ChiMesh

Chicago LoRa Meshtastic mesh. A community-built LoRa mesh network for Chicago, deployed on solar-powered RAK4631 nodes in IP65 enclosures. v0 ships three nodes to prove multi-hop routing; v2 disguises them as solar wall lamps. The build guide is a single self-contained HTML page rendered from a Markdown source of truth.

Layout

Path	What it is
ChiMesh.md	Markdown source of truth for the public build guide.
ChiMesh.htm	Self-contained styled page rendered from ChiMesh.md by scripts/cli/build-html.js.
index.htm	Byte-identical clone of ChiMesh.htm so mindattic.com/chimesh/ serves it directly.
config/parts.json	Parts catalog feeding the shopping list. Each part has tiered Official / Amazon / Reputable links plus a Google Shopping search URL.
config/versions.json	External dependency versions injected into ChiMesh.md at build time.
scripts/cli/	Windows-side tooling: build, bump, deploy, node provisioner, healthcheck, console launcher.

Build the HTML locally

npm install
npm run build:html

Outputs ChiMesh.htm. Re-copy it over index.htm if you want the local mirror up to date (the deploy script does this automatically).

Edit + auto-rebuild

The .claude/settings.json PostToolUse hook re-runs build-html.js on every save to ChiMesh.md, so the styled page stays in sync while you edit.

Provision a node

Once a fresh RAK4631 has been flashed via flash.meshtastic.org and is plugged into USB:

scripts\cli\provision-node.ps1 -NodeName chimesh-001

Sets region, role (ROUTER_CLIENT by default), channel, and owner. Re-running is safe. See section 05 of the guide for full flag docs.

Healthcheck a deployed node

scripts\cli\healthcheck-mesh.ps1

Queries the USB-connected node for region, role, channel, and peer count. Exits 0 on green, 1 on any failure.

Console (interactive)

scripts\cli\ChiMesh.Console.bat

Single entry point for build, deploy, parts catalog walker, and the two node scripts above. Run without arguments for a menu, or pass a command name directly:

ChiMesh.Console build-html
ChiMesh.Console provision chimesh-001
ChiMesh.Console healthcheck
ChiMesh.Console find-deals core

Deploy

scripts\cli\deploy.bat

Bumps the date stamp in ChiMesh.md, rebuilds, mirrors to index.htm, and FTPs the three files to mindattic.com/chimesh/. Requires scripts/cli/deploy.settings.json (gitignored — start from the .template).

What this guide IS the boilerplate for

The layout, build pipeline, parts-catalog schema, and config-widget pattern are reusable across any hardware build guide. To start a new project from this template:

1. Clone the repo as the seed.
2. Rewrite ChiMesh.md with the new project's sections.
3. Rewrite config/parts.json with the new BOM (keep the schema: category, name, price, specs[], searchFor, tiers[{tier, url}]).
4. Update BUILD_CONFIG_AXES in scripts/cli/build-html.js with the new project's configurable axes.
5. Update config/versions.json with whatever upstream version labels the new project cares about.

Sections, conditional <!-- when: key=val --> blocks, the price-aware total, the Official/Amazon/Reputable tier system, the parts gallery, the dark/light theme toggle, the scroll-spy TOC — all of it carries over unchanged.