Replace the sparse Heltec V4 R8 observer home screen with a padded dark
analytics dashboard, add manual display control, and make blanking a runtime
setting.
Dashboard (DISPLAY_ACTIVITY_DASHBOARD, the four R8 TFT observer envs):
- RadioActivityWindow: 20 one-minute buckets of valid RX packets, no heap.
The caller's 32-bit millis() is extended to a monotonic 64-bit clock, so
nothing downstream has a rollover case; an always-on node passes 2^32 ms
after ~49.7 days, which would otherwise re-enter warm-up and divide 20
minutes of traffic by seconds. Rates use 19 whole minutes plus the elapsed
part of the current one rather than a fixed 1200 s.
- ObserverDashboard: header, radio strip, headline totals, a 20-bar
packets-per-minute graph and RF/status footers, with separate portrait and
landscape layouts. A text row is a fixed 16 px, which is 3.2 logical units
in portrait but 4.27 in landscape, so one shared grid would overlap.
Text is trimmed by character budget, not measured width: getTextWidth()
reports an over-long string at the portrait driver's fallback scale, so
DisplayDriver::drawTextEllipsized() under-trims and the row renders at half
height.
- Six per-row signatures computed from what is actually drawn, so only the
rows whose pixels changed repaint. No startFrame(), no whole-screen clear.
Link state moved out of the full-frame signature, so a DHCP renewal or WiFi
flap repaints one footer row instead of the panel.
- Dark theme by retuning the UIColor statics at runtime, which needs no
display-driver edit and carries boot, setup, reboot and power-off with it.
Touch and button (DISPLAY_TOUCH_TOGGLE):
- CHSC6X at I2C 0x2E, polled; TP_INT is unusable (optional R13, and GPIO 43
is U0TXD). The point-count byte is tested against a valid count, never
against non-zero: an idle read returns 0xFF, which reads as a finger held
down forever and latches the tap detector after one event.
- turnOff() no longer parks PIN_TFT_RST low on this board. GPIO 21 is a
shared LCD_RST/TP_RST net, so doing that held the touch controller in
reset for as long as the display was off. Verified against Heltec's
expansion-board and mainboard schematics and the V4-R8 datasheet pinout,
which also correct the pin comment in HeltecV4R8Board.cpp.
- The USER button click now toggles the display too; it previously did
nothing whenever the display was already on.
display.timeout:
- `set display.timeout <secs>` / `get display.timeout`, 0 = stay on, 60 s
default, 3600 max. Read live, so a change applies without a reboot and
restarts the countdown rather than firing on the old deadline.
- Stored in MQTTPrefs (/mqtt.json), keeping NodePrefs aligned with upstream.
Runtime-only: LegacyV1MQTTPrefs and the four frozen binary payload sizes
are unchanged. No JSON format-version bump - the loader skips keys no
def() claims, so older firmware reads newer files and this firmware reads
older ones with the default applied. Both directions are covered by tests.
- Joins the observer atomic-setter contract, so a failed save rolls the live
value back instead of only claiming to.
New periodic work uses a wrap-safe deadline check; `millis() >= deadline`
fires every loop for a whole interval before each rollover.
Adds test_radio_activity_window, test_observer_dashboard (driving the real
renderer against a recording DisplayDriver in both orientation profiles) and
test_touch_tap_detector. 440 native cases pass.
Absorbs 106 upstream commits. Seven files conflicted; the substantive one
was upstream's new JSON ConfigSerializer (PR #2982), which replaces the
binary /com_prefs layout with /prefs.json and makes NodePrefs a
ConfigSerializer subclass.
Prefs migration
- Adopt upstream's ConfigSerializer. writeCommonPrefsImage() and its
documented offsets (0-294) are deleted, along with the now-unreachable
saveCommonPrefsImageAtomically()/CommonPrefsFileStore atomic rename path.
- Load order is /prefs.json, then /com_prefs, then /node_prefs. Upstream
dropped the /node_prefs fallback; it is restored here so devices that
never advanced past that filename keep their config.
- Legacy files are never removed, so migration cannot destroy its own
source and a deferred or failed save simply retries next boot.
- /com_prefs is treated as a format migration only, not an "upgrade", so
it does not trip the bridge.source tx->rx flip on existing nodes.
- The MQTTPrefsAtomicStore legacy gate is retained: the observer tail
recovered from an old-format file still commits to /mqtt_prefs before
/prefs.json is written.
- MQTTPrefs and /mqtt_prefs are untouched; savePrefs keeps its save_mqtt
parameter and now returns upstream's bool.
Fixes to upstream code
- RadioPrefs::structure() bound both "rxgain" and "fem_rxgain" to
rx_boosted_gain, so radio_fem_rxgain was never persisted. Bound to the
correct field.
- discovery_mod_timestamp was dropped from structure(); it gates
'since'-filtered DISCOVER replies and is set on every config change, so
losing it would silently stop discovery responses after a reboot. Added
as "disc_mod".
Merge artifacts repaired
- Restored bblanchon/ArduinoJson to the native test env; a clean but wrong
auto-merge at the lib_deps block boundary dropped it and broke all 19
host test suites.
- Migrated the fork's WebConfig UITask screens off the removed
DisplayDriver::Color enum to upstream's UIColor element types.
- Removed duplicate getCADEnabled() definitions in companion MyMesh.cpp
and simple_sensor SensorMesh.cpp that both sides had added.
- Dropped memset(&_prefs, 0, ...) in the four example meshes; NodePrefs now
has a vtable. guard gains an initializer that memset used to provide.
Other resolutions
- simple_room_server keeps both the fork's discover.* commands and
upstream's new room.post.
- docs/payloads.md taken from upstream, undoing content earlier merges had
reverted (Control data section, split login tables).
Verified: 273/273 host tests pass across native and native_kiss_modem;
Heltec v3 repeater, repeater_observer_mqtt, room_server_observer_mqtt,
sensor, and companion_radio_ble all build clean.
First upstream merge since the 2026-06-06 base (191 upstream commits). 14 files
conflicted; resolutions below.
Fleet-critical check (Constraint 1): upstream reordered NodePrefs members
(rx_boosted_gain / path_hash_mode moved to the struct tail) but did NOT change
/com_prefs. Persistence is written field-by-field at explicit offsets, so member
order is in-memory only. Verified the fork's writeCommonPrefsImage() is
byte-identical to upstream's inline writer at every offset (79 pad, 121, 122,
290-294). No migration needed.
Resolutions:
- CommonCLI.h: kept the fork's NodePrefs (superset) and adopted upstream's
setRxBoostedGain(bool)->bool signature change, which CommonCLI.cpp now uses to
report unsupported. Corrected a stale comment claiming rx_boosted_gain lives at
offset 79 (it is a pad; the field is at 290).
- CommonCLI.cpp: kept the fork's legacy /com_prefs migration and the extracted
writeCommonPrefsImage() call.
- UITask.cpp: three-way merge - upstream's drawTextCentered + powering-off
screen, plus the fork's WITH_WEBCONFIG portal/reboot screens.
- ESP32Board.cpp, MeshCore.h, platformio.ini: kept both sides (fork OTA additions
alongside upstream powerOff/enterDeepSleep and Packet.cpp).
- MicroNMEALocationProvider.h: took upstream's claim/release and added the
_claims member they depend on.
- MyMesh.cpp/.h (repeater + room server): kept the fork's superset defaults.
- Removed duplicate declarations auto-merge produced: RadioLibWrapper::_cad_enabled
and MyMesh::getCADEnabled().
Verification: native suite 15/15 (incl. upstream's new test_mesh_tables), both
MQTT smoke builds green, ArduinoJson pin check passes. Hardware validation next.
- Added getTextWidth method to DisplayDriver interface
- Implemented getTextWidth in all display classes
- Updated examples to use getTextWidth directly
agessaman