Keep local talk local.

Left alone, a message on the mesh is repeated by every repeater that hears it, so a hello posted in Liberty Hill can end up crossing half of Central Texas. A region puts a limit on that. #lhtx is scoped to the region lhtx, so its messages ride Liberty Hill repeaters and go no further. This page lists the regions our repeaters carry, shows how to scope #lhtx in your app, and gives the commands to add the regions to a repeater of your own.

What a region does

A region is a name a message carries with it. A repeater passes the message on only if it carries that exact name too. Otherwise it drops the message and the message goes no further.

It is not a channel: A channel decides who can read a message. A region decides how far it travels. #lhtx is still readable by anyone who joins it, wherever they are.
Names match exactly, and only exactly: A repeater carrying us-tx-aus does not pass on a message scoped to us-tx-libertyhill, even though one sits inside the other below. The tree is how the names are filed on the repeater, not a route. That is why a Liberty Hill repeater carries every name on the list.
It only limits what you send: Setting a region on a channel changes how far your own posts go. You still receive messages from anywhere they reach you.
No region is still fine: A message with no region travels the way it always has, to every repeater in range. Nothing breaks if you never set one. Scoping is a courtesy to everyone sharing the air.

The regions our repeaters carry

Nine names, filed like this on every Liberty Hill repeater:

us
└─ us-tx
   └─ us-tx-central
      └─ us-tx-aus
         ├─ us-tx-austin
         ├─ us-tx-leander
         └─ us-tx-libertyhill
            └─ us-tx-lhtx

lhtx

lhtx, on its own outside the tree, is the one #lhtx uses. Carrying a region costs a repeater nothing on the air. It only means traffic scoped to that name can pass through. So the wider names are on the list too: anything someone scopes to all of Central Texas, or to Leander next door, still crosses Liberty Hill instead of stopping at its edge.

Scope #lhtx in your app

Set the #lhtx channel's region to lhtx. Do it once per phone. After that, everything you post on #lhtx stays on Liberty Hill repeaters. LibertyHillBot also needs it: in #lhtx it answers only messages scoped to lhtx.

MeshCore One

Open #lhtx, then open the channel's info sheet. Tap Region, choose lhtx, then tap Done. The Region row then shows the name.

MeshCore

Open the #lhtx chat, open its menu and choose Set Region Scope, then pick lhtx. The channel's title bar shows the scope once it is set. This needs version 1.38 of the app or newer.

If lhtx is not offered, add it in the app's region settings first. Type just lhtx, in lower case and without the # the channel name has. A misspelled name is a different region, and no repeater carries it.

Set it to us-tx-libertyhill before? Change it to lhtx. Our repeaters carry both, so your posts were getting through, but in #lhtx LibertyHillBot answers only lhtx.

If #lhtx goes quiet after you set it, the first repeater your radio reaches probably does not carry lhtx yet, and it is dropping your posts. Set the channel's region back to none and you are heard again. Then tell us at hello@lhtx.org so we can find the gap.

Add them to your repeater

Running a repeater in or near Liberty Hill? Give it all nine names so #lhtx, and anything scoped wider, can pass through it. Adding regions never removes any already on the repeater, so if it carries others for a neighboring area, they stay.

With flasher.lhtx.org

When you set up a repeater at flasher.lhtx.org, tick Set the region scope before you press the button. It adds the same nine names in the same tree and saves them. Any region it did not set is listed in the result, for you to keep or remove.

By hand

Type or paste these into the repeater's command line, top to bottom. Order matters: a region has to exist before another one can name it as its parent.

region put us
region put us-tx us
region put us-tx-central us-tx
region put us-tx-aus us-tx-central
region put us-tx-austin us-tx-aus
region put us-tx-leander us-tx-aus
region put us-tx-libertyhill us-tx-aus
region put us-tx-lhtx us-tx-libertyhill
region put lhtx
region save

These are written for repeater firmware 1.15 or newer, where region put also lets the region pass traffic. On 1.10 to 1.14 a new region starts out switched off, so follow each region put with region allowf and the same name (for example region allowf lhtx) before you save. Firmware older than 1.10 has no regions at all. Update it first; flasher.lhtx.org can do that too.

Check it

Run region on its own over USB, and the repeater prints its tree. One extra space of indent marks each level. An F after a name means traffic scoped to it gets passed on. It should look like this:

* F
 us F
  us-tx F
   us-tx-central F
    us-tx-aus F
     us-tx-austin F
     us-tx-leander F
     us-tx-libertyhill F
      us-tx-lhtx F
 lhtx F

A name with no F is carried but switched off, and the repeater drops traffic scoped to it. region allowf and the name turns it on. Then run region save.

Taking one back

region remove and the name deletes a region, then region save keeps the change. A region with children cannot be removed until they are gone, so work from the bottom of the tree up: us-tx-lhtx before us-tx-libertyhill, for instance.

Questions

Running a repeater and not sure what it should carry, or seeing traffic stop somewhere it should not? Email hello@lhtx.org.