Getting Started with Burning Mesh 2025 : Hello Burn

I'm getting ready to go to Burning Man 2025!

And this year, I'm super excited to be the Field Tester for some of the innovation prototypes from the Hackster community!

What is Burning Man?

There are hundreds of Burning Man events around the world and Black Rock City, a temporary metropolis in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, is Burning Man Project’s signature annual gathering. Black Rock City brings all of Burning Man Project’s program areas as well as the 10 Principles to life in a large-scale instantiation of the Burning Man arts and cultural experiment.

For the meshtastic and LoRa fans, well, there is a special Burning Mesh!

And I'm bringing several devices to test its functionality in the desert environment.

😎 Wearable Meshnode -> Smartglasses by ᯅ Paul Stefaan Mooij

👔 Wearable Meshnode -> FaraTie by Ben Eadie

📟 And the all-new Seeed Studio Wio Tracker L1 PRO

I'm planning to cover my experiences with all these devices, but in this tutorial, we will start with flashing the firmware step-by-step for getting the radio ready, even if you're new to meshtastic or LoRa tech.

Flashing the custom Burningman firmware

The Burning Mesh community has released a fantastic getting started guide.

Out of all of my "nodes", the easiest one is the Wio Tracker L1 PRO (why? cuz it has a screen 😇)

Here's what it looks like out of the box:

There's no paper instructions or manual that come with, so go to Seeed Studio wiki to get info for the button definitions:

Use the power button to switch on the device, and then I log into my meshtastic app and "scan" for the device via bluetooth to get it connected to my app.

Then the device will show you a code to be connected.

Enter this code into the app, and then it's paired, and we can then use the app to do configuration settings etc.

These devices come with the default firmware, which at this point is 2.6 - we're gonna update that with Burning Mesh custom firmware - which is very alpha, but we're here for the experiment!

Step 1: Plug the device into the computer (I'm on a Mac here) --> Need USB C to C cable.

Step 2: Go to burn.meshtastic.org and land on the firmware flasher site (which looks very similar to the meshtastic flasher site)

Step 3: “Select Target Device” and we will be selecting "Seeed Wio Tracker L1"

Step 4: Select the firmware in the flasher from the drop down (only "Burning Man Firmware" will show)

Step 5: Click Flash

Step 6: Click "Enter DFU Mode", (**DFU means device firmware update) and choose "Tracker L1" to "connect"

Step 7: Follow the download button to download the UF2 (firmware file) - remember its directory.

Step 8: Click on reset button on the Wio Tracker L1 PRO - it's the button above the power switch, to bring up the device drive on your computer. Mine show up on my desktop like this (since I'm on a Mac).

Step 9: Double-click on that device, bring up its directory folder, and then drag the firmware from the downloaded file directory over to mount the new firmware.

Step 10: Wait for the firmware to load into the device. When it's complete, the Wio Tracker L1 Pro will beep 📟

Step 11: Now the device's screen will ask to select the region for LoRa, we're gonna use the joystick on the main panel (so nice) to pick "US".

Step 12: Wait for the device to reboot

Step 13: And here's my "Hello Burn"

I need to flash a bunch of these for camp activities, but this is such a neat piece of technology to be used at Burning Man and events alike.

I'll cover the other more advanced devices (Paul's smart glasses and Ben's ties) in other upcoming Hackster project. And also excited to join meetup, meet other fellow meshers to look at new features (including the Android offline maps).

Meanwhile, I need to get to the PLAYA first!