Out there
Everything worth knowing once you are out there. The mesh is shared and small — every message you send is relayed by other people's radios, using their battery.
Day to day
- Messages take minutes, not seconds. Sending again doesn't speed it up — it slows the mesh for everyone.
- Height beats everything. On the ground, in a bag or in a pocket against your body, your range collapses. Clip it high.
- Charge it nightly. Turn it off when you sleep if you want it to last.
- Operate it inside a sandwich bag. The radio, Bluetooth and screen all work through the plastic and you can press the buttons through it — best fifty cents you will spend on dust protection.
- Your phone can die and the radio keeps meshing — it holds your messages until you reconnect.
Everyone is public
Channel 0 reaches the entire event. Anything you send there can be read across the whole city. Camp business belongs on the Fauxliage channel.
Don't spam it
No test messages on the public channel, no rapid-fire, no memes. Every one costs everybody else battery and airtime on a network with less capacity than dial-up.
Leave the radio settings alone
Burning Mesh locks the event configuration deliberately. Don't change the frequency slot, modem preset, or anything near them. The hop limit is fixed at 4 and there's no knob for you to turn.
Never set your radio to router
Burning Mesh disables it outright. The failure mode of a 1,700-node mesh is too many self-appointed routers, not too few — a helpful-looking change here makes comms worse for everyone near you. Leave it on client.
Location sharing goes on the camp channel
The firmware will not let you turn it on for Everyone, and that is deliberate — it would flood the mesh for the entire event if it could. On the camp channel it is the most useful feature there is.
Be patient
Minutes, not seconds. Resending doesn't make it faster; it makes the mesh slower for everyone.
This is not an emergency service
For a real emergency, find a Ranger, go to Medical, or get to Center Camp. Don't count on a message reaching anyone in time.
What it's genuinely good for: come to camp, I'm walking back from deep playa, has anyone seen Sam, bring water to the art car.
Sharing your location
On the camp channel it's on by default, because finding each other is the whole point. It broadcasts continuously to everyone holding the channel key — and that key is printed on cards being carried around a city of seventy thousand.
You can turn it off in Settings → Position and nobody will think anything of it. If you want to be findable sometimes and not others, switching the radio off entirely is the reliable way.