ON/QC scopes proposal + IATA region tools — looking for feedback

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ON/QC scopes proposal + IATA region tools — looking for feedback

I’ve been working on the MeshCore Canada region map and repeater configurator to help people review and try out the ON/QC scopes proposal.

The proposal uses MeshMapper city codes such as yow, yul and yqb, the province where the repeater is physically located (on or qc), and onqc for the shared mesh. can is reserved for later. This is still an Ontario/Québec proposal for discussion.

The tools are available on the test site:

The map separates published MeshMapper boundaries from proposed planning regions and extensions. Those outlines aren’t radio coverage. The configurator generates instructions for you to review and apply yourself; it doesn’t change your radio, and the ON/QC standard settings are opt-in.

One distinction worth checking: a city repeater allows unscoped flooding locally. An edge repeater regularly links different IATA zones and blocks unscoped flooding. Sitting near a line on the map doesn’t automatically make it an edge repeater.

I’d appreciate feedback on:

  • Whether your town and nearby repeaters are assigned to the right region.

  • Whether the city/edge guidance fits the links you actually see.

  • What needs clarifying for Canada–US links and cross-border use.

  • Any awkward or unclear French wording.

If you use a personal companion, leave your scopes unchanged until Phase 2 is announced—January 2027 at the earliest, after the repeaters are ready. Repeater operators can review the proposal and coordinate locally.

Try your area and let me know what looks wrong or needs a better explanation.

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I’m generally in favour of what’s discussed here. However, we need to keep in mind:

  1. Not everyone is connected to the Mesh 24 hours a day and may miss configuration guidance messages (non enthusiasts/power users)
  2. Not everyone may know of a given web site that helps them configure their setup to use the scoped mesh (new users)
  3. Given how adverse the community is to connecting the internet to the mesh, the same philosophy should hold true about forcing people to go to the internet to understand how to get on the mesh! This is especially true during an emergency, when people might only turn to the mesh when the internet is down and just expect it to “work”.

The latter is my main concern re: scoping. In an emergency (outage of traditional digital communications) - we should expect half the mesh to disappear (ie: power loss/event damage) and what’s left should be easy for someone with nothing more than a rarely connected device to be able to communicate as widely as possible.

As for routine daily operations, my other suggestion is to promote the ability for repeater operators to register hyper-local region scoping for their immediate area as well, like Barrhaven or Orleans. Standardizing on a coding scheme for this now, will prevent us from having to do it in 6 months from now! :slight_smile: