1. Power on your node in the morning. It is not connected to any smartphone or PC via BT/USB/HTTP;
2. In the evening, connect to it via BT/USB/HTTP;
3. Access all messages received in Primary channel and/or DMs.

Is it possible? How many messages does a node store in it's internal memory? How to access them via terminal? If node is restarted, are they erased?

I have a Heltec V3. In Meshtatsic CLI there's --listen option, but it's about receiving new packages in real time.

This is from memory and anecdotal, so take it with a grain of salt.

On firmwares below 2.7, I think it only stored the last-received message on the node itself. 2.7+ may store the latest message from up to a few different contacts, but not more than that (if even that). Either way, it's not really meant to operate as a "mailbox" where you can retrieve the messages later; they basically need to go somewhere as they're received.

There's a store-and-forward mode that can be enabled, but it stores all messages for everyone and is more of an infrastructure node role. It also requires hardware that has PSRAM which the Heltec V3's don't have.

The radio will store a small amount of packets (around 30) in its memory for when it's not connected to a client app. If it's full, it will replace the oldest packets with newly incoming text messages only.

https://meshtastic.org/docs/overview/

And yes, they persist if you restart the node. Not sure what you mean by “terminal”, there are a couple of CLI tools for meshtastic, including a practically complete chat app.

Hmm maybe this is what I want: https://github.com/brad28b/meshtastic-cli-receive-text
But I can't install it currently, I get python stack trace instead...

UPD. Fail. I've managed to launch it, but it is same as "listen", it receives only new messages in real time.

it’s not really meant to operate as a “mailbox” where you can retrieve the messages later

Why not, where's bottleneck? Internal memory is too small? Packets are 255 bytes each, doesn't seem like there's much to store.

AFAIK, yes, memory. There are a lot more packets than just text messages. Telemetry, node info, positions/waypoints, etc.

There are standalone devices with integrated keyboard for typing messages. I'd expect them to be able to store a lot of messages, regardless of firmware version. Imagine someone sent 7 "test" messages to Primary channel and thus wiped your DM's. Doesn't feel right.

What about MeshCore, can it operate as a mailbox? Mailbox mode will be extremely convenient.

Related:

• https://www.reddit.com/r/meshtastic/comments/1camtqt/handling_missed_messages/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/meshtastic/comments/1nuqmsb/question_for_best_practice_not_to_miss_messages/
  • https://github.com/meshtastic/firmware/pull/3784
• https://github.com/pdxlocations/Meshtastic-Python-Examples - "print all packets" script probably will print all packets collected by a node since last time it had a chance to dump them somewhere.

As far as I can tell my RAK stores them. Feels like it stores more than 30 but I'm unsure.

Try running 'meshmonitor'. It'll keep a history for you.

No, it's a hardware limitation. There's only so much memory on these little devices, and once it's full, it starts replacing old messages.

I wonder how many messages can it store. I will try leaving my node for a day and will see timestamp of earliest messages and how many there are. Also, maybe it worth checking out firmware source code. Different devices can have different limit.

Just found MM yesterday while searching for a similar question. Great for my fixed base node.

I'm digging it. Especially the virtual node I can connect multiple things to