Bobcat G295, 2 GB RAM, 64 GB eMMC, community Armbian, onboard SX1302. Meshtastic receive and transmit confirmed.
- Hardware
- Bobcat Miner 300 G295
- Concentrator
- Onboard SX1302-class radio
- SPI device
/dev/spidev5.0- GPIO
- 147 PA enable · 149 reset
- Status
- TX/RX validated · July 2026
First rule: do not “upgrade” it.
The Bobcat Armbian image carries the device-tree and kernel combination that exposes the miner hardware correctly. A generic distro upgrade can replace that kernel and make the SPI overlay disappear.
I hold the Rockchip kernel, DTB, and U-Boot packages before doing anything else.
sudo apt-mark hold linux-image-current-rockchip64 \
linux-dtb-current-rockchip64 \
linux-u-boot-bobcat-29x-currentThe concentrator is on SPI5.
Meshpoint's normal Raspberry Pi path expects /dev/spidev0.0. The Bobcat carrier puts the SX1302 on SPI5. Armbian needs the spi5-m1 overlay before the device exists.
# /boot/armbianEnv.txt
overlays=spi5-m1
sudo reboot
ls -l /dev/spidev5.*After reboot, the primary concentrator device is /dev/spidev5.0. A secondary chip select may appear as /dev/spidev5.1.
Tell Meshpoint what it actually has.
Autodetection is intentionally conservative and does not pretend this is a Pi. The local configuration names the concentrator, its real SPI path, and the Bobcat reset line.
capture:
sources:
- concentrator
concentrator:
board: "sx1302"
spi_path: "/dev/spidev5.0"
reset_pin: 149GPIO is part of service startup.
GPIO 147 enables the transmit amplifier rail. GPIO 149 resets the concentrator. A systemd drop-in exports both pins, asserts the PA rail, pulses reset, fixes SPI permissions, and creates spidev0.x symlinks for Pi-oriented HAL code.
This is the difference between “the chip probes once from a shell” and “the radio comes back correctly after every reboot.”