Contact - A Console UI for Meshtastic

Powered by Meshtastic.org

Install with:

pip install contact

[!NOTE] Windows users must also install:

pip install windows-curses

because the built-in curses module is not available on Windows.

This Python curses client for Meshtastic is a terminal-based client designed to manage device settings, enable mesh chat communication, and handle configuration backups and restores.

Contact - Main UI Screenshot



The settings dialogue can be accessed within the client or may be run standalone to configure your node by launching contact --settings or contact -c

Screenshot 2025-04-08 at 6 10 06 PM

Docker install

Install with Docker:

docker build -t contact .

# Change /tmp/data to a directory you'd like to persist the database in
export DATA_DIR="/tmp/contact"

mkdir -p "$DATA_DIR"
docker run -it --rm -v $DATA_DIR:/data --workdir /data --device=/dev/ttyUSB0 contact --port /dev/ttyUSB0

Message Persistence

All messages will saved in a SQLite DB and restored upon relaunch of the app. You may delete client.db if you wish to erase all stored messages and node data. If multiple nodes are used, each will independently store data in the database, but the data will not be shared or viewable between nodes.

Client Configuration

By navigating to Settings -> App Settings, you may customize your UI's icons, colors, and more!

For smaller displays you may wish to enable single_pane_mode:

Screenshot 2025-08-22 at 11 15 54 PM

Commands

  • CTRL + k = display a list of commands.
  • ↑→↓← = Navigate around the UI.
  • F1/F2/F3 = Jump to Channel/Messages/Nodes
  • ENTER = Send a message typed in the Input Window, or with the Node List highlighted, select a node to DM
  • ` or F12 = Open the Settings dialogue
  • CTRL + p = Hide/show a log of raw received packets.
  • CTRL + t or F4 = With the Node List highlighted, send a traceroute to the selected node
  • F5 = Display a node's info
  • CTRL + f = With the Node List highlighted, favorite the selected node
  • CTRL + b = Enable/Disable Autoresponder Bot (ping / pong)
  • CTRL + g = With the Node List highlighted, ignore the selected node
  • CTRL + d = With the Channel List hightlighted, archive a chat to reduce UI clutter. Messages will be saved in the db and repopulate if you send or receive a DM from this user.
  • CTRL + d = With the Note List highlghted, remove a node from your nodedb.
  • ESC = Exit out of the Settings Dialogue, or Quit the application if settings are not displayed.

Search

  • Press CTRL + / while the nodes or channels window is highlighted to start search
  • Type text to search as you type, first matching item will be selected, starting at current selected index
  • Press Tab to find next match starting from the current index - search wraps around if necessary
  • Press Esc or Enter to exit search mode

Arguments

You can pass the following arguments to the client:

Connection Arguments

Optional arguments to specify a device to connect to and how.

  • --port, --serial, -s: The port to connect to via serial, e.g. /dev/ttyUSB0.
  • --host, --tcp, -t: The hostname or IP address to connect to using TCP, will default to localhost if no host is passed.
  • --ble, -b: The BLE device MAC address or name to connect to.
  • --settings, --set, --control, -c: Launch directly into the settings.

If no connection arguments are specified, the client will attempt a serial connection and then a TCP connection to localhost.

Example Usage

contact --port /dev/ttyUSB0
contact --host 192.168.1.1
contact --ble BlAddressOfDevice
contact --port COM3

To quickly connect to localhost, use:

contact -t

Install in development (editable) mode:

git clone https://github.com/pdxlocations/contact.git
cd contact
python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e .

Project links

Data verified by PyPI on Jul 19, 2026
Data provided by the project maintainers, verified at the time the release was uploaded to PyPI.

Key dates

PyPI data
Data sourced directly from PyPI's database.
  • Released:
Newer release available (1.6.12)

1 maintainer

PyPI data
Data sourced directly from PyPI's database.
Avatar for pdxlocations from gravatar.com pdxlocations

Credits

Author: Ben Lipsey

GitHub Statistics

Data verified by PyPI on Jul 19, 2026
The GitHub source repository was provided by the project maintainers and verified by PyPI at the time of upload. Stars, forks, and open issues/PRs are derived from that repository and have not been independently verified.

License expression

GPL-3.0-only
View SPDX License List

Requires

Python <3.15, >=3.9

Classifiers

Report project as malware

Download files

Download the file for your platform. If you're not sure which to choose, learn more about installing packages.

Source Distribution

contact-1.5.11.tar.gz (113.0 kB view details)

Uploaded Source

Built Distribution

If you're not sure about the file name format, learn more about wheel file names.

contact-1.5.11-py3-none-any.whl (126.3 kB view details)

Uploaded Python 3

File details

Details for the file contact-1.5.11.tar.gz.

File metadata

  • Download URL: contact-1.5.11.tar.gz
  • Upload date:
  • Size: 113.0 kB
  • Tags: Source
  • Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? Yes
  • Uploaded via: twine/6.1.0 CPython/3.13.12

File hashes

Hashes for contact-1.5.11.tar.gz
Algorithm Hash digest
SHA256 1879a41a1906ebc019b51401b5449ea5af84ef50a1d7c20483b4ee9ff0cd7670
MD5 972623c234e88a55cd7e1f2845d2adcf
BLAKE2b-256 fcb7c4c0c78962a57b6eff8f5133bca31958b83c65eab2a07f6f1c7252680337

See more details on using hashes here.

Provenance

The following attestation bundles were made for contact-1.5.11.tar.gz:

Publisher: release.yaml on pdxlocations/contact

Attestations: Values shown here reflect the state when the release was signed and may no longer be current.

File details

Details for the file contact-1.5.11-py3-none-any.whl.

File metadata

  • Download URL: contact-1.5.11-py3-none-any.whl
  • Upload date:
  • Size: 126.3 kB
  • Tags: Python 3
  • Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? Yes
  • Uploaded via: twine/6.1.0 CPython/3.13.12

File hashes

Hashes for contact-1.5.11-py3-none-any.whl
Algorithm Hash digest
SHA256 d6022d0382bed5f30ca036694ce261d4df92046c2fe9225c512010e97e727a45
MD5 7b5c24b6bd6bc5d8bc6ab73b920b2e04
BLAKE2b-256 582c060b0654bdd0c5102fcac0e1bb9d6851d78cf6b12aacbf2e8fc341100a9c

See more details on using hashes here.

Provenance

The following attestation bundles were made for contact-1.5.11-py3-none-any.whl:

Publisher: release.yaml on pdxlocations/contact

Attestations: Values shown here reflect the state when the release was signed and may no longer be current.

Release history Release notifications | RSS feed

1.6.12

2 files

1.6.11

2 files

1.6.10

2 files

1.6.9

2 files

1.6.8

2 files

1.6.7

2 files

1.6.6

2 files

1.6.5

2 files

1.6.4

2 files

1.6.2

2 files

1.6.1

2 files

1.6.0

2 files

1.5.14

2 files

1.5.12

2 files

This release

1.5.11 This release

2 files

1.5.10

2 files

1.5.9

2 files

1.5.8

2 files

1.5.7

2 files

1.5.6

2 files

1.5.5

2 files

1.5.4

2 files

1.5.3

2 files

1.5.2

2 files

1.5.1

2 files

1.5.0

2 files

1.4.23

2 files

1.4.22

2 files

1.4.21

2 files

1.4.20

2 files

1.4.19

2 files

1.4.18

2 files

1.4.17

2 files

1.4.16

2 files

1.4.15

2 files

1.4.14

2 files

1.4.13

2 files

1.4.12

2 files

1.4.11

2 files

1.4.10

2 files

1.4.7

2 files

1.4.6

2 files

1.4.5

2 files

1.4.4

2 files

1.4.3

2 files

1.4.2

2 files

1.4.1

2 files

1.4.0

2 files

1.3.17

2 files

1.3.16

2 files

1.3.15

2 files

1.3.14

2 files

1.3.13

2 files

1.3.12

2 files

1.3.11

2 files

1.3.10

2 files

1.3.9

2 files

1.3.8

2 files

1.3.7

2 files

1.3.6

2 files

1.3.5

2 files

1.3.4

2 files

1.3.3

2 files

1.3.2

2 files

1.3.1

2 files

1.3.0

2 files

1.0.5

2 files

Anthropic, PBC Visionary sponsor Bloomberg Visionary sponsor Hudson River Trading Visionary sponsor Meta Visionary sponsor NVIDIA Visionary sponsor Microsoft Sustainability sponsor Depot Continuous Integration AWS Cloud computing and Security Sponsor Datadog Monitoring Fastly CDN Google Download Analytics Sentry Error logging StatusPage Status page