HOPTIMIST listening #ping

Help

How this site and bot work, for anyone landing on a map link.

Commands

Send any of these in the #ping channel on the mesh (/ or ! both work, e.g. !ping):

1
/ping
Full reply: hop count, hop list, round-trip latency, and a map link. Data is logged here regardless of which command you use.
2
/kping
Abbreviated reply (~40 bytes vs. ~100-140): just your name and the map link. Use this when a normal /ping reply is too big to get through cleanly. The full route is still recorded — only the on-mesh reply is shortened.
3
/stats
Network totals: pings today, all-time total, record hop count, today's max hop count, and unique senders seen.

Each sender is limited to one reply every 30 seconds, across all three commands, to keep the channel quiet.

path & sz

A map link looks like /ping?path=<hex>&sz=<bytes-per-hop> (or the short form /p/<code> used in bot replies, which just redirects to one of these). path is the concatenated hex node-ID prefixes the ping travelled through, one per hop. sz is how many bytes (hex chars ÷ 2) each hop prefix uses — usually 1, 2, or 3 depending on how the network is configured. Splitting path into sz*2-character chunks gives you the individual hop IDs.

Route & map

Every hop ID resolves to a node name and, where available, a GPS position, by querying three community MeshCore analyzer instances — meshview.dk, rf.rbit.se, and analyzer.meshcom.dk — the same sources mhop.dk uses. The numbered list under the map on a ping page shows every hop in order, name resolved where possible. A hop gets a solid amber marker when exactly one node matches its prefix (a "unique prefix" match). Short prefixes (1-byte hops) usually match several nodes worldwide — when that candidate list is small enough and at least one candidate falls within this mesh's real-world region, the most likely one is shown as a teal "best guess" marker instead (a tilde ~ after the name in History marks these). Prefixes that are still too ambiguous, or that don't match any nearby node, stay unmapped rather than being guessed at, but still count toward the hop total. The 📡 icon marks a relay-capable node (repeater or room server) rather than a plain client.

Reading SNR

Where available, signal-to-noise ratio is shown per ping in History. As a rule of thumb, values below −15dB carry a high risk of message loss on that hop.