Raspberry Pi usermode support?

[Malvineous]

Hi all,

I'm new to MeshCore and interested in setting up a repeater in my local area. I am in the process of setting up the site with power and Internet, and I'd like to add a MeshCore repeater too.

However since the site is a little distance from me (a two hour drive each way) I'd like to be able to access the node over the Internet to monitor and manage it (e.g. firmware upgrades) as I may not always have connectivity to it over the mesh.

I see that RAK have a Raspberry Pi hat that can take up to two of their one-watt LoRa devices, so this would allow me to have two 1W devices attached to a single Raspberry Pi. Since I'm already deploying a few RPis to the site, sticking this hat on would allow one of them to also function as a LoRa device.

However it doesn't look like there's a build of the MeshCore firmware that will run on a Raspberry Pi as a normal userspace application/daemon, so if that's correct, I'm wondering how much effort it would be to get one going?

I imagine the compilation process would be easier since you would be cross-compiling it as a normal program rather than a bare metal firmware image, so you'd just need to somehow make the code aware of the different interfaces the Pi uses for accessing the radios and TX amplifier, however since all that LoRa related hardware is already supported it looks like it might just be an exercise in getting the build process adjusted accordingly.

Is this correct, or would it be more difficult than this?

There are already a few solutions for getting MeshCore working on the Pi, however these appear to be independent implementations which means they don't support all the MeshCore app's functions, no remote management, etc. It would be nice to stick to the same underlying protocol implementation as every other device if possible.

Is support for running the firmware as a normal application on a Pi something that could be possible?