calc.engineer / LoRa & Meshtastic / Channel Utilization

Channel Utilization v1.0.0

Estimates Meshtastic or LoRa mesh channel utilization percentage based on node count, message rate, and per-packet airtime. Determines how much of the shared radio channel is occupied and computes the maximum number of nodes before exceeding a configurable duty cycle limit (default 10%). Returns utilization percentage, headroom, and total packet count. Chain from lora_airtime to get airtime_ms input. Essential for Meshtastic mesh deployment planning to avoid channel congestion and packet collisions.

← from lora_airtime.airtime_ms
Number of active nodes in the mesh network.
Average messages transmitted per hour per node. Includes position beacons and user messages.
Time-on-air per packet in milliseconds. Obtain from lora_airtime tool.
Maximum acceptable channel utilization percentage. Default 10% is a common Meshtastic guideline.
Fill in the inputs and Compute to see the structured result.

From an agent (MCP) or the API

curl -X POST https://calc.engineer/api/channel_utilization \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"nodes": …, "messages_per_hour_per_node": …, "airtime_ms": …}'

MCP: connect to https://calc.engineer/mcp and call channel_utilization.

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