I wanted cheap HaLow nodes that could one day sit in an OpenMANET net without a Pi at every spot. Morse Micro's microcontroller SDK only does station and access point, and they have said mesh isn't supported on micros. The chip itself does mesh (that's what your Pis run), so with a lot of help from an AI (Claude, The Fable variant) I went looking for what the ESP32 side was missing.

Short version: the stock chip firmware will do it. It takes three small hooks into Morse's SDK and one extra chip command, the same MESH_CONFIG command the Linux driver sends.

What's working today, on two boards on my desk:

- A mesh-type interface on the chip, beaconing with a Mesh ID element about 10 times a second

- The other board hears those beacons and finds the neighbour without any scan or hub

- Mesh peering action frames both ways

- 4-address mesh data frames with a Mesh Control field both ways, 90 to 100 percent delivered

- On top of that, a small flooding mesh with duplicate suppression and learned routes, exposed as a normal network interface, so IP just works: boards ping each other over the mesh in about 15 ms

- A group chat app on top with a phone hotspot per board, delivered and seen receipts

What's NOT done: relaying through a middle board is written but untested (I only have two boards), no 802.11s peering state machine yet, no mesh password (SAE), and no batman-adv. So these boards can't join an OpenMANET net yet. That's the plan though, in this order: peering, then the mesh password, then a minimal BATMAN_V node on the ESP32 so a XIAO can be a real OpenMANET node, with Pis only where you need internet or the heavy apps. The quick bridge in the meantime would be an OpenMANET Pi running a HaLow access point next to its mesh interface and the XIAOs joining as stations, if the Morse Linux driver allows mesh plus AP on one radio. If anyone here knows, I'd love to hear.

Honesty section: I'm a PHP and Python developer, not an embedded one. The research, firmware and most of the docs came out of working with Claude and simple google searches I perfromed; I ran the hardware, tested and steered. Everything is 0BSD, free, use it for anything, credit optional. Use at your own risk. Morse Micro's SDK and chip firmware are theirs and follow their rules; the repo doesn't contain them, the build fetches them.

Repo, with every experiment written up with its numbers:

https://github.com/Digitalhour/ESP32-openmanet-experment

Help wanted from anyone who knows batman-adv internals, 802.11s security, or the Morse Micro Linux driver. Also keen to hear from anyone with a third board who wants to test the relaying. Or just make fun of me and my AI slop 😂

Trying oht a nee raspberry 4 set up and the setup wizard it not apprearing when going to the 10.41.254.1 and instead going straight to the home page?

Raspberry Pi 4, I’ve tried fresh installs but can never log into my nodes after the setup wizard using a custom login and password. My next option is to keep it default at root with no password to see if that works.

Hey guys like a lot of you I went down the dataslayer rabbit hole and found myself acquiring a bunch of pi4s to attempt a WiFi HaLow Mesh-net build. I’m curious if anyone has managed to get the M8108 working with Open-Manet with a pi4? I acquired the haven guide and read the detailed new update documenting the process of getting open Manet running on the rpi5 with the new Morse Micro m8108 chipset. I’m curious if the GW16167 M8108 paired with the M.2 to PCIe Converter and Seed studios WM1302 Raspberry Pi Hat would work just the same on the rpi4

I imagine if this is not yet working it’s a firmware or driver problem but I guess my question is will this likely be resolved in the future and have a backwards compatible firmware for the rpi4 and m8108 or is it already working or will there be a possibility of that in the future?

Maybe this is an ignorant question if so feel free to remove this post but my understanding is that the 8108 compatibility with the rpi5 was a driver issue if that’s the case would the firmware changes dataslayer painstakingly made be backwards compatible with the rpi4?

I imagine if this is not yet working it’s a firmware or driver problem but I guess my question is will this likely be resolved in the future and have a backwards compatible firmware for the rpi4 and m8108 or is it already working or will there be a possibility of that in the future?