the console becomes a messenger: no second radio, you talk to the mesh straight from your openHop node. Channels and direct messages sit in an amber LED screen with a contact roster, unread tallies, reply and delete on every message, and bot responses printed as instrument cards. The plate above it carries the companion selector, flood and zero-hop advert keys, the channel and contact counters, an outbound queue meter, and LINK, RX and TX lamps.
The System workspace reads the host the repeater runs on. Load, storage, heat and network I/O are seven-segment readouts. CPU and memory are a live scope. Temperature envelopes cover the SoC and every NVMe drive, and memory and storage are column meters. Sensors, logs, storage, recovery, diagnostics and a terminal are tabs in the same workspace.
Local network I/O is a two-channel scope for the host's interface, with peak hold, current rates on the readouts, and bytes and packets since boot.
The home dashboard is the one-glance view: live traffic and recent packets, chat activity, mesh health, SpamGuard, and node context. On wide displays it becomes a pane-of-glass layout. Tap the version badge for the release notes.
waev:outpost is an application UI plugin managed by openHop Repeater. The plugin is the channel for new releases; the standalone distribution stops at v0.9.394.
| Starting point | Next step |
|---|---|
| Built-in Repeater interface with Plugins | Install from the catalogue. |
| Existing waev:outpost standalone install | Switch to the built-in interface and migrate. |
| Repeater without a Plugins page, or with an unavailable plugin manager | Update Repeater and its plugin manager. |
| Repeater in Docker or Proxmox LXC | Use the same plugin workflow once the Repeater plugin manager is available. Follow Repeater's installation guide for the host or container setup. |
waev:outpost requires a working openHop Repeater with application UI plugin support. Use Repeater's installation or upgrade instructions for your platform. Existing native installations may need to run its updated manage.sh upgrade once as an administrator to refresh the privileged upgrade helper; see the plugin prerequisites.
Repeater owns the radio configuration, identities, credentials, storage and service. Installing this UI plugin does not reset them. Use your existing repeater address; the examples here assume its default port, 8000.
- In the built-in Repeater interface, open System → Plugins → Catalogue.
- Find waev:outpost and press Install. The repeater downloads the approved wheel and checks its checksum, plugin ID and version against the catalogue.
- On the Installed tab, confirm UI READY. Catalogue installs are enabled automatically; if it is disabled, press Enable.
- Use Open UI or visit
http://<repeater-ip>:8000/plugins/waev.outpost/. Sign in with your existing Repeater credentials. - To make it the default at
/, return to the built-in interface and open System → Configuration → Access → Web Options → Web Frontend. Select waev:outpost, the plugin entry. This applies immediately and the page refreshes into the chosen interface.
If an older standalone copy is also installed, choose the plugin entry, not openHop Console pointing at /opt/pymc_console/web/html.
In the built-in interface, use System → Plugins → Catalogue → Refresh, then Update for waev:outpost when offered. From waev:outpost, tap the version badge to open What's new, use Check, and press Update when the repeater reports an available plugin update.
Updates are approved by you, not installed automatically. The plugin uses the same Repeater configuration and credentials after an update. A new GitHub release appears in the catalogue only after its metadata has been approved; Refresh cannot install a version that is not approved yet.
Use this when you need to install a release directly or cannot reach the catalogue:
- Download the single
.whlasset from a waev-outpost-plugin release. - In the built-in interface, open System → Plugins → Install wheel, choose the file, and press Install.
- Press Enable if the plugin is disabled, then open its UI and optionally select it under Web Options → Web Frontend as above.
A fresh local-wheel installation has no catalogue repository metadata, so Update may be unavailable. Update it by uploading a newer wheel with Install wheel again. To adopt catalogue-managed updates, reinstall the approved catalogue version using the authenticated API; check the approved version first because it may be older than a manually uploaded release.
The pymc_console-dist distribution and its manage.sh upgrade path end at v0.9.394. New waev:outpost versions are published as the waev.outpost plugin.
- Keep
/opt/pymc_console/web/htmland your existing Repeater configuration in place. No uninstall, credential reset or radio reconfiguration is needed. - In your current waev:outpost, open Configuration → Web Frontend and select Default Frontend, the built-in Repeater interface. In v0.9.394 this applies immediately and reloads. In newer waev versions, press Set as default interface, then Open default interface in a new tab. Open your repeater's home address
/if you are still viewing the direct plugin URL. - In the built-in interface, follow System → Plugins → Catalogue → waev:outpost → Install. Confirm UI READY and open
/plugins/waev.outpost/to check the installed version and your repeater connection. - Make the plugin the default through System → Configuration → Access → Web Options → Web Frontend. Choose the waev:outpost plugin entry.
Repeater still serves the same API with the same configuration, radio identities and login credentials. Keep the same host, port and protocol to retain access to that browser origin's saved preferences. Your old standalone files can remain as a fallback.
To switch back, choose Default Frontend again. To temporarily use the old standalone copy, choose openHop Console in the built-in interface while /opt/pymc_console/web/html still exists; waev labels that choice waev:outpost · standalone install. Your old copy keeps its installed version; the standalone channel ends at v0.9.394. See the complete migration and recovery guide if the current UI cannot be opened.
For a catalogue installation, use Keeping it up to date. For a local-wheel installation, use Install a plugin wheel. Existing standalone users must migrate to the plugin for new versions; rerunning the old manage.sh upgrade does not migrate the installation.
Repeater itself is updated separately through its supported installer or container upgrade process.
First choose Default Frontend and open the repeater's home address to confirm that the built-in interface works. Then use System → Plugins → Installed → Uninstall for waev:outpost. Leave Also delete persistent data directory unchecked if you want to keep plugin data for a later reinstall.
Removing a UI plugin does not uninstall Repeater. The old /opt/pymc_console folder is separate, and deleting it is not part of migration. See legacy recovery and cleanup before removing any old files.
The installation guide documents authenticated catalogue installation, wheel upload, updates and default-interface selection. These operations use Repeater's existing API credentials.
Release notes live in CHANGELOG.md, on waev-outpost-plugin releases, and in the console's What's new dialog.
The plugin repository carries all new versions. The final standalone v0.9.394 release is a legacy fallback, not an update channel. Published plugin versions remain available at their versioned release URLs.
For bots and automation:
- Atom feed (RSS readers and feed integrations):
https://github.com/Treehouse-00/waev-outpost-plugin/releases.atom - Latest published release JSON (
tag_name,body, assets):https://api.github.com/repos/Treehouse-00/waev-outpost-plugin/releases/latest - Raw changelog (full history as Markdown):
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Treehouse-00/waev-outpost-plugin/main/CHANGELOG.md
A published release may be newer than the version approved for catalogue installation. Repeater's Plugins page reports the approved update.
| Operation | Effect |
|---|---|
| Install or update the UI plugin | Replaces waev:outpost's managed plugin files; Repeater configuration and credentials remain in place. |
| Select a default frontend | Changes web.web_path, deciding which UI Repeater serves at /. |
| Uninstall the UI plugin | Removes its release files; plugin data is kept unless you explicitly choose to delete it. |
Legacy standalone manage.sh |
Manages the separate /opt/pymc_console files. It does not install or update the plugin. |
| Update Repeater | Uses Repeater's own installer or container process, independently of the UI plugin. |
For native installations, Repeater's service tools remain:
sudo systemctl status openhop-repeater
sudo journalctl -u openhop-repeater -fwaev:outpost is built against the openHop Repeater dev branch and checked against it before each release; this release was checked against dev as of 2 September 2026 and against a 1.1.2 development build in daily use. Everything the console shows comes from the Repeater's own HTTP API and its two WebSocket streams, /ws/packets for the live mesh and /ws/companion_frame for the companion page; the console applies no patches to the Repeater and needs nothing installed beside it.
Where the Repeater renamed something, the console reads both the old and the new name and writes whichever the Repeater it is talking to understands, so an older Repeater keeps working:
- Modem transports:
pymc_tcpandpymc_usbbecamemodem_tcpandmodem_usbin August 2026. - The modem sensor:
pymc_modembecameopenhop_modem. - ACL roles: the Repeater now reports
admin,read_write,read_onlyandguestwith MeshCore's numbering; older ones report onlyadminandguest. - The stats WebSocket now carries the sidebar vitals (uptime, mode, utilisation, noise floor, advert tier) in every beat and the 24-hour packet aggregate one beat in six; the console reads either cadence.
- Noise-floor history is paged: a Repeater from September 2026 answers with up to 300 samples an hour of the window where older ones answered with the newest 1,000 samples, so the console now asks for a bounded page on every Repeater.
- Config exports and the stats view redact the modem's TCP token to
*** REDACTED ***; posting that value back leaves the stored token in place, so a re-imported export or a saved radio form never clears it. - A multi-radio Repeater lists its radios and names a default; the Configuration page's Radio module and the Radio Hardware page pick which one to edit and write to that radio's entry. Packets from such a Repeater carry
rx_radio_idandtx_radio_id, which are typed but not yet shown on a packet row.
Two optional back ends are used when present and done without otherwise. The analytics API (/api/analytics/*) is not part of the upstream Repeater; without it the console computes topology, disambiguation and sparklines itself. The companion REST API (/api/v1/companions) comes from our fork of the Repeater; without it the companion page works over the frame stream alone.
Features that need a Repeater from mid-2026 or newer hide themselves on an older one rather than failing: the direct advert key beside Send Advert and the direct advert interval fields, the discovered regions list and a node's region scopes with its "ask now" key, the MQTT page's neighbours-table schedule and Publish now key, the CAD page's Manual Check, the Neighbour Links page under Statistics, and the multi-radio selector. The Logs page listens to the Repeater's log stream and falls back to polling when the stream is refused.
Repeater features the console knows about but does not draw yet, kept in its API layer with a note of where each belongs: noise-floor and route statistics, the count of adverts by node class, the Docker-safety flag on serial ports, a BME280 sensor card, server-side session verification, the radio a packet arrived on, and the server-sent-event streams for GPS and neighbour discovery where the console still polls.
In the built-in interface, open System → Plugins → Installed and confirm waev:outpost is enabled and shows UI READY. Test its direct address, /plugins/waev.outpost/. If that works, select the plugin under System → Configuration → Access → Web Options → Web Frontend to use it at /.
If neither interface opens, follow Recovery. Native hosts can also check systemctl status openhop-repeater and journalctl -u openhop-repeater -n 100; use your container's service logs for Docker installations.
This is the legacy standalone installer, which does not install the plugin. Use Repeater's System → Plugins page for current releases. If that page or its manager is unavailable, follow the plugin prerequisites.
Use the same credentials configured for Repeater; migrating the UI does not create a new account. If needed, update Repeater through its own supported installer or container process and update waev:outpost through its plugin channel, then hard-refresh the browser.
Use Cmd+Shift+R on macOS or Ctrl+Shift+R on Linux/Windows to bypass a stale cached index.html. The version badge in the sidebar shows the build you are running.
- Allow a fresh Repeater 30–60 seconds to initialize.
- Confirm radio frequency, GPIO, and SPI/USB transport in Repeater configuration.
- Check the live service log with
journalctl. - The connection dot in the sidebar reports the packet WebSocket. If it degrades, the console falls back to polling; if it stays offline, check that nothing between the browser and port 8000 strips WebSocket upgrades.
A channel is named when its hash matches the curated list or a channel you have joined. Under Messages → Manage, join a hashtag channel by name, or a private channel by pasting its key, and traffic already in the local cache is decrypted for it.
A companion's Frame link serves one client at a time. Close the other session, or take the link from this one with the TAKE key in the STATUS pocket; the other client is told it was displaced. The Companion API mode keeps chat available without the Frame link at all, at the cost of the trusted radio controls.
The console caches packets in browser storage so history survives reloads; a hard refresh rebuilds that cache from the repeater. The repeater's own database is managed under System → Storage, where tables can be purged and the file vacuumed.
Browser
└─ waev:outpost (React + TypeScript + Vite)
├─ REST API: configuration, history, analytics, system state
├─ WebSocket: live radio and packet events
├─ Browser storage: localStorage packet cache, IndexedDB companion messages
└─ Web workers: bucketing, decoding, and topology analysis
│
▼
openHop Repeater (Python service, port 8000)
├─ authentication and API
├─ packet forwarding and persistence
├─ radio and GPIO control
└─ openHop Core / MeshCore protocol implementation
waev:outpost is deployed as static assets in Repeater's managed plugin storage. Repeater serves the SPA at /plugins/waev.outpost/ and the same-origin API, so no second production service or cross-origin configuration is needed. Selecting the plugin as the default sets web.web_path to plugin:waev.outpost. The old /opt/pymc_console/web/html/ directory belongs only to legacy standalone installations.
MeshCore paths carry two-character node prefixes, so several nodes may match a hop. waev:outpost uses a Viterbi hidden Markov model to select the most probable path from known candidates plus an unknown-node state. Scoring combines observation recency, prefix co-occurrence, path position, geographic plausibility, and measured edge evidence. The resulting topology powers path confidence, ghost-node discovery, link analysis, and TX-delay recommendations.
The frontend also contains a TypeScript MeshCore protocol implementation for binary frame parsing, packet-type decoding, channel-key derivation, and group-text decryption. Heavy work runs in web workers so the instruments stay responsive on a phone.
The source repository uses React 18, TypeScript, Vite 6, Zustand, MapLibre GL, µPlot, and xterm.js.
Installing source dependencies requires access to the Motion+ registry. CI injects the repository's MOTION_TOKEN into the __MOTION_TOKEN__ placeholders in package.json and package-lock.json. For a fresh local install, do the same with the same organization credential: run MOTION_TOKEN=<token> ./scripts/inject-motion-token.sh from the repository root before npm install, then ./scripts/inject-motion-token.sh restore to put the placeholders back.
git clone https://github.com/Treehouse-00/pymc_console.git
cd pymc_console/frontend
cp .env.example .env.local
# Set VITE_API_URL in .env.local to a running Repeater, then:
npm install
npm run devUseful checks:
npm run typecheck
npm run test
npm run lint
npm run buildProduction builds are written to frontend/out/; npm run build:static also copies the packaged output to frontend/dist/.
The console ships as a UI-only openHop plugin. Once the wheel is installed and enabled, Repeater can select plugin:waev.outpost as its primary frontend (web.web_path), so waev:outpost answers at the root URL; /plugins/waev.outpost/ remains a direct route to the same build. From frontend/:
npm run build:pluginThat builds the SPA a second time with the absolute /plugins/waev.outpost/ base into frontend/out-plugin/ (the root install keeps /; a relative base would break nested deep links), stages plugin-stage/ (openhop-plugin.json stamped with the package version, plus ui/), and packs a PEP 427 wheel under plugin-dist/:
plugin-dist/waev_outpost_plugin-<version>-py3-none-any.whl
Install a development wheel through System → Plugins → Install wheel (or POST /api/plugins/install), enable it, then open /plugins/waev.outpost/. Use System → Configuration → Access → Web Options → Web Frontend to make it the default. Fresh local-wheel installations have the update limitations described above.
Every new release publishes the wheel as the single .whl asset of the waev-outpost-plugin release. Published plugin releases are retained because approved catalogue entries and rollbacks use exact versioned release URLs. After publication, the Console catalogue workflow downloads and verifies those release bytes, calculates their SHA-256, and opens a ready PR for waev.outpost through the catalogue publisher GitHub App. Catalogue-owned certification policy and required checks control automatic merging; retries preserve any existing human-selected draft state. See release setup for the required repository secrets. Re-pack only (after a prior stage) with npm run pack:plugin.
MIT. See LICENSE.
- RightUp — creator of the original pyMC Repeater/Core projects and a maintainer of the MeshCore Python ecosystem
- openHop Repeater — Repeater daemon and the backend waev:outpost plugs into
- openHop Core — MeshCore protocol library
- MeshCore — MeshCore project and community
- d40cht/meshcore-connectivity-analysis — Viterbi HMM approach for path disambiguation
- meshcore-bot — recency scoring and dual-hop anchor disambiguation
waev:outpost is built as hardware: every page is an instrument, not a form. Bolt it to your repeater and watch the mesh breathe.