This guide walks you through flashing a companion device with MeshCore firmware, pairing it with your phone, and setting the correct radio settings for the Bay Area network. If your device arrived pre-flashed with Meshtastic firmware, start at step 1.

Flashing Companion Firmware

1. Connect your device to your computer with a data-capable USB cable. If your operating system asks whether to allow the computer to connect to the new device, allow it.

2. Using Chrome (or Chrome based browser), navigate to flasher.meshcore.co.uk. Chrome is required because the flasher uses the Web Serial API, which other browsers don’t support.

3. Wait a moment for the app to load, then find your device model in the list. Choose the Community Firmware version.

4. For role, select Companion Bluetooth.

5. Follow the on-screen flashing instructions. The steps can vary by device model, so read each prompt carefully.

6. Once flashing is complete your device is running MeshCore firmware and is ready to configure.

For a step by step walkthrough of flashing a device, check out this YouTube Video

Pairing with Your Phone

MeshCore companions connect to the MeshCore app on your phone over Bluetooth. The app is available for both iOS and Android.

1. Install the MeshCore app on your phone.

2. Open the app and tap Add device. Your companion device should appear in the list — select it to pair.

3. Once paired, you can set your device name, send messages, and see other devices on the network from within the app.

Radio Settings

For the Bay Area network, use the US Recommended preset. If setting manually, use the following:

Setting	Value
Frequency	910.525 MHz
Bandwidth	62.5 kHz
Spreading factor	7
Coding rate	5

These settings match what the rest of the Bay Area network uses. Using different settings means your device won’t be able to communicate with other devices on the network.

Contact Settings

Most devices have limited memory for storing contacts. These are suggested settings to optimize your device’s contact list.

• Choose Auto Add Selected
• Enable Auto Add Repeaters. Repeaters in your contacts list means you’ll see them on the map, and their names will appear in message paths instead of just their raw prefixes — making it much easier to understand how your messages are being routed.
• Enable Overwrite Oldest. When your contact list is full, this automatically replaces the oldest entry rather than dropping new ones, keeping your list current.

Tip: For contacts or repeaters you want to make sure are always saved, mark them as a Favorite. Favorites are never overwritten by the oldest-contact rule, so the people and repeaters that matter most to you will always stay in your contact.

Path Hash Size

You may have heard the discussion about recent changes to path hash size, which handles how your companion device gets its messages routed through the mesh network via repeaters. As of firmware 1.14, the MeshCore app includes an Experimental settings section where you can configure your companion’s message path hash size. For now, leave this at the default 1-byte setting — repeaters running older firmware will silently drop messages that use a larger path hash, so changing this early could cause your messages to go undelivered.

The Bay Area network will move to 2-byte path hashes in the future, but there’s no specific timeline yet. For the curious: the way we are tracking readiness is through the path.hash.mode setting on repeaters — when enough repeaters have updated to firmware 1.14+ and set this value, it signals that it’s safe to start using larger path hashes on companions. You don’t need to do anything on your end right now.

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If you run into trouble at any step, ask for assistance in our Discord.