Add repeater: contact not found

[semml0r]

Dear all,
I have a Heltec V3 via WiFi added and it works without any problems. Trying to add my Repeater station, which is 5m away from my companion, results in "Contact not found". I cannot add any repeater station, constantly getting "contact not found", although repeaters show up with their correct public hash.
I am running:

• Home Assistant OS Core 2026.4.1
• Supervisor 2026.03.2
• Operating System 17.1
• Frontend 20260325.6

Possibly it's an issues on my side. Happy to test / provide more details if required, thanks in advance for all the work and a possible hint what could lead to this.

[awolden]

Thanks for reporting this @semml0r! I can confirm this is a bug — the "Add Repeater" dropdown includes discovered (advertised) contacts, but the validation step only checks contacts that have been added to your companion device. So a repeater you've seen over the air shows up in the list but fails with "Contact not found" when selected.

Workaround: Add the repeater as a contact on your companion device first, then retry "Add Repeater":

1. Add a Discovered Contacts dropdown to your dashboard using the select.meshcore_discovered_contact entity, along with a button that calls the meshcore.add_selected_contact action — see the contacts docs for the dashboard card YAML
2. Select the repeater from the dropdown and click the Add Contact button
3. Once added, go back to Settings → Devices & Services → MeshCore → Configure → Add Repeater Station — the repeater will now pass validation

Alternatively, you can call the meshcore.execute_command action with add_contact <pubkey_prefix> directly from Developer Tools → Actions. See Add Contact via services.

I'll get a fix out so the Add Repeater flow either handles discovered contacts properly or filters the dropdown to only show contacts already on the device.