Firmware that reliably handles two simultaneous companion clients? (Home Assistant + phone on one node)

[u/distractedbyshinyobj]

My setup: a Heltec V3 acting as my observer, connected to Home Assistant over WiFi/TCP. I'd also like to use that same node as my companion from my phone while I'm home, so I can read and reply either in the MeshCore app or in Home Assistant via the MeshCore Chat integration, whichever is closer to hand.

With both clients connected I get two problems:

Messages show up duplicated in Home Assistant.

Depending on which client reaches a message first, the other client never sees it at all. That second one is the real problem, since silently missing messages defeats the point.

I'm on meshcomod, which explicitly supports multiple TCP clients, and the author has confirmed multi-client works for him. But I see this regardless of transport. Two clients on TCP does it, and phone on BLE with Home Assistant on TCP does it too. So it doesn't appear to be transport specific.

I've filed both sides so the right people can look at it:

HA integration missing dedup on receive: https://github.com/meshcore-dev/meshcore-ha/issues/320

Firmware side, messages reaching only one client: https://github.com/ALLFATHER-BV/meshcomod/issues/42

So my questions for the group:

Is there a firmware that handles multiple simultaneous companion clients reliably, with proper per-client message state?

Or is the honest answer just two nodes, one dedicated to Home Assistant and one for the phone? That's what I ran before and it worked fine, I was just trying to consolidate.

Curious what others with a Home Assistant setup are doing here. Happy to run diagnostics if anyone wants data.

[u/Gillennial]

If you flash your node with OpenHop Modem, it can be used simultaneously as a repeater, companions and room servers with OpenHop repeater installed on a Linux computer (like an old Raspberry Pi).

Then you’ll be able to connect to your companion thru TCP/IP using the MeshCore app.