ha-meshtastic-addon/meshtastic_receiver/DOCS.md

Meshtastic Sensor Receiver

Subscribes to a Meshtastic channel over MQTT, decrypts the packets, and exposes the results in Home Assistant via MQTT Discovery:

• Last Message — the most recent text message on the channel (with from, to, and timestamp as attributes).
• Parsed sensors — values pulled out of structured messages such as 🏠 T1:20.8°C T2:26.7°C H1:83.7% become individual numeric sensors.
• Link diagnostics — Last Seen, RSSI, SNR, and Hops Away, derived from each packet's metadata (shown under the device's Diagnostic section).

This is the receiving counterpart to the Meshtastic Sensor Broadcaster add-on.

Requirements

An MQTT broker configured in Home Assistant (e.g. the Mosquitto broker add-on). The add-on discovers it automatically via the Supervisor — no manual credentials needed for the HA side.

Options

Option	Description
source_broker	MQTT broker the mesh packets arrive on. mqtt.meshtastic.org for the public server, or your local broker.
source_port	Broker port. 1883 plain, 8883 TLS.
source_username / source_password	Source broker credentials. Public server uses meshdev / large4cats.
source_tls	true when using port 8883.
region	Region code in the topic, e.g. EU_868, US. Use + to match any region.
channel_name	Exact (case-sensitive) channel name, e.g. DET.Baulog.
channel_psk	Base64 channel key from the Meshtastic app. AQ== is the default public key.
match_prefix	Only messages containing this string are parsed into sensors. Leave empty to parse every message. The Last Message sensor always updates.
device_name	Name of the HA device that groups the created entities.
discovery_prefix	MQTT Discovery prefix (default homeassistant).
sensors	List of {label, name, device_class, unit}. Each label (e.g. T1) is matched as label:value in the message.

How parsing works

The add-on scans each message for LABEL:VALUE pairs (units after the value are ignored). For example:

🏠 T1:20.8°C T2:26.7°C T3:26.6°C H1:83.7% H2:54.4% H3:55.5%

produces T1=20.8, T2=26.7, T3=26.6, H1=83.7, H2=54.4, H3=55.5, each published to the sensor configured with that label.

Link diagnostics

These are created automatically (no config) from each received packet:

Sensor	Source	Notes
Last Seen	packet rx_time	Updates on every packet on the channel.
RSSI	packet rx_rssi (dBm)	Signal at the gateway. Omitted when the gateway originated the packet (value 0).
SNR	packet rx_snr (dB)	Published alongside RSSI.
Hops Away	hop_start - hop_limit	Number of hops the packet traveled. Requires firmware that reports hop_start.

Topics used

• Discovery: {discovery_prefix}/sensor/{device}/{label}/config
• State: meshtastic_receiver/{device}/{label}
• Last message: meshtastic_receiver/{device}/last_message (+ /attributes)
• Diagnostics: meshtastic_receiver/{device}/{last_seen,rssi,snr,hops_away}
• Availability: meshtastic_receiver/{device}/status

Privacy note

On the public server your packets stay AES-encrypted in transit; only holders of the channel PSK can read them. For full privacy and no traffic restrictions, run a local MQTT broker and point both your node and source_broker at it.