twislaandClaude Opus 5.5
9c30d47982
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01EhqxQ49eCju4CzKYNjZzwT
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Own firmware that speaks Meshtastic, not a Meshtastic fork
We build our own firmware from existing libraries (PlatformIO + Arduino-ESP32, M5Cardputer/M5Unified, RadioLib, TinyGPSPlus, nanopb with Meshtastic's published protobufs). We implement the Meshtastic protocol ourselves as one pluggable Mesh Protocol, rather than forking the Meshtastic firmware, which already supports this exact hardware.
A fork would give full compatibility on day one, but its architecture is built around being a single-purpose Meshtastic node. That conflicts with our goals: a multi-app OS with a fully custom UX, and room for other mesh protocols (e.g. MeshCore) later.
Consequences
- We accept partial Meshtastic compatibility at first: text on channels, Direct Messages, node list, position and relaying.
- The phone-app (BLE) API and PKI-encrypted Direct Messages are deferred, and we must re-implement protocol details ourselves.
- Multi-boot with stock Meshtastic via a launcher was rejected: it gives none of our own UX.
Note (2026-10-04, M2)
NMEA is parsed by our own small, host-tested parser instead of TinyGPSPlus: the GNSS App's Sky view needs the satellite list (GSV) across several constellations, which TinyGPSPlus doesn't track. See docs/milestones/M2.md, Q66.