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.
Picks up upstream MeshCore 1.17.1.
Notable upstream content:
- 1.17.1 version/build-date bump in the example MyMesh headers.
- nRF52: combine radio entropy with CC310 RNG.
- Companion FEM prefs: load/save of fem_ properties commented out until they
can be set from the client.
- Scoped reply routing: replies no longer dropped when flood.max.unscoped is
low (RoutingPolicy + unit tests).
- nRF52 unused-pin sweep (T1, T-Echo Lite, MeshPocket).
No conflicts.
Brings in the external FEM gain preferences (fem_txgain, PR #3137 plus the
companion-side port), the AGC reset rxgain fix, the LR2021 preamble/IRQ
timeout logic, and assorted variant fixes (T096, T-Echo Card TCXO, promicro
pinmap, minewsemi, R1 Neo).
Conflict resolutions:
- SH1106Display: both sides fixed T-Beam Supreme startup independently. Kept
our _initialized guard and DISPLAY_ADDRESS_ALT override, took upstream's
SA0-pair fallback and its unconditional display.begin() so the frame buffer
is allocated even when no panel answers.
- MyMesh/SensorMesh/CommonCLI: took upstream's fem_txgain default and wiring,
kept our comments and the observer-side prefs layout.
Also fixes CustomLLCC68Wrapper, which upstream missed when sx126xResetAGC
gained its rx_boost_gain parameter. No variant builds that wrapper today, so
neither tree failed to compile.
SPI pins that are set to -1 cause OOB reads on NRF52. The unused Serial2 pin definitions were removed to avoid potential issues with the Uart framework.
Setting SPI pins to values that are OOB of the g_ADigitalPinMap[] array causes OOB reads. This variant.h has pin 0 as 0xFF which passes through as NRFX_SPIM_PIN_NOT_USED.
Picks up upstream MeshCore 1.17.0 and the dev commits that followed it.
Notable upstream content:
- 1.17.0 version/build-date bump in the example MyMesh headers.
- anon_req hardening: reply_path_len is now uint8_t with an isValidPathLen()
bounds check and a 0xFF sentinel; reply_path_hash_size is gone.
- LR2021 support (Meshnology W12, Seeed MeshTracker X1) incl. side detectors,
multi-SF and the new `extra.sf` get/set CLI.
- CustomLFS 0.2.2 -> 0.2.3 (GD25Q64C support).
- kiss_modem envs for several nRF52 variants; ThinkNode M6 GPS/flash fixes.
Conflicts resolved:
- platformio.ini: took upstream's CustomLFS 0.2.3, kept our lib_ignore for
the vendored PsychicMqttClient.
- CommonCLI.h: kept both upstream's USE_LR2021 configSideDetectors() hook and
our fault-alert callbacks.
NodePrefs gains upstream's extra_sf[4], which is not registered with
ConfigSerializer, so /prefs.json layout is unchanged.
Verified: 275/275 native host tests pass; Heltec_v3_repeater_observer_mqtt,
Heltec_v3_repeater and heltec_v4_repeater_observer_mqtt all build.
PA PL1 re-targets the PA's DC-DC supply rail rather than selecting a
logic-level gain, and the serial CLI is serviced on every main-loop pass
regardless of whether a transmit is in flight. A `set radio.fem.txgain`
write could therefore move the rail mid-transmit, while the SX1262 was
still driving the PA at full input power.
Record the requested level in setPAGainEnable() and drive the pin from
setTxModeEnable(), which runs from onBeforeTransmit() ahead of
startTransmit(). The level only matters while transmitting, so deferring
costs nothing.
Document that the pref is saved immediately but applied at the next
transmit, so `get radio.fem.txgain` can lead the hardware until then.
Nothing has ever read it. The slot count comes from two other places: the
persisted array size (MAX_MQTT_SLOTS / RUNTIME_MQTT_SLOTS in MQTTPresets.h) and
the runtime cap MQTTBridge::getMaxActiveSlots(), which answers 5 with PSRAM and
2 without. A flag reading MAX_MQTT_BROKERS=3 sitting in every observer env
implies a third, lower limit that does not exist — it cost me a wrong answer
about how many MQTT slots a Heltec V4 exposes.
36 lines across 15 variants, all of them =3. Removing an unread -D cannot change
code: heltec_v4_repeater_observer_mqtt builds to a byte-identical size before and
after (1647744). The image checksum does differ, but so does it between two
clean builds of untouched source — ESP-IDF stamps the app descriptor with the
build time — so size is the meaningful comparison here.
All 606 envs still parse; heltec_v4, heltec_v3, station_g2, rak3112 and
xiao_s3_wio observer targets all build.
Neighbors publication was gated on BOARD_HAS_PSRAM. Removing that gate alone
was not enough: the feature built but was inert without PSRAM, because three
allocation sites asked for MALLOC_CAP_SPIRAM (which returns null with no
PSRAM), the bridge's persistent buffer was allocated inside a BOARD_HAS_PSRAM
block, and neighborDiscoverReady() rejected every pass at runtime on
psramFound(). The entry table also did not fit: finishNeighborDiscover put
pubkey_hex[50][65] plus entries[50] on the stack, a 4752-byte frame against
the mesh loop task's 8 KB.
- Gate on MAX_NEIGHBOURS plus PSRAM or an explicit per-variant
MQTT_NEIGHBORS_WITHOUT_PSRAM opt-in.
- Move the entry table and its hex strings into one heap block sized to the
pass; the frame drops from 4752 to 304 bytes.
- Prefer PSRAM and fall back to internal DRAM in the mesh-side allocations
and the ArduinoJson pool; hoist the bridge's persistent buffer out of the
BOARD_HAS_PSRAM block (psram_malloc already falls back).
- Keep the runtime psramFound() check only where the buffers are sized for
PSRAM, so a board whose PSRAM failed to init still refuses.
- Size for internal DRAM without PSRAM: 4 KB text buffer and 20 entries per
publish, keeping the pool to a single block and the peak near 13 KB rather
than ~35 KB. Oversized tables truncate and report total_neighbors as before.
Enabled on the ESP32-S3 observer envs (Heltec V3/WSL3, RAK3112, Heltec
Tracker v1.1/v2). Left off for the classic ESP32 T-LoRa V2.1-1.6, which is
already limited to one active TLS slot.
Costs ~7.4 KB static DRAM on repeaters and ~9.6 KB on room servers. The
prefs layout is unchanged, so this is neutral for existing devices.
Board manifest for esp32-c6-devkitm-1 defaults build.flash_mode to qio,
which this module's flash chip does not support -- causes a boot
crash-loop (repeated USB-Serial-JTAG reconnects) on real hardware.
Override with board_build.flash_mode = dio in the common M5Stack_Unit_C6L
section so it applies to all envs (ble/usb/repeater/room_server).
Adds ThinkNode_M7_repeater_observer_mqtt and
ThinkNode_M7_room_server_observer_mqtt, following the Station G3 observer
overlay: adafruit-full cert bundle, MQTT bridge + SNMP, pinned observer
lib_deps, and the quieter default logging profile.
WiFi-only for now. The M7 has an onboard CH390 Ethernet controller (used by
ThinkNode_M7_companion_radio_ethernet, and an lwIP netif so the MQTT data path
would work over it), but the bridge's link management is bound to the WiFi
station API, so Ethernet cannot carry MQTT yet.
The board has PSRAM, so MAX_NEIGHBOURS=50 enables WITH_MQTT_NEIGHBORS —
verified present in both images. Builds use 46.5% of the 3.19 MB app slot at
13.7% RAM, and build.sh emits the full artifact set (.bin, -merged.bin,
.partsig). The partition table is inherited from [ThinkNode_M7] unchanged, so
no merged first flash is needed; its signature is byte-identical to the T-Beam
Supreme observer builds (both default_8MB.csv).
Also fixes two pre-existing build failures on this board:
- [ThinkNode_M7] re-added a blanket helpers/*.cpp after arduino_base excludes
the MQTT-only sources, so every M7 env failed on a missing Timezone.h. The
glob was otherwise fully redundant with the base, so it is dropped rather
than re-excluding the two files.
- ThinkNode_M7_companion_radio_ethernet sets DISPLAY_CLASS=NullDisplayDriver
but never compiled NullDisplayDriver.cpp, which defines UIColor::window_bkg,
so it failed at link. The ble and wifi envs both already list it.
All nine M7 envs now build. Observer env discovery picks up both new envs, and
the ArduinoJson pin check covers both new sections.