MeshBot — a command bot for CarinthiaMesh

Listens on a MeshCore channel, recognises commands with a ! prefix, fetches data from the outside world and answers in a single short message.

Channel: #at-ktn-bot, slot 3 on the node.

The bot does not attach to the radio. It attaches to the MQTT broker of the existing meshinfra stack, so it is not another TCP client on the node — a companion only tolerates two of those.

The bot answers in German: it serves a Carinthian radio network, and that is the language on the channel. This README is English so the design is readable to anyone; the code comments and the wiki stay German.

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The one rule

Airtime is the scarcest resource on the network. Everything else follows from it:

• Answers are capped at 140 characters, hard, before sending
• On request only, never unprompted
• At most 12 answers per 10 minutes network-wide, 4 commands per 5 minutes per sender
• Over the limit, unknown command, or duplicate: silence. A refusal costs exactly as much airtime as an answer
• Delivery goes through meshinfra's existing rate-limit gate (tx/chan), not around it — that gate's own brakes apply on top
• Both limits are token buckets: limit answers back to back, then one every window/limit seconds. Globally 12 at once, then one every 50 s; per sender 4 at once, then one every 75 s

The character limit is not the whole story. The node prefixes its own name (AT-VI-KFHQ: ), and those characters count towards the firmware limit even though the bot never sees them. SENDER_RESERVE (24) keeps room for them; without it the node rejects the finished message with error_code 2 and the answer vanishes without a trace. The bot's usable budget is MAX_MSG_LEN - SENDER_RESERVE.

Commands

Command	Alias	Answer
!wx <place|lat lon>	!wetter	WX Villach: 31.8C, 32%, Wind 12km/h W, 956hPa
!wx <place abroad>		WX Lienz (AT): 21.9C, 77%, Wind 1km/h NNO (Modell)
!gipfel <summit>	!berg	WX Triglav 2864m: 9.0C, 79%, Wind 7km/h WNW (Modell)
!warn [place|lat lon]	!warnung	WARN Waidegg (Kirchbach): GELB Gewitter (bis 22:00)
!vorhersage <place>	!morgen, !fc	24h Villach: 18 bis 26C, 11mm Regen, Boeen 38km/h
!lawine	!avalanche	Lawine KTN: Stufe 3 erheblich (ab Waldgrenze)
!sota <ref>	!summit	OE/KT-048 Rinsennock 2334m, 10Pkt
!sota <lat> <lon>		OE/KT-072 Villacher Alpe 2166m 8Pkt (88m NW) | …
!az <lat lon>	!zone	AZ OE/KT-048 Rinsennock 2334m: JA - 30m bis zum Rand, 10Pkt
!spot [assoc]	!spots	OE8XXX OE/KT-048 14.062 CW 12min
!sonne [place|lat lon]	!sun	Sonne: auf 06:04, unter 20:15, dunkel 20:48 (noch 1h03)
!mond [place|lat lon]	!moon	Mond: auf 10:28, unter 21:33, zunehmend 17%
!events	!event, !termine	Event: Mesh-Treffen, Villach - 14.11. 10:00 (in 29 Tagen)
!sicht <lat,lon> <lat,lon>	!los	Sicht 18.4km: FREI, Fresnel 100% (enger bei km17.5, 1347m)
!hoehe <lat,lon>

Without a place, !wx and !relais use the default location from the configuration. Typos are tolerated (!wx vilach finds Villach) — and flagged, see below.

A missing argument produces the usage line, not silence. Someone who typed a command correctly and merely forgot an argument has not produced garbage. The airtime is better spent on !sicht <lat,lon> <lat,lon> - z.B. !sicht 46.60,13.67 46.79,14.96 than on a second round of guessing. An unknown command still gets silence.

Two ways in, two ways back

An answer on the channel floods: channel messages carry no stored path, so every one of the 35 Carinthian repeaters transmits it once. A question and its answer together cost roughly 70 transmissions. Half of that is ours.

A direct message travels a known path and only burdens the repeaters on that chain:

	transmissions
today, on the channel	~70 per exchange
direct message, path known, 2 hops	~8
first DM to a new contact	as today — the path lookup floods

So the bot answers on the medium it was asked on. Write on #at-ktn-bot and the answer appears there, where everyone reads along and one !wx villach serves five people. Write directly and the network is spared the flood.

It cannot start a direct message. A channel message carries no sender identity at all — only a name in the text, which is neither a key nor trustworthy. Only somebody who wrote directly first can be answered directly. That also makes the per-sender limit meaningful there: a channel name can be changed to dodge it, a public key cannot.

This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗