Guide — 5 min read — DOSnet Learning Hub

How to Plan Your Meshtastic Node Placement

Buying nodes is easy. Placing them well is what turns hardware into a network that actually works. This guide walks you through the thinking process for planning a Meshtastic deployment on a property, trail, or community area.

Start with a map

Before you place a single node, draw or print a rough map of the area you want to cover. Mark the following:

• Every location where you need communication — homestead, sheds, paddocks, gates, water points, regular work areas
• Every high point — ridges, hills, elevated paddocks, shed roofs, water towers
• Every obstacle — dense tree lines, steep valley walls, large buildings

This map becomes your node placement plan. High points get repeaters. Communication locations get hand-held or fixed nodes.

The repeater-first rule

If you have any significant terrain — hills, valleys, dense bush — place your repeater before you place your communication nodes. The repeater's job is to extend range above the terrain. Until it's placed, you can't accurately assess the coverage of your other nodes.

For most rural properties, one solar repeater on the highest accessible point will dramatically increase coverage. The DOSnet Solar Repeater Node is designed specifically for this — pole-mounted, solar-powered, zero-maintenance.

Hop count and network depth

Meshtastic limits messages to a maximum of 3 hops by default. That means a message can pass through a maximum of 3 relay nodes before it reaches its destination. For most property deployments, this is more than enough. For very large networks (multiple properties, community scale), you may want to increase the hop limit — this is a setting in the Meshtastic app.

Testing before permanent mounting

Don't bolt anything down on day one. Walk your planned locations with nodes powered on and check signal strength readings in the Meshtastic app. The app shows RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indicator) and SNR (Signal to Noise Ratio) for received messages. You want RSSI above -120 dBm and SNR above -10 dB for reliable communication. Move nodes to find the positions that deliver these numbers before committing to permanent mounting.

Growing your network over time

Start with the core coverage you need and expand from there. A Farm Pack with 4 nodes and a solar repeater covers most medium properties well. As you learn where the dead spots are and where the relay value is highest, add nodes incrementally. The network grows with you — every new node adds coverage and resilience.

Need help planning your specific property? Contact the DOSnet team → — we've done enough of these to know what works in different Australian terrain types.

Keywords: Meshtastic node placement, LoRa mesh planning, Meshtastic deployment guide Australia, plan LoRa network, property mesh network layout