HELLO MY NODE IS

Meshtastic contact-QR nametag kiosk for a Raspberry Pi + a Niimbot label printer. DM the kiosk node the word print over the mesh and it prints your nametag: a black HELLO-MY-NODE-IS header, your short/long name (emoji included), node ID, a shared-contact QR (https://meshtastic.org/v/#...) that anyone can scan in the Meshtastic app (>= 2.6) to add you as a contact, PKC public key included, and the Meshtastic M-PWRD mark.

Built at DEFCON 34. 🦞

Hardware

• Raspberry Pi with a Meshtastic node attached (USB serial radio, or meshtasticd with a LoRa hat — use --tcp localhost for the latter)

• A Niimbot label printer, USB-C cable strongly recommended (2.4 GHz at DEFCON is a war zone). Pick yours with --printer:

  --printer	head	labels	layout
  d110 (default)	12 mm / 96 dots	continuous roll, or --die-cut 30x15 mm	dynamic-length banner, or a compact QR-left card
  b1	48 mm / 384 dots	50x30 mm die-cut	landscape card: header band, name block, QR right

  The 50x30 mm stock is 50 mm across the roll and 30 mm along the feed, so the B1 card is laid out across the head instead of along it. Its QR gets 3 printer dots per module against the D110's 2, which means full long names survive into the QR payload instead of being truncated.

Setup

On the Pi:

sudo apt install -y python3-venv fonts-dejavu-core git
python3 -m venv ~/badge
~/badge/bin/pip install git+https://github.com/meshtastic/labeltastic

That puts a labeltastic command in ~/badge/bin/. The emoji font ships with the package; fonts-dejavu-core is the text font and comes from the system. Python 3.11 or newer.

labeltastic sorts out which USB serial port is the radio and which is the printer by USB vendor/product IDs (the D110 is a CH340; radios are CP210x/CH9102/ESP32/nRF52/RP2040) and prints its port table at startup. Just run it:

~/badge/bin/labeltastic --sample --dry-run          # render only, no radio needed
~/badge/bin/labeltastic --test                      # one real test print
~/badge/bin/labeltastic                             # run the kiosk
~/badge/bin/labeltastic --printer b1 --die-cut      # kiosk on a B1

--sample renders a canned node, so --sample --dry-run works with nothing plugged in at all. It writes the PNG (--out to redirect) and then runs the real bitmap encoder over it, reporting packet count and per-third pixel counts — the only check on the wire format you can make without the printer in front of you.

If it can't tell the ports apart, it exits with the table and tells you what to pass — use the stable names in /dev/serial/by-id/ for --serial / --printer-port so a replug can't shuffle them. The B1's USB IDs aren't known here, so pass --printer-port explicitly for one.

If labels come out flipped, add --flip (the old --rotate 270 still works).

Development

uv sync --extra dev
ruff check . && mypy && python scripts/check_spdx.py && pytest

None of it needs a printer or a radio. CONTRIBUTING.md has the details, AGENTS.md the module map and the invariants that will bite you (starting with: head_px must be a multiple of 24, or the printer prints blank and reports success).

Notes

• DM-triggered only, with a per-node cooldown — broadcast triggers would melt the label roll on a con mesh.
• Long names are truncated inside the QR payload (not on the printed label) to keep QR modules >= 2 printer dots (3 on the B1's roomier card), or phones can't scan the thermal print.
• Print density is capped per model (--density): 3 on the D110, 5 on the B1.
• src/labeltastic/assets/NotoEmoji-Regular.ttf is Google's monochrome Noto Emoji, vendored from google/fonts under the SIL Open Font License 1.1 (assets/OFL.txt).
• niimprint is vendored under src/labeltastic/_vendor/ (MIT, © kjy00302 — AndBondStyle's repo is the maintained fork of that original) because upstream's packaging pins Python to 3.11.x, which modern Pi OS is way past, while the code itself runs fine on 3.14. See its README for the two local changes.
• The M-PWRD mark is redrawn with PIL primitives from M-PWRD_BW_Border.svg in meshtastic/design — the geometry is a dozen coordinates, which beats putting an SVG rasteriser (and native cairo) on the Pi for one 40-dot glyph. It is supersampled and hard thresholded rather than left anti-aliased, because niimprint dithers any grey it is handed and that turns a mark this small into noise. Only the banner prints the whole logo, in a column of its own — it can just grow. The B1 card and the compact 30x15 layout print the bare Ms, no border and no wordmark: PWRD is a fifth of the frame's height, so a logo sized to fit the space those two had spare sets it under a millimetre.