How to Connect Your Radio to the EF Mesh

Welcome! This guide walks you through setting up a brand-new Meshtastic radio for Electric Forest. If you've never touched one of these before, you're in the right place. The setup looks like a lot at first — but you only do it once, and then your radio just works for the entire weekend (and every Forest after).

Don't have a radio yet?

No worries. Check our Recommended Hardware page — there are great options starting around $30. Order it now and it'll arrive before you head to Rothbury.

Find the nerd in your squad

A lot of this setup is "do it once and share." If one person in your crew is a tech nerd, have them do the QR code parts (Step 4 and Step 9) and the rest of you just scan their QR. Easy.

Step 1: Update Your Firmware

This is honestly the most confusing part of Meshtastic, so we get it out of the way first. An up-to-date radio works better, ships with better defaults, and avoids weird bugs.

Plug your radio into your laptop with a USB-C cable.
Open Meshtastic Web Flasher in Google Chrome (Firefox and Safari don't support the USB-flashing API).
Pick your device from the list, click Flash latest, and follow the on-screen instructions.
If your device needs to be in DFU mode to flash, Google "[your device name] DFU mode" — it's usually a button-hold while plugging in.

Your node identity can get wiped

Updating firmware sometimes resets your radio's identity (the encryption value shown under Settings → Security). If after you update your friends say "we can see each other but not you," that's the cause. Have them each go to the Nodes tab in the Meshtastic app, tap your node, and tap Delete node. They'll re-fetch your new key automatically. Easy fix.

To avoid this entirely: before updating, go to Settings → Security in the Meshtastic app and screenshot the value shown there. Save the screenshot to your notes app. If it gets wiped, just paste the saved value back in.

Step 2: Get the App on Your Phone

Your radio talks to your phone over Bluetooth. You'll do most of the configuring from the phone.

Platform	Link
iPhone	Apple App Store
Android	Google Play Store
Web (laptop)	client.meshtastic.org — backup option

iOS and Android both work great. Just download the official Meshtastic app.

Step 3: Pair Your Radio to Your Phone

Turn on your radio.
Open the Meshtastic app.
Tap the + button (add device).
Your radio should pop up in the list — tap to pair.
If it asks for a pairing PIN, check the documentation that came with your device or the manufacturer's site.

You should now see your node in the app. If not, restart the radio and try again.

Step 4: Scan the Official EF Channels QR

This is the easy way to load all the Forest-compatible settings to your radio at once. Only one person in your squad needs to do this — they'll then generate a new QR and share it with the rest of you.

Click here to load EF channels onto your radio

QR code for EF Mesh channels

Or scan this from a second phone to bring it into the mesh.

Open this link on the phone that's paired to your radio. It loads a placeholder squad channel (you'll customize this in Step 8) as your primary, the public forest-chat channel, and the Weather channel — all on the Medium Range - Fast preset.

Stuck? Ask in Discord

Post in the EF Meshtastic Discord thread — someone in the community is usually around and happy to walk you through it on a quick voice chat.

Step 5: Set Your Radio Settings

Open the Meshtastic app → tap your node → Radio Configuration. There are a lot of settings here. Please don't get creative — changing the defaults will either make your radio incompatible with the Forest mesh or flood the network with traffic.

Here's exactly what to change. Anything not mentioned, leave alone.

LoRa

Region: United States ← change this if it's not already set
Set Preset: Medium Range - Fast ← this is not the default. Change it from Long Range - Fast to Medium Range - Fast. Why: the Forest is a dense crowd — hundreds of nodes packed into a few square miles. Medium Fast trades a little range for faster message delivery, lower latency, and way less channel congestion. Better network for everyone when we're all on top of each other.
Transmit Enabled: On (default — leave it)
Number of Hops: 3 (default — leave it)
Frequency Slot: 0 (default — leave it)

User

Long Name: Your festival name / handle
Short Name: 3–4 characters max (this is what people will see on their map — keep it tasteful)

Device

Device Role: Client (leave it)
Rebroadcast Mode: ALL (leave it)

Do NOT set your role to Router or Repeater

This is the #1 way to break the Forest mesh for everyone. Stick to Client. If you've got an awesome setup at camp and you want to help carry the network, message the EF Discord before changing this.

Position

Broadcast Interval: 1 hour
Smart Position: ON
Smart Minimum Interval: 30 seconds
Smart Minimum Distance: 100 meters
Device GPS: Enabled
GPS Update Interval: 30 seconds
Position Flags: Turn them all off

No GPS on your radio?

If your radio doesn't have built-in GPS (or it's flaky), you can use your phone's GPS instead. In the Meshtastic app: App Settings → Phone GPS sharing → Enabled. Make sure your phone's location permission for Meshtastic is set to Always.

Store & Forward

DO NOT ENABLE THIS. Just leave it off.

External Notifications (optional — quiet your radio)

Hate the beeps and buzzes? Turn these off:

Alert GPIO buzzer when receiving a bell: OFF
Alert GPIO vibra motor when receiving a bell: OFF
Alert GPIO buzzer when receiving a message: OFF
Alert GPIO vibra motor when receiving a message: OFF

Step 6: Save and Reboot

Hit Save in the app. Your radio will reboot every time you save. Wait for it to reconnect (top-right indicator turns green) before you do the next step. Always confirm the settings stuck.

Step 7: Check Your Channels

You should now see three channels in the Channels tab:

Primary Channel — leave it alone, this is the default Meshtastic channel
chgme-squad — placeholder for your squad (you'll customize in Step 8)
forest-chat — public EF community chat — leave it alone

Step 8: Set Up Your Squad's Encrypted Channel

Tap chgme-squad. This is the channel for just you and your friends.

Change the Name to something unique to your crew — like disco-ducks or taco-tuesday.
Tap the blue lock icon to generate a fresh channel key. This is critical — it gives your squad channel a unique encryption identifier so other Forest folks can't snoop on your group chat.
Enable Allow Position Requests (so your squad can ping for your location).
Enable Precise Location (so location shares are accurate to meters, not hundreds of meters).
Leave MQTT uplink/downlink disabled.

Hit Save. Wait for the radio to reboot and reconnect.

In the Meshtastic app: Settings → Share Channel QR Code.

Make sure all 3 channels are selected (Primary, your squad channel, forest-chat).
Double-check your squad channel name is right.
Click Share QR Code and send the QR (or link) to everyone in your crew.

Each squad member opens the link/QR on their paired phone — and boom, they're in.

Step 10: Test It

Once everyone's scanned, you all have:

The standard EF primary channel (for hearing everyone)
An encrypted channel just for your squad
The public forest-chat for the wider Forest community

Send a "hello world" message in the squad channel. If you all see it, you're golden.

Test it at home BEFORE Forest

Seriously. Don't wait until you're in Rothbury to figure this out. Get your squad together at someone's house, do the setup, drive around your neighborhood. The Meshtastic learning curve is real but it's small — get past it in the comfort of wifi.

What Now?

Recommended Settings — deeper dive on broadcast intervals, GPS, and getting the most out of your node
Camp Nodes — want to help build the mesh? Set up a high-altitude node at your camp
Troubleshooting — common gotchas and fixes

Stuck? We've Got You.

The EF Meshtastic crew lives in the official Electric Forest Discord. We're friendly, we love getting more people on the mesh, and there are no dumb questions.

Get Help in the EF Discord