First steps

You are connected. Nothing obvious has happened, because Reticulum has no home screen. Here is what to actually do, in a sensible order. Each step says how to do it out of the box in an app (MeshChatX, Sideband or an iPhone app) and how to do it from a full installation of Reticulum on the command line; pick whichever you have.

1. Give it a few minutes

Other nodes and people announce themselves every so often, and you only learn about what has announced since you connected. Your lists fill in over the first ten minutes or so. An empty node list straight after connecting is normal.

2. Join the chat room

The quickest way to see that you are on a real network with real people.

• Out of the box: in MeshChatX, open the chat section, pick the ScotMesh hub from the list and join the scotmesh room.
• Full installation: install a terminal chat client (see The chat room) and type /join scotmesh.

Say hello. If nobody answers straight away, leave it open.

3. Get your own address

Every messaging app gives you an LXMF address the first time it starts: 32 hexadecimal characters, derived from an identity your app created. There is nothing to register. That is what you give people so they can message you.

• Out of the box: it is on your profile or settings page in MeshChatX, Sideband, Retichat or Columba, usually with a copy button and a QR code.
• Full installation: Nomad Network shows it under its own conversations tab; the identity file lives in ~/.nomadnetwork/storage/identity.

Announce yourself. Every app has an announce button; Nomad Network announces on start and on request. Until you have announced, nobody can find a path to you, and until they have announced, you cannot find one to them.

4. Send a message

Paste someone's address, or pick them from the list of announced peers, and send. If they are online it arrives directly. If they are not, your app hands it to the propagation node, which delivers it when they next appear.

• Out of the box: MeshChatX and Sideband pick a propagation node automatically; ours is fine. iPhone apps have a setting for it.
• Full installation: Nomad Network takes propagation_node in its config; see Propagation node.

If you have nobody to message yet, ask in the chat room; someone will send you a test message back.

5. Browse a Nomad Network node

Nomad Network is a small web that lives inside Reticulum: pages served straight from people's machines, with no DNS or hosting. Our node's entry page is 10a839df2c50635bcb0c8a299b9ca0f8:/page/index.mu.

• Out of the box: MeshChatX has a page browser built in: open it and pick the ScotMesh node from the list, or paste the address.
• Full installation: pip install nomadnet, run nomadnet, open the Network tab. See Nomad Network.

6. Transfer a file

• Out of the box: MeshChatX sends files and images in a conversation by drag and drop or the attach button; Sideband attaches files and images too.
• Full installation: rncp copies a file over Reticulum:

rncp -l                 # on the receiving side: prints an address and waits
rncp file.jpg <address> # on the sending side

7. Have a look around

• Out of the box: MeshChatX's interfaces page shows your connection and traffic; its map shows announced nodes that publish a position.
• Full installation: rnstatus -a shows every path your node knows, a first sense of how big the network is; rnpath -t 004e5a15da221d9a236b0e8d74195f13 asks for the path to our chat hub and tells you how many hops away it is.
• rns.scotmesh.net shows the node's live status; rmap.world shows public nodes on a map.

Then

• Choosing a client if you want something different from what you installed.
• RNode if you want a radio, and ScotMesh firmware if you want a node on a hill.
• Running your own transport node if your computer is always on anyway.
• Learning resources for the manual, talks and the wider community.