OSHI for Meshtastic Users

OSHI is a free, open-source, end-to-end encrypted messenger for iOS and Android that uses Bluetooth and Wi-Fi mesh networking to send messages without Internet or cellular service. If you already run Meshtastic nodes, this page tells you precisely what OSHI adds beside them, what its LoRa node is (a board running Meshtastic 2.x firmware), and what is not interoperable, so you do not buy or promise anything that does not exist.

The short version

• OSHI is a phone-first mesh messenger: phones talk directly over Bluetooth Low Energy and Wi-Fi Direct, with no radio, and use the Internet or Tor when available.
• OSHI's optional LoRa node runs OSHI Mesh, our own open-source firmware, flashed from this site in a browser. It speaks the same radio settings, channels and keys as Meshtastic 2.x, so it joins a mesh you already run; OSHI pairs with it over the published Bluetooth service. Two boards are verified on real hardware — the Heltec WiFi LoRa 32 V3 and the Seeed SenseCAP T1000-E — and four more are listed as compatible on paper and untested.
• An OSHI Mesh node is a member of your mesh, and that has now been measured rather than asserted. It relays your stock nodes' traffic and they relay its own; the Meshtastic apps keep working with it. In October 2026 two T1000-E nodes a metre apart carried a 2,000-byte OSHI message as 11 fragments, reassembled byte for byte, in 53 s, with an end-to-end delivery receipt back at the sender; the same message from a Heltec WiFi LoRa 32 V4 arrived in 33 s, which is the cross-vendor case. Both nodes then joined the public mesh around Geneva on their own and relayed for it as far as five hops. OSHI's own messages travel on a separate encrypted OSHI channel that your stock nodes relay without being able to read — so they do not appear in your Meshtastic chat channels, which is the honest limit of the interoperability.
• LoRa carries messages as a long-range fallback, used when no nearby phone and no network path can, and the listing states that messages bridged to LoRa radios are not encrypted by that link.

What you already have, and what you do not

A Meshtastic network gives you kilometres per hop, unattended solar repeaters, position sharing and a community that has mapped half the planet. What it does not give you is the people who will never carry a radio. Your partner, your kids, the rest of the hiking club, the neighbours after the storm: they have phones. Meshtastic's app is a keyboard for a radio; without the radio it does nothing. OSHI is the opposite — the phones are the network — and that is the gap it fills beside your nodes, not instead of them.

Side by side

Sources: meshtastic.org docs (encryption, LoRa configuration, software), oshi-messenger.com/lora/ (nodes.json updated 2026-10-21), OSHI App Store listing v1.0.46, oshi-messenger.com/compare/oshi-vs-meshtastic.

Three ways to run them together today

1. Radio backbone, phone edges

Keep Meshtastic for the long links between people who carry radios. Put OSHI on every phone in each cluster: the base camp, the family at home, the crowd at the event. Within a cluster, OSHI carries photos, voice notes and live location that LoRa never could. Between clusters, the radio carriers relay by hand — read on Meshtastic, retype in OSHI — which is exactly what a Meshtastic-only group does for non-radio members already, only now the non-radio members are meshed among themselves instead of isolated.

2. One spare board becomes an OSHI node

If you have a Heltec V3 in a drawer, it is already the board OSHI develops against. Flash OSHI Mesh from this site in a browser — or leave the node on the stock firmware, which also pairs — power it on, open OSHI and press Connect. Set the region at first pairing: a new node ships with the region UNSET and will not transmit at all until it has one. From then on OSHI treats the node as a range extender for text. An OSHI Mesh node does exchange traffic with your existing channels, relaying for them on the same settings; what it does not do is put OSHI's own messages into your Meshtastic chat, because those ride a separate encrypted channel.

3. Same phone, both apps

Nothing stops the Meshtastic app and OSHI from living on one phone. The Meshtastic app owns the Bluetooth link to your Meshtastic radio; OSHI owns the Bluetooth link to its own node and to other OSHI phones. Bluetooth handles several connections at once, but if you pair one board to both apps you are inviting trouble — give OSHI its own board.

What to expect from OSHI's node roadmap

Updated 23 September 2026. Released: the OSHI Mesh firmware for eleven boards, flashed from the browser flasher (full install, or an update that keeps your settings); the Heltec V3 is tested on hardware, the other boards are built but untested. The protocol is open, with its specification under CC BY 4.0 and reference code under MIT: oshi-mesh-protocol. Coded for the next app update, not released: the app speaking the protocol itself on a stock Meshtastic radio, MeshCore radios in the app, and a phone bridging Meshtastic and MeshCore. Details: why OSHI Mesh.

Things OSHI will not do for a Meshtastic user

• It will not join your channels, show your node map, or read your telemetry.
• It will not flash MeshCore or RNode firmware. MeshCore is reached through a bridge (one radio on each network), not by the same radio.
• It will not encrypt the LoRa air link; between OSHI phones the Double Ratchet applies, over the air whatever the node firmware does applies.
• It will not run unattended: every OSHI relay is a phone with the app open.

For the full pairwise comparison see OSHI vs Meshtastic; for the wider field, LoRa messengers compared.

Frequently asked questions