How do I uplink to MQTT

SUSHI's settings for connecting your node to the SoCal Mesh MQTT server so your messages and position reach the community maps.

Originally posted by SUSHI in the SoCal Mesh Discord on November 8, 2024, and reproduced here as written. The username and password below are the shared public ones for our broker, and they are meant to be public.

Care and feeding of the parrot

To have your messages appear here set your Lora Settings as follows:

OK to MQTT Enabled
Ignore MQTT Enabled

To uplink set your MQTT Config as follows:

Server: mqtt.socalmesh.org
Topic: msh/US/CA/socalmesh (it is case sensitive)
Username: meshdev
Password: large4cats
Encryption enabled
JSON output disabled

In the primary channel settings Enable Uplink. DO NOT DOWNLINK

Other notes

Gateways that are wifi enabled rather than client connected seem to be the most reliable.
If you are a gateway then please enable the map report option for your location if possible. This helps us to see how far meshages are traveling.
Uplinking to this MQTT server still gets you on Liam’s map and the public meshmap site. In fact this is the only way aside from hosting your own server that you can get onto both maps from your own uplink.

Notes added later by the site maintainers, outside SUSHI’s post. His settings above are still right. These are context, plus one correction.

How our broker is set up, including the brokers it bridges to: socalmesh/mqtt-config. Uplinking here does put you on meshmap and Liam’s map, because we share to both of them. It isn’t the only route short of running your own server, though. Other community brokers bridge there too.

Two field names have moved since 2024. Topic is now Root Topic, and JSON output is JSON Enabled. On iOS that toggle has gone altogether, which is no loss, since off is the state you want anyway.

OK to MQTT is not the same thing as uplinking. The settings above set a node up as a gateway, pushing what it hears to the broker. OK to MQTT is the separate, much smaller thing every other node needs: permission for a gateway that hears it to pass its traffic on. That is what puts a node on the maps, and plenty of people never switch it on, which is why there are always more nodes on the air than the maps show. You do not need to run a gateway to appear on a map. For which channel to run and the rest of the recommended settings, see Best practices for the SoCal Mesh.