MeshScope vs Meshbell

The MeshScope application is a quick way to find active Meshtastic nodes, anywhere in the world. A mobile companion to the MeshScope web site, this makes it easy to find your position, and to zoom around and find other nodes nearby. Want to dig in to details? Chat with the AI MeshBot to find out more about nodes around you, chat in your native language, and have fun! The app relies on the Meshtastic network for finding nodes, and the nodes shown may be filtered by time to only see the most recent, or to see all nodes over the last several days. Want details? Tap a marker and view the specifics of any node on the map! Although this will show the Meshtastic network, it does not require a local mesh radio and uses an internet connection to retrieve the mesh network information. This also means that the app will not be able to show any mesh radios not reporting to the global Meshtastic MQTT network.

Meshbell is a neighborhood emergency-alert app built for the moment the network fails. Floods, fires, and outages take cell towers and home internet with them — exactly when a neighborhood most needs to talk to itself. Meshbell doesn't depend on either. WORKS WHEN THE NETWORK DOESN'T Meshbell carries small, signed emergency bulletins over a local long-range radio mesh (LoRa). A warning can enter the mesh anywhere and hop radio-to-radio across the neighborhood — no tower, no router, no account. Your phone receives it and checks it, offline. VERIFIED, NOT VIRAL Most apps show you a claim and let the styling imply it is true. Meshbell keeps two facts separate and visible: who is speaking, and whether it could be checked. An unconfirmed neighbor report is shown as exactly that. Only a message that clears a real cryptographic bar can ever carry an instruction — and even a relayed official alert is not treated as official unless it proves it. This is built into the app, not a policy it remembers to follow. FOLLOW THE PLACES YOU CARE ABOUT Add your home, or a family member's street. Meshbell tells you about hazards that touch a place you watch, on your lock screen if they are serious enough — and stays quiet about the rest. Official warnings come from the National Weather Service, and a neighborhood bridge can add FEMA IPAWS in the United States or MeteoAlarm across Europe, in the issuing service's own words. REACH NEIGHBORS WITHOUT A RADIO One prepared neighbor can bootstrap the block. Set up a small Wi-Fi bridge on a Raspberry Pi (the installer ships inside the app), and anyone nearby with just a browser can read the mesh — nothing to install, and a neighbor's signed report is still checked on their own device. BUILT FOR THE WORST HOUR No cell, no Wi-Fi, an old phone, a nearly dead battery — Meshbell still works, and it tells you plainly what it can and cannot do. When data is stale, it says so, with its age, rather than showing a confident blank. A PUBLIC GOOD, NOT A PRODUCT Meshbell is built as a nonprofit, in the spirit of Watch Duty: the core alerting is free and always will be. We will never sell your emergency or turn your neighborhood into a mailing list. Your keys and your watched places stay on your device. Meshbell is an early release and is not a substitute for official emergency services or alerts. Keep your existing emergency notifications turned on.