A second lock only phones hold
Every Firepit room has a key that never touches a radio. Words, positions and pins are sealed with it, so a lost or borrowed radio gives nothing away.
For Meshtastic radios · Android & iPhone
Off the grid.
Still together.
Firepit is private group chat and a live map that run on small LoRa radios. Talk and find each other where phones have no signal: no internet, no accounts, no servers.
In development · field testing next
01What is Firepit
Group chat and a live map, carried by radio.
Everyone in the group carries a pocket-sized Meshtastic radio, paired with their phone over Bluetooth. The radios pass messages to each other, hop by hop, across kilometres of valley, forest or festival field. Firepit turns that mesh into something anyone can use: rooms you join by scanning a code, messages with honest ticks, and a map that shows where everyone is.
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No signal needed
LoRa radios reach for kilometres and relay for each other. No towers, no Wi-Fi, no internet.
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Private by design
In a Firepit room, words, positions and pins are sealed on your phone. The radios in between carry only ciphertext.
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Android and iPhone
Two native apps that speak exactly the same protocol, so everyone fits in the same room.
02Why it was created
Phones go quiet exactly where groups spread out.
At festivals, on long trails, in the desert and in the mountains, the signal fades just as people drift apart. Meshtastic radios solve the hardest part: a network that needs no towers at all.
But turning those radios into a group chat meant channels, keys and settings, and it was less private than it looked. A radio shares its channel keys with any phone paired to it, so whoever holds a friend's radio can read the whole group.
Firepit was made to fix both: simple enough for everyone around the fire, and private enough that what people say stays on their phones.
No accounts, no servers, no public directory. Just a room, a few friends, and a mesh.
03How it works
Sealed on one phone. Opened on another.
Your phone talks to your radio over Bluetooth. Radios talk to each other over LoRa and pass messages along. Firepit seals everything before it leaves your phone, so every radio on the way, your own included, carries only ciphertext.
Your phoneSeals it with the room keyOpens it with the room key
Bluetooth
Your radioAdds the channel layerRemoves the channel layer
LoRa
Any radioPasses it on, can't open it
LoRa
Maya's radioRemoves the channel layerAdds the channel layer
Bluetooth
Maya's phoneOpens it with the room keySeals it with the room key
Words“Meet at the trailhead at 9?”
Sealed
9F 2C A1 07 E4 5B 3D 88 C2 1E 6B F0 …
Sealed + channel4C 09 D1 EE 7A 31 B6 05 F0 6A 2D 93 …
Your phone seals the message with the room key. Only phones in the room hold it.Maya's phone seals her reply with the room key. Only phones in the room hold it. Your radio wraps it again with the channel key, as every Meshtastic radio does.Maya's radio wraps it again with the channel key, as every Meshtastic radio does. Radios in between pass it on. None of them can open the seal. Maya's radio removes the channel layer. Inside, the message is still sealed.Your radio removes the channel layer. Inside, the reply is still sealed. Maya's phone opens it with the room key. Only here is it words again.Your phone opens it with the room key. Only here is it words again. Each message is sealed on the sender's phone with the room key, wrapped by the radios in the channel key, and opened only on the other phone.
Room key · only on members' phones Channel key · on the radios
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Pair your radio
Connect over Bluetooth. Firepit checks the radio's security settings, such as a default PIN, and offers to fix them.
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Start a room
A room lives in one of your radio's channel slots, up to seven of them. Creating one never restarts the radio.
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Invite in person
Show the room's QR code. It carries no key and changes every few seconds. They scan it, you compare a short key on both screens, and let them in.
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Talk and share
Send messages, share where you are for as long as you choose, and drop pins. Every radio on the way helps carry them; only your room can read them.
04On top of Meshtastic
Meshtastic builds the network. Firepit adds what a group needs.
Firepit runs on stock Meshtastic firmware 2.7 or newer and speaks the standard protocol, so every radio in range helps carry your messages. Everything below is Firepit's own.
Invites that carry no key
A room's QR code is shown in person and changes every few seconds. A photo of it can only ask to join, and you let people in after comparing a short key on both screens.
Direct messages, sealed twice
Between people who share a room, a direct message is sealed from one phone to the other, inside the radios' own encryption. Neither radio can read it.
Remove someone, change the lock
Removing a member gives everyone who stays a new room key. The person removed keeps what they already saw, and can read nothing new.
Ticks that tell the truth
Each tick claims only what the mesh can prove. "Read by" comes sealed from the readers' own phones, and nobody is ever shown as "online".
- Sending
- Sent to your node
- Heard by at least one node
- Delivered to their node
Location on your terms
Share where you are with one room, for an hour, four hours, a day, or until you stop. Your phone seals every position, and sharing pauses while it is away from your radio.
Pins only your group can see
Drop a meeting point with a note. Pins are sealed to the room, and only the person who placed one can move or remove it.
A health check for your radio
Every time you connect, Firepit looks for risky settings, such as a missing or default Bluetooth PIN, remote admin or MQTT, and offers a one-tap fix.
Every room says who can read it
Each room carries a clear label: only the people you invited, anyone who has the channel's key, or every Meshtastic radio in range. Firepit refuses to send on a channel with no encryption.
And the quieter details
- Offline map areas
- The map never fetches tiles where your group is until you ask
- History deletes itself after a day, a week or a month
- Quiet rooms can be left automatically
- A radio mode that hides you from ordinary Meshtastic radios
- "Our nodes only" or "Nearby radios too"
- Personal, Base and Router radio roles
- Light and dark
Gather round.
Firepit is in development for Android and iPhone, with field tests coming next. It works with any Meshtastic radio on firmware 2.7 or newer.