Trap nodes
Report status and battery health. Years on a small LiFePO4 cell plus a postage-stamp solar panel.
Monitoring predator traps across the NZ backcountry.
An open-source LoRa network for conservation: trap nodes that run for years on a small solar panel, a router-tier mesh back to a local hub, and a federated central service anyone can self-host.
meshtrap reports predator-trap status — open, closed, triggered — and battery health back through a low-power LoRa mesh. It is designed for the conservation context: long battery life, off-grid deployment, low cost per node, and operation by non-technical rangers. This site documents the project intention, the early spec, and where the work currently stands. It is a work in progress, in active development.
The nodes
Section titled “The nodes”Router nodes
Sit on ridges and junctions, aggregating a cluster of traps and relaying back to the hub — a router-tier mesh.
Hub nodes
Deployment-level authority: a local dashboard, stored history, and optional MQTT telemetry to a central service.
Central service
Aggregates telemetry from many hubs and federates to Trap.NZ. Open source; anyone can self-host.
Find your way around
Section titled “Find your way around”PitchWhat meshtrap is and who it's for — the short version.
Status matrixSpec vs. built and tested: exactly where the work stands.
ArchitectureNode roles, topology, and the layered network model.
Protocol & specFrame formats, crypto, and the versioned machine-readable contracts.
meshtrap is a personal R&D project, currently private during prototyping. The intent is to open-source it under a permissive licence once a working pilot is in the field.