SynapseLink

A self-hosted LoRa sensor & actuator mesh for the places WiFi can't reach — with a cyberpunk Android app and zero-config Home Assistant integration.

Battery/solar sensor nodes in the yard, a relay on the fence line, an LED ring in a jack-o-lantern, a four-servo robot arm — all talking over 915MHz LoRa to a base station that bridges everything into MQTT and Home Assistant. No cloud, no subscriptions, everything runs on your own network.

How it works Role What it does Cortex The base station. Connects to WiFi + your MQTT broker, receives LoRa data from every node, publishes to Home Assistant with full auto-discovery, and relays commands back out over LoRa. One per network. Synapse A sensor/actuator node. Reads sensors, drives actuators, sleeps on battery. No WiFi needed. As many as you like. Repeater Rebroadcasts packets to extend range. Any node can be reconfigured into one. Every board runs the same firmware — the role, radio settings, sensors, and actuators are all configured over Bluetooth from the Android app. No recompiling, no hardcoded credentials.

Features AES-256 encrypted LoRa with replay protection, ACK + retry, and listen-before-talk Deep sleep for battery/solar nodes — wake on timer or instantly on sensor interrupt; the base station holds commands for sleeping nodes and delivers them at next wake Home Assistant auto-discovery — nodes appear as devices with proper entities (climate sensors, switches, lights with effect lists, preset dropdowns) the moment they first report Sensors: BME280/680, AHT20, SHT31/SHT40, BMP280, DHT11/22, DS18B20, BH1750, TSL2591, HC-SR04, PIR, reed switches, buttons, soil moisture, analog, IR receiver (learns remote codes), and more Actuators: relays (with active-low + momentary pulse modes), LEDs, buzzers, servos (smooth motion, angle limits, multi-joint poses), PWM/MOSFET dimmers, IR blaster, and addressable LED strips LED strips: 15 effects, WLED-style segments, four color slots, speed/intensity/direction per effect, named presets applyable from the app or an HA automation The app: BLE device setup with wiring diagrams and a live pin map, real-time dashboard, mesh topology view with per-link signal strength, MQTT traffic monitor, config export/import for cloning nodes