Message screen

Messages Screen

Overview

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The Messages screen is split into three modes — DMs, Channels, and Rooms — selectable with UP/DOWN on the mode-select screen. Each mode shows the corresponding list of conversations with unread counters.

Sending messages

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Press Enter on a contact or channel to open its history, then press Enter again (or select the [+ send] button, anchored at the right edge of the history) to compose a message. Choose between:

Custom message — opens the on-screen keyboard
Q1–Q10 — quick reply templates editable in Settings › Messages

While typing, UP from the top letter row enters cursor mode — LEFT/RIGHT move the insertion point, UP/DOWN jump to start/end (then to the grid on a second press), Enter/Cancel exit from anywhere — so you can edit mid-text, not just at the end. Hold Enter on a letter with accented variants (a, e, c, n, o, s, z…) opens a one-row accent popup instead — LEFT/RIGHT picks, Enter inserts, Cancel dismisses. Full key set (Shift, T9, Cyrillic/Greek) in the UI framework guide.

The keyboard supports placeholders that insert live data at send time:

Placeholder	Value	Availability
`{time}`	current time (HH:MM)	always
`{loc}`	GPS coordinates	always ("no GPS" if no fix)
`{temp}`	temperature	sensor connected
`{hum}`	humidity	sensor connected
`{pres}`	barometric pressure	sensor connected
`{alt}`	altitude	sensor connected
`{lux}`	luminosity	sensor connected
`{co2}`	CO₂ concentration	sensor connected

Sensor placeholders appear automatically in the placeholder picker when the corresponding sensor is active. {time} and {loc} are always shown.

Rooms — logging in

Posting to a room server needs a login handshake — the device does this on its own, no phone app needed. First Enter on a room opens a password prompt automatically; type it and press ✓ (empty for no-password rooms). On success the chat opens automatically, no second Enter needed.

Passwords are remembered across reboots. After a successful login it's saved on the device, so picking that room again — even after a power cycle — logs back in silently.
A wrong or changed password self-heals. A failed login forgets the saved password, so the next Enter prompts for a new one.
Re-login any time with Hold Enter on the room → Login… — useful to switch passwords without waiting for a failure.
Log out with Hold Enter → Logout (only offered once logged in). Forgets the saved password, so the next open prompts for one again.
Passwords set from the phone app are saved on the device too, so it can post to that room standalone after a reboot.

The on-screen keyboard's default (Latin) page is ASCII only. Typing accented or non-Latin characters — Polish, Czech, Slovak, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese or Nordic diacritics, Cyrillic, or Greek — needs Settings › Keyboard › Alphabet set to the matching language first; the keyboard's #@/abc key then cycles Latin → that alphabet → Symbols → Latin. A password containing characters outside whatever's currently enabled can still be set from the phone app — the device stores and replays it byte-for-byte.

Message history

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Messages appear as chat bubbles sized to their content — right-anchored for outgoing, left for incoming — with sender name and a compact age indicator (3m, 2h, >1d) in the top-right corner. List runs newest at the bottom; opening a history starts at the latest message, scrolling up goes further back.

Short Enter on a message opens it in fullscreen. Hold Enter — on a history row or in fullscreen — opens the same options menu: Reply, plus Navigate / Save waypoint / Set as target when the message contains a location, and Path / Relayed by when hop data is available (see Fullscreen message view). You don't need to open the message first.

Fullscreen message view

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Navigate between messages like pages in a book — LEFT goes back to the older message, RIGHT forward to the newer one. The < / > markers along the bottom edge show which directions still have a message. Long messages scroll with UP/DOWN.

If the message is a reply addressed to someone (@[nick]), a To: nick bar is shown below the sender name and the body is displayed without the address prefix.

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Hold Enter in fullscreen opens the options menu. It always offers Reply for an incoming message, and when the message contains a location it adds three more:

Navigate — opens the bearing/distance view to those coordinates (the same two-bearing screen as Waypoints and Nearby; Back returns to the message).
Save waypoint — stores the location as a waypoint (visible on the trail map and in the Waypoints list).
Set as target — pins those coordinates as the active Locator/Nav target in one step, the same row Nodes and Waypoints offer (see Tools › Locator).

A location is any lat,lon pair in the text — exactly what the {loc} placeholder inserts — so you can navigate to anything a contact shares. A [WAY]lat,lon label share also carries a name, used as the waypoint label. This works on DMs and channel messages, incoming or outgoing.

When the entry has hop data recorded, the menu also adds one more row:

Path (N hops) — on a received message (DM or channel), lists every repeater the message actually travelled through to reach you, oldest hop first.
Relayed by (N) — on your own channel post instead, lists every distinct repeater heard rebroadcasting it back into the mesh (order isn't meaningful here — each one heard it independently, not as a chain).

Selecting the row opens a read-only list of the resolved hops — each shown as the matching contact's name where one is known, or a short ?AABB-style hex tag for an unrecognised repeater. Only repeaters within range of the message's actual travel — or, for Relayed by, within your own device's radio range — can ever be identified this way; a message with no recorded path (e.g. a zero-hop send, or one sent before any repeater relayed or echoed it) doesn't show this row at all.

Hold Enter on a contact entry opens a context menu:

Rows that show a value (Notif:, Melody:, Fav:) are changed in place — LEFT/RIGHT steps the value and Enter advances it, with the menu staying open. Only Back closes the menu. The same rule holds in every context menu on the device.

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Item	Action
Mark as read	Clears unread counter for this contact
Notif: Default / OFF / ON	Per-contact notification override — LEFT/RIGHT or Enter to cycle
Melody: Global / M1 / M2	Per-contact melody override — LEFT/RIGHT or Enter to cycle
Fav: ON / OFF	Mark this contact as a favourite — LEFT/RIGHT or Enter to toggle
Pin to dial / Unpin (slot N)	Pin this contact to a Favourites Dial slot; if already pinned shows which slot

Fav and Pin to dial are separate. Fav is the starred flag shared with the companion app: it marks the row with a ★, sorts it above the rest of the list (unless Settings › Contacts › Favs top is off), and drives the DMs = Fav list filter. Pin to dial puts the contact on the Favourites Dial page and changes nothing about the list.

When Pin to dial is selected, a slot picker opens (Slot 1–6 showing current occupant name or "empty"). Choosing a slot that already holds another contact moves the new contact there.

In the Rooms list the context menu instead offers:

Item	Action
Login…	Opens the password prompt to (re-)log in to this room (see Rooms — logging in)
Logout	Only shown once logged in. Forgets the saved password so the next open prompts for one again
Fav: ON / OFF	Mark this room as a favourite — LEFT/RIGHT or Enter to toggle; drives the Rooms = Fav list filter
Pin to dial / Unpin (slot N)	Pin this room to a Favourites Dial slot

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Hold Enter on a channel entry opens a context menu:

Item	Action
Mark all read	Clears all unread for this channel
Notif: Default / OFF / ON	Per-channel notification override — LEFT/RIGHT or Enter to cycle
Melody: Global / M1 / M2	Per-channel melody override — LEFT/RIGHT or Enter to cycle
Fav: ON / OFF	Add or remove this channel from favourites — LEFT/RIGHT or Enter to toggle
Pin to dial / Unpin (slot N)	Pin this channel to a Favourites Dial slot
Edit	Opens the Add/Edit form below, pre-filled with the channel's name
Delete	Removes the channel — confirms first (defaults to Cancel)

Adding / editing a channel

Joining or creating a community channel no longer needs the phone app. The Channels list ends with "+ Add channel" — Enter picks a channel type; Edit from the context menu changes an existing channel's name/secret directly, skipping the type picker.

+ Add channel first asks which type to create — the same three the phone app offers:

Public — instantly re-adds the well-known default public channel, no fields needed. Useful if it was deleted and you don't remember its key.
Hashtag — type a topic (e.g. test); name (#test) and secret (first 16 bytes of sha256("#test")) are both derived from it. A topic-based public chat — anyone typing the same topic elsewhere lands on the same channel, separate from the default Public one.
Private — the manual Name + Secret form:

Field	Notes
Name	Up to 31 characters
Secret	LEFT/RIGHT toggles between two entry modes; Enter opens the keyboard for whichever is selected

Passphrase (default) — type any text; the device hashes it to the channel's 16-byte secret. Easiest to agree on verbally — same idea as a room password.
Hex key — the exact 32-hex-character secret (channel QR code format, see QR Codes), for joining with a secret you were given rather than a new passphrase. An all-zero secret (00…0) is rejected — reserved internally for an empty slot.

Select [Save] to commit. The secret can't be redisplayed once saved (only the derived key is kept) — editing later means typing a new one, same as re-logging into a room.

Mark all read

Hold Enter on the DM / Channels / Rooms mode-select screen to clear all unread counters for the highlighted category at once.