If you have questions, feel free to edit this wiki and add them. Then post in our forum and someone there will edit this page to add an answer!
Why does my phone warn about "you must enable location services"? How do I do that?
Android (for privacy reasons) will not allow apps to access or scan for bluetooth devices without turning on location services. They do this because a clever (but sleazy) app could use the presence and signal strength of nearby bluetooth devices to possibly learn the users location.
But our application needs to talk to our radios over bluetooth. So you need to:
- Grant the application permissions to get location information (and bluetooth access). If you don't we will put up a small reminder each time you launch application.
- Also you need to enable "High accuracy" location services.
It is not always sufficient to just turn on the "location services" checkbox, because some manufacturers (Chinese clones mostly) seem to default to "only allow GPS access". So if your location settings screen doesn't say "High accuracy" you'll need to change it. Here's two example screenshots from a very tiny phone:
How do I get my devices on the same Channel?
Firstly, note that you must use a link or a QR Code to Join a Channel. Setting the Channel Settings to the same Name and Options will not work as there is also a shared key encoded in the link.
- You need to connect to one device on a phone, and set a channel (or use the default channel). Then share the channel as a link via a chat message or email (you can also capture the QR code as a screenshot).
- Connect the second phone to the second device and check there is a connection in the status bar.
- Switch apps to open the link or the QR code, and this should pass the channel details to the Meshtastic app. You should see a message like "New URL channel received. Do you want to switch to the 'name' channel?". Accept this.
- You should now have both devices on the same channel.
See also the User Guide section on Joining a Channel.