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!

Notification sounds

Add audio files to Contact's contact/sounds/ folder, then choose one in Settings → App Settings → Notification sound. alert.mp3 is the default selection; choose None to disable notification audio. Supported file types are MP3, WAV, OGG, AIFF, and FLAC.

Remote administration

With the Nodes pane selected, press ` or F12 and choose Remote admin for the highlighted node. Contact requests the node's settings through Meshtastic Remote Admin and displays an error if the node does not authorize your public key. Remote App Settings are intentionally unavailable because they apply only to the local Contact client.

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 + 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 Sep 5, 2026
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Key dates

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  • Released:
Newer release available (1.6.12)

1 maintainer

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Avatar for pdxlocations from gravatar.com pdxlocations

Credits

Author: Ben Lipsey

GitHub Statistics

Data verified by PyPI on Sep 5, 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

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