The Elecrow M9 on Meshtastic

robert

27 Sep 2026 • 6 min read

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Warning with the Elecrow M9, I've received an email stating that some of the M9's may have shipped with a WORM Virus that can be transmitted if the sd card is taken out and plugged into a windows pc with the auto play feature enabled and windows defender disabled. This worm doesn't seem to have the ability to infect a pc through the radios usb port or be transmitted over lora on either Meshtastic or Meshcore. Elecrow has given you the option for a return or replacement if you want them and you can also follow the guide that they give that should remove the virus off the SD card. It does require reflashing the radio and re-uploading map tiles but it worked on mine. Here is the official advisory: https://www.elecrow.com/Thinknode-M9-Security-Advisory-SD-Card-Malware-Risk.html. And as always never plug an SD card that isn't brand new into your computer or that you've found on the ground. This type of worm happens all the time and can infect even air-gapped computers so always be safe and don't trust them.

First look

The M9 so far has been a really good meshtastic node, the form factor is nice and slim and it fits in your hand nicely. It has a really impressive battery life, even on meshtastic with the fancy UI I was getting almost 30 hours with occasional usage and the gps enabled. Its also super fast to boot up only taking 8 seconds compared to the Tdecks almost 25 seconds to boot.

As you can see the M9 and Tdeck are close to the same size where the Tdeck measures 115 x 72 x 20 mm and the M9 measures 127 x 67 x 10.5 mm. they also have similar feeling keyboards and the M9 has a few extra keys for navigating since it doesn't have a touch display like the Tdeck. The M9's display is also more compact then the Tdecks coming in at 2.4 inches compared to 2.8 inches.

The M9 is way more compact compared to the Tdeck being half the size and the power buttons are placed in the same general area on the side, They're also both sliding switches with a good feel to them. I'm not completely sure on the reset switch but it's not on the side like the Tdecks is and I've hit the Tdecks enough times on accident that i welcome this change on the M9. The only change that I don't like is the SD card is not so easily accessible on the M9. You have to take apart the M9 to get to the embedded SD card but that also probably saved a lot of people from the virus that made its way onto a few.

The USB port is in the same place as the Tdeck on the bottom and it feels like a solid connector. Standard USB chargers work with it at 5V but my USB PD charger seemed to not work so I would stick to a normal hub. The charging time is also not bad taking around 2 Hours to finish from 20%.

Now the Tdeck does have the M9 beat with external antenna ports. The little rubber port with the signal icon on the M9 is for the GPS antenna, it needed a spot for the GPS to get a signal since the frame appears to be metal. That means you sadly cannot use this spot for an external antenna. But the built in antenna does seem to get pretty good range at-least being able to see all the current nodes that the tdeck could in my area.

The Firmware

I ordered the Meshtastic version of this radio and it shipped with version 2.8.0 pre-installed, It even came with some map tiles pre-installed on the micro SD but they only went to a certain zoom level which is still nice since the SD card is embedded.

The 2.8.0 version of Meshtastic is an alpha build as of the time of this post. This version Hasn't changed the look of the UI but it did have a new ftp option on the main menu just below wifi. They show this as one of the options in the menu if you look at the elecrow wiki but they don't go into any details on how to use it. I've looked through the change logs on GitHub but the only mention for this is probably that its for the linux version of the firmware and won't do anything on the M9 right now. It does enable and you are able to connect to it with filezilla but it errors out saying that the credentials were wrong. If i find any documentation or figure it out on my own ill update this on how to use it.

The keyboard was pretty easy to use on the M9 in Meshtastic and the side buttons do act as shortcuts to their respective icons. the only thing i didn't like was having to press the middle button to wake the device up instead of being able to press one of the shortcut buttons to also wake it up but that's a small thing.

The Maps load and work pretty well on the M9 and I haven't had any issues with the GPS updating my position. The GPS definitely needs an open sky to get a lock as testing inside seems to lose the lock sometimes which happens to a lot of other radios I've tested. You can use they sym+o to zoom in and sym+i to zoom out. I would have personally chosen sym+i to zoom in and sym+o to zoom out but that's just me.

I ran my M9 for a few days and only ran into a bug with the ftp feature where it wouldn't turn off and require a restart. Other then that i haven't noticed and crashes or any other bugs with this version it shipped with.

Final Thoughts

The M9 is a perfect node for those who want an all-in-one and easy setup without the phone. The range was as good as the Tdecks internal antenna and it felt nice to hold in my hands. The only thing I would say the Tdeck wins at is with the ability to use an external antenna, You're always going to get better performance with an external antenna and the Tdeck has better options for mods.

This doesn't take away too much from my thoughts on the M9 being a good device though since if you've built a roof node you can hear just about everyone around. If a rooftop node isn't an option and you want the ability to use an antenna then the Tdeck would be better.

For the person who wants to get into Meshcore/Meshtastic and don't want to DIY a radio I think this is the perfect device at a similar price compared to others on the market. If you want to grab one you can by directly ordering from Elecrow(from china):

or you can buy from a US source like Muzi Works:

First look

The Firmware

Final Thoughts

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