Integrates Mike Carper's transmission-reliability work (direct retries with
SNR-adaptive backoff and CR, flood retry controls, alt-path replies, flood
channel gates) plus its upstream/dev base (as of 2026-07-06) on top of the
observer stack. The flex branch is untouched; this branch is the experimental
integration line.
Conflict-resolution decisions, for future re-syncs (git rerere is enabled and
has recorded these):
- NodePrefs adopts keymind/upstream member order + retry/flood tail. Member
order is in-memory only: /com_prefs stays field-by-field with the same
canonical file order both sides already share through offset 294; keymind
appends the retry tail at 295+ (new canonical size 676). Flex fleet files
load unchanged; retry fields default via direct_retry_prefs_magic.
- loadPrefsInt keeps the fork's legacy MQTT-gap recovery but moves its
detection boundary from 'extra > 5' to 'extra > LEGACY_MQTT_GAP_3SLOT (864)'
so keymind-size tails take the normal read path. COM_PREFS_TAIL_BYTES
retired.
- Dispatcher/RadioLibWrappers: fork watchdog additions + keymind TX overrides
and CAD busy counter are unioned; RxReservePacketManager::queueOutbound
follows upstream's new bool return (false when shedding).
- CommonCLI: fork observer dispatch + versioned /mqtt_prefs machinery kept;
keymind CLI (retry/flood/radioat) taken; duplicate CAD/FEM handlers and
sanitise lines deduped (kept keymind placements to minimize future diff).
- MyMesh (repeater/room): fork alerter/OTA/observer wiring kept; keymind
scheduled-radio system replaces the old pending_* temp-radio members;
applySavedRadioParams() replaces raw setParams at startup.
- ESP32Board: fork manifest-OTA + keymind powerOff/deepSleep and stopOTAUpdate
unioned; startOTAUpdate keeps fork's STA-aware IP with keymind's idempotency
guard.
- build.sh taken wholesale from keymind (fleet builds use GH Actions).
Verified: Heltec_v3_repeater_observer_mqtt, Heltec_v3_repeater,
heltec_v4_repeater_observer_mqtt, Heltec_v3_room_server_observer_mqtt build;
host migration harness (13 MQTT + non-MQTT scenarios) passes with updated
expectations (676-byte /com_prefs; odd-size files normalize on save, not
load); native unit tests 13/13.
Load-testing the restored token bucket at 'set dutycycle 1' showed MQTT
capture dropping to exactly the TX rate. Queued retransmissions hold static-
pool packets with no expiry, so throttling parks the whole pool in the send
queue; Dispatcher::checkRecv() then discards received packets before logRx()
ever feeds the bridge — each completed TX frees exactly one packet for
exactly one more RX.
Observer builds now use RxReservePacketManager (fork-owned header): once the
free pool drops below a quarter of the pool, outbound packets are refused and
freed, so RX allocation and MQTT capture continue at full rate while the node
sheds repeat load it has no TX budget for anyway. Non-observer builds keep
upstream pool behavior via the same factory; StaticPoolPacketManager stays
byte-identical to upstream.
mikecarper