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.
MeshRank slots previously took packets only. The broker tolerates status and
neighbors (and its maintainer intends to look at using the neighbors data), so
those now publish under meshrank/uplink/{token}/{device}/{type}, using the same
type suffixes as the MeshCore layout. Raw stays excluded: it is the
highest-volume topic and the broker does not consume it, so `set mqtt.raw on`
has no effect on a MeshRank slot.
All MeshRank gating funnels through the topic router, so relaxing that single
guard was sufficient - publishStatusToSlot, publishStatus, publishRaw,
publishNeighbors, and eligiblePacketSlots already skip slots that cannot form a
topic. A per-slot token is still required. Because eligiblePacketSlots resolves
topic support before serialising, raw JSON is never built for a MeshRank slot
rather than built and discarded.
observer-firmware sends raw to MeshRank; this supersedes that decision, so raw
must stay excluded when the branches merge. MeshRankTakesEveryTypeExceptRaw
fails if a merge re-enables it.
Add support for named packet types in per-slot filters, allowing users
to specify packet types using descriptive names alongside numeric values.
This improves usability and clarity in configuring MQTT slot filters.
Updates include modifications to the parsing logic, WebConfig interface,
and related documentation to reflect the new naming conventions.
Introduce per-slot packet filters to allow users to specify which
packet types are uploaded for each MQTT slot. This feature enhances
the flexibility of the MQTT bridge by enabling users to configure
allowlists for packet types, improving the efficiency of data
transmissions. The implementation includes updates to the WebConfig
interface, internal handling of packet filters, and necessary
modifications to the MQTT preferences structure.
Adds an admin-password field to the setup wizard and the LAN editor, so a
node's password can be set during onboarding and rotated later without a
serial console.
The key maps to the top-level `password` CLI command rather than a `set`
handler, so it is classified separately from WC_ALLOWED_SET_KEYS. It is the
only key granted that treatment, which keeps the allowlist the sole route to
`set` and leaves no general path from a batch to arbitrary CLI commands.
Accepted in both modes: MODE_OFF is refused earlier in handleConfigPost, LAN
required a login to get that far, and the setup AP implies physical proximity.
Restricting rotation to the AP would have forced a bridge outage (`set bridge
off` + `start webconfig ap`) just to change a password.
First onboarding is gated server-side: while the setup AP is up and no WiFi is
configured, a batch that reboots or sets wifi.ssid must also carry a password,
so neither the Advanced editor nor a crafted request can save WiFi and strand
the node on the factory password. The flag is latched at AP start, so a save
that fails partway cannot drop the requirement on retry.
The CLI's `password` command echoes the new secret back in its reply, and
replies are served to the client over the open setup AP, so the reply is
overwritten with "OK" before it can be serialized.
UI: the field lives with the other NodePrefs settings (wizard step 2, and the
Node card on the Radio tab) rather than beside the WiFi password, which is a
different credential. Confirm fields mirror their password twin and are cleared
whenever it is, so a stale confirm value cannot fail a later save as a spurious
mismatch. Validation runs ahead of the WiFi-changed split so a password-only
save is still checked, and reveals the Radio tab before reporting, since the
save bar spans every tab.
Rework the /mqtt_prefs load/save path so preference migrations are
crash-safe and, for the first time, unit-testable on the host.
Most of this is extraction. The multi-format migration that previously
lived inline in CommonCLI.cpp (and could only run on-device) is moved
into three dependency-free headers so it can be exercised without
Arduino, a filesystem, or the radio stack:
- MQTTPrefsStorage.h frozen layout structs for every /mqtt_prefs
format ever shipped, with static_asserts that
fail the build if any on-flash offset changes.
- MQTTPrefsCodec.h pure format classification, field-copy
migration, and plausibility validation.
- MQTTPrefsAtomicStore.h transactional writer plus the power-cut
upgrade gate, both host-testable.
New behavior, beyond the refactor:
- Atomic writes: /mqtt_prefs is written to /mqtt_prefs.tmp, verified,
then published with an atomic rename; the writer never removes the
existing file. A failed or interrupted save leaves the current
config intact.
- Power-cut ordering: LegacyUpgradeGate guarantees /mqtt_prefs is
durably committed before the legacy /com_prefs (or /node_prefs)
carrying the observer tail is compacted or removed, so an
interrupted two-file upgrade retries on the next boot without
losing settings.
- Corrupt, unsupported-version, and newer-than-known files are
preserved and the device boots on in-RAM defaults, rather than
overwriting a file this firmware cannot fully decode.
- Headerless legacy formats are validated for plausibility before
they are trusted and rewritten (raw prefs carry no checksum).
The full historical format matrix is migrated forward to the versioned
v1 layout: pre-slot (including pre-wifi-power), 3-slot (base and
token/topic tails), and headerless 6-slot (base, audience, rx, ntp).
Scope note: only /mqtt_prefs and the one-time /node_prefs -> /com_prefs
name migration use the atomic path. Ordinary /com_prefs saves remain a
direct rewrite, unchanged by this commit.
Tests: adds two host GoogleTest suites (pio test -e native).
- test_mqtt_prefs_codec: format classification, migration fixtures,
v1 header integrity, downgrade preservation.
- test_mqtt_prefs_atomic_store: transactional writes, short-write
detection, begin/finish/rename failure cleanup, original-file
preservation.
Replace direct JSON construction in MQTTMessageBuilder with calls to
MQTTPayloadBuilder for building status, packet, and raw messages.
This change improves code maintainability and reduces duplication by
centralizing message formatting logic. Additionally, update platformio.ini
to include ArduinoJson dependency for JSON handling.
Include detailed instructions for local testing of observer and WiFi
functionality without hardware. Document the use of a mock backend and
Wokwi ESP32-S3 simulation for easier development and testing.
Enhance the MQTT implementation documentation to improve developer
experience and facilitate testing workflows.
agessaman