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releasenotes/RELEASE_NOTES_1.17.5-zephcore.md

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+# ZephCore 1.17.5-zephcore
+
+> [!NOTE]
+> **Draft — release in progress.** Covers what is on `dev` so far. More entries will land before this ships.
+
+A Bluetooth range fix that affects every ESP32 board, GPS support on the two Heltec V4 boards, and the
+single-button confirmation prompt now works on the eight boards where it never could.
+
+---
+
+## Bluetooth range on ESP32 boards was 9 dB down
+
+Every ESP32 board — S3, C-series and classic alike — has been advertising and connecting at 0 dBm.
+Stock Arduino MeshCore runs the same radios at +9 dBm. That is the reported "ZephCore has worse
+Bluetooth range than the official firmware" on Heltec V4, and the gap is real: 9 dB is roughly 2.8
+times the distance in free space.
+
+Nothing was misconfigured. The setting was deliberately left alone, on the understanding that the
+Espressif controller blob picked its own transmit power. It does not. Zephyr's driver hands the
+controller a default built from a chain of `CONFIG_BT_CTLR_TX_PWR_*` options, and with none of them
+set the chain fell through to its `use 0dB TX power as default` arm. Silently, with no warning at
+build time and nothing visible on the node.
+
+ESP32 boards now transmit at +9 dBm, matching stock MeshCore. That is comfortably inside the EU
+2.4 GHz 100 mW limit, and it is the one level every Espressif chip family in the tree supports, so it
+applies everywhere without per-board overrides.
+
+> [!NOTE]
+> **Nothing to change on your side.** No setting, no re-pairing. Flash and the range is there.
+> nRF52, nRF54L and MG24 boards were never affected — they set their own transmit power already.
+
+---
+
+## GPS on Heltec WiFi LoRa 32 V4 and V4.3
+
+Both boards bring a GPS UART and its power-control pins out to the header, and ZephCore had no
+wiring for either. Attaching a module did nothing.
+
+They are now described the same way every other GPS board is: NMEA on UART1 at 9600 baud, with the
+enable and reset lines driven properly rather than left floating into the module. `set gps on` and
+the GPS pages behave as they do elsewhere.
+
+> [!NOTE]
+> **This is for an external module.** Neither board ships with a GPS receiver — the pins are there for
+> one you add yourself. Boards with nothing attached are unaffected.
+
+---
+
+## The confirmation prompt now works on single-button boards
+
+Shutdown, DFU and off-grid all ask you to confirm by pressing ENTER twice. On boards with one button,
+ENTER is not a tap — it is a one-second hold, produced by a long-press filter.
+
+Two one-second holds cannot fit inside a half-second window, and half a second is what the window
+was. The second hold always arrived after it had closed, so instead of confirming, it re-armed the
+prompt. Pressing again did the same thing. On these boards the three actions simply could not be
+confirmed from the screen, however many times you tried.
+
+The window is now three seconds on every board that emits ENTER through a long-press filter, which is
+what the setting's own documentation had been recommending all along. Six boards had it; eight did not.
+
+Newly fixed:
+
+| | |
+|---|---|
+| Heltec WiFi LoRa 32 V3 | Heltec Wireless Tracker |
+| Heltec WiFi LoRa 32 V4 | Heltec Wireless Tracker V2 |
+| Heltec WiFi LoRa 32 V4.3 | LilyGo T3-S3 |
+| Meshnology W12 | TTGO T-Beam |
+
+> [!NOTE]
+> **Boards with a joystick were never affected.** The Wio Tracker L1 and GAT562 use a different menu,
+> which has always allowed three seconds. Nothing changes for them.
+
+Thanks to **bisbille** for finding this and fixing the first two boards.
+
+---
+
+## Also in this release
+
+*To be filled in as further changes land.*