leds.brightness (PWM-capable boards) was RAM-only since it was added: it
always reset to ZEPHCORE_LED_DEFAULT_BRIGHTNESS_PCT (10%) on every boot,
regardless of what a user had last set it to.
New field led_brightness on NodePrefs, following the exact same
append-only pattern as leds_radio_mode/leds_hb_mode added just before it:
offset 311 in RepeaterDataStore.cpp (repeater/room-server/observer,
shared file), offset 174 in ZephyrDataStore.cpp (companion). Both are
backward compatible by construction: a prefs file written before this
field existed simply leaves it at the initNodePrefs() default (10%),
which is exactly the behaviour every already-deployed node has today --
no special-casing needed to keep "10% on a new/not-yet-upgraded node" as
the effective default.
CommonCLI.cpp's "set leds.brightness" handler now writes the prefs field
and calls savePrefs(), same as the leds.radio/leds.hb handlers right
above it; "get leds.brightness" now reads from prefs instead of the RAM
getter directly, for the same reason those two already do (always in
sync, prefs is the source of truth). The four boot call sites
(main_companion.cpp, main_repeater.cpp, main_room_server.cpp,
main_observer.cpp) each gained a zephcore_led_set_brightness_pct() call
seeding the RAM cache from the persisted value, mirroring the existing
leds_radio_mode/leds_hb_mode lines right next to them.
Verified building for heltec_t096/nrf52840 (companion) and rak3401_1watt
(repeater), the two roles/datastores touched by this change.
ESP32 light sleep (devdocs/lld/13-power-management.md)
Light sleep on the S3 repeaters never worked as designed, for two
independent reasons:
- No S3 repeater ever slept. Every one carries WiFi OTA, the WiFi
driver starts WiFi at boot (NULL mode), and a started WiFi library
holds its modem PM lock. Measured on the XIAO: zero sleep entries
with WiFi compiled in. helpers/pm_esp32_wake.c now stops WiFi at
boot on PM builds; `start ota` and a station connect start it again
(verified: AP up, sleep blocked for the session, sleeping after
`stop ota`).
- DIO1 was not a wake source. GPIO_INT_WAKEUP means EXT1 in Zephyr's
ESP32 driver: RTC pads only, one trigger polarity for all pins on
the S3, and pads left on the RTC mux after every sleep. Since 1.17.1
pm_esp32.overlay also armed the active-low user button; gpio-keys
configures first, so the driver refused the active-high DIO1.
The new helper arms the radio IRQ line and the user button (sw0) as
per-pin level GPIO wakes (ESP-IDF gpio_wakeup_enable, any pad) for the
length of each sleep, masks their CPU interrupt while in level mode,
and re-raises the interrupt a sleep swallowed through status_w1ts, so
the radio's dio1_isr and gpio-keys run as usual. EXT1 is no longer
used: patch 0003 configures DIO1 as a plain input again and drops the
d7cc4cb pad-restore notifier (preamble section rewritten). Non-RTC
DIO1 boards (XIAO GPIO39, Station G2 GPIO48) can now light-sleep.
Each light sleep is also bounded by the next esp_timer alarm
(pm_policy_next_custom_ticks, CONFIG_PM_CUSTOM_TICKS_HOOK), as ESP-IDF
does; the BLE controller's modem-sleep wake timer lives there.
Light sleep isolates every pad that is not held, RTC or digital, while
the radio keeps receiving. Holds (ESP32_GPIO_SLEEP_HOLD_EN, inert
without PM) now live in each board's own files: NSS and RESET on all
PM-capable boards, VFEM_Ctrl (GPIO7) and Vext on V4/V4.3/V4 R8/WTv2,
CPS on V4, RXEN on the XIAO. The shared overlay keeps only &rtc_timer
and the GPIO wake source; the wrong RTC_PERIPH explanations are gone.
Also:
- `powersaving` (upstream's command and replies) gates light sleep;
light-sleep builds default to on, and a stored 0 without the new
pwr_sav_set marker (the field did nothing before) becomes on once.
`powersaving off` persists and keeps the node (and its USB) awake.
- `get pm`: asleep %, sleeps, wake causes, per-pin wake counts.
- The console window reopens on every user-button press.
- XIAO ESP32-S3: GPIO21 is both the kit's user button and the board's
led0; the heartbeat drove it low and every sleep woke as a button
press. led0 is deleted, the button gets a pull-up.
- Station G2: button active-low with pull-up, as upstream reads it
(was active-high). Untested on hardware.
Verified on the XIAO ESP32-S3 as a light-sleep repeater on the live
mesh (repeat off, 2 dBm) against a T1000-E on the same channel: awake
20 min, ratio of floods heard 0.95; asleep 30.5 min (96.6 % of
uptime), 119 vs 119, ratio 1.00. TX: sent == flood + direct. Heltec
boards: build-only (no unit on the bench).
Companion light sleep stays off by default; the esp_timer bound makes
it possible. Spike on the XIAO (pm_esp32.conf by hand, BLE only): a
held connection survives, 35 min with a poll every minute and no
miss, the SoC asleep ~91 % between connection events, LoRa RX 130 vs
~130 on the T1000-E. Pairing while asleep fails; USB CDC and UI still
need locks before companions can ship with it.
Flash wear (storage)
The companion marked contacts dirty on is_new, but upstream's is_new
means "not in contacts[]": auto-add declined the node (type filter,
hop limit, full table). Every advert from such a node forced a 5 s
full rewrite of an unchanged contacts3, while a contact that really
was just added only got the liveness deadline. onAdvertRecv now
snapshots the stored record first. is_new never dirties. An addition
or a changed name, type or position flushes in 5 s, and a plain
re-advert waits the liveness deadline, now 1 h instead of 10 min.
A new weak hook, zephcore_persist_before_off(), flushes the deferred
writes before every clean reboot and power-off. It is called from
zephcore_power_off(), the ZephyrBoard reboot, bootloader and BLE-OTA
paths, the UI save-and-restart, the joystick restart and wifi_ota.
Off the main thread it posts MESH_EVENT_PERSIST and waits up to 5 s.
Before this, only CMD_REBOOT flushed.
The repeater saved its ACL on every admin login. It now saves only
when the role or secret changed; the secret is the ECDH of two fixed
keys, so re-logins store nothing new. The room server likewise skips
the lazy write unless the role, sync_since or secret changed.
zephcore_prefs_json_save() compares the serialised JSON with the file
and skips an identical rewrite. Not tested on hardware.
Builds and tests: role_builds.sh 10/10; the ESP32 PM set on the
combined tree (five Heltec repeaters, V4 R8, Station G2, XIAO repeater
and companion) 9/9, repeaters at 69-71 % dram0; board_manifest check
clean; host tests quick 114/114. heltec_companion dram0 at 99.80 %
(776 B left, +88 B for both changes together).
- admin screen: telemetry via upstream LPPDataHelpers (ported; fixed its
1-byte humidity size), every field, per-channel, signed current
(helpers/ui/telemetry_text)
- battery %: both UIs show ZephyrBoard::getBattPercent() (discharge
curve / fuel gauge) instead of a linear 3.0-4.2 V estimate
- app/PowerPolicy: low-battery auto-shutdown + v-contact alert +
autoshutdown CLI on every companion (headless too); under 2000 mV
counts as no battery; default 3200 mV, stored 3300 migrated once
- one time_sync.c for both UIs; ui_push_radio_state() for all roles
- repeater admin screen in its own file; handleInput split per mode
- dead UI code removed; companion help fits one reply frame
- gps: servers honour gps_enabled at boot (was lost on reboot; zc.gps_set
upgrades older prefs to on once); sleep lock only while acquiring;
gps off works on boards without a power line (UART sleep); UI toggles
and fixes handled on the main thread; configure only after a good init;
observer parks its GPS; one interval clamp (clampGpsInterval); one
nav-mode knob (room servers on Air530Z now stationary); GNSS UARTE from DT
- gps: split into ZephyrGPSManager / gps_power / gps_module_cfg
(+gps_internal.h); dead driver branches, gps_get_diag, sats_* removed
- clock: ZephyrRTCClock writes the hardware RTC itself (clkreboot now
resets it); MESH_EVENT_RTC_SAVE gone
- power: one power-off path (zephcore_power_off, ZephyrBoard::powerOff),
poweroff/shutdown CLI, get pwrmgt.*, crash record kept across reboot,
battery reading cached 10 s, fuel gauge on the current API
- telemetry: upstream SensorManager + CayenneLPP (rounded to nearest),
one builder for all roles; per-sensor channels, MCU temp always,
guest gating and inverse mask on servers; sensor list/get/set work;
BME280/BMP280 also probed at 0x77
- CLI: gps in upstream's form, get gps detail, gps sync
Server roles (slice 7)
- CommonCLI split into upstream's shape; region CLI moved into CommonCLI;
ClientACL, RegionMap, TransportKeyStore and both server meshes in
upstream shape over an Arduino compat shim (helpers/compat: Arduino.h,
Stream/Print, Serial, SHA256, FILESYSTEM/File over Zephyr fs)
- room server processAck port; `get acl` prints as upstream
- room: default name Room-XXXX, display/input rotation, live radio UI refresh
Event loops (slice 7b)
- repeater and room server share server_main_common with a ServerRole
descriptor; shared event bits in src/mesh_events.h
- room server deadline-driven (idle wakes 2.2/s -> 0.08/s); companion
loop() runs on housekeeping (closes the lazy contact-flush gap)
- `get loop.wakes` in debug builds (CONFIG_ZEPHCORE_LOOP_WAKE_STATS)
Companion transports and WiFi (slice 8)
- upstream MultiSerialInterface: BLE, USB/UART and TCP are each a
BaseSerialInterface, every connected transport gets every frame;
CompanionSerial holds a lossless reply; shared frame_txq for BLE/TCP
- SerialCompanionTransport and LinuxTCPTransport replaced by
TcpCompanionTransport; ZephyrBLE split (gatt layout, DFU)
- WiFi companion (upstream wifi.ssid/pwd/enabled CLI, TCP port 5000) on
boards declaring `capabilities: wifi` in zephcore.yml: the PSRAM
ESP32-S3 boards, plus Heltec V3 (140 contacts), Wireless Tracker (130)
and both C6 boards (280); ESP32-S3 without PSRAM gets bounded WiFi
buffers and a measured 72 KB heap; PSRAM boards' internal heap 72 KB
- TCP queues: own depth (ZEPHCORE_TCP_QUEUE_SIZE=8), RX waits instead
of dropping
- RAM: companion ClientACL dropped; main/BT-TX/TCP stacks sized from
measured peaks (-7 KB nRF companions, -9 KB ESP32 companions)
- ESP32 WiFi stopped working under ~200 frames/s unicast. Fixed by:
patches/zephyr/0017 never block the WiFi task in the RX callback;
patches/zephyr/0018 lock shared_multi_heap (heap corruption with the
WiFi heap in PSRAM); patches/modules/hal_espressif/0001 backport of
hal_espressif af97fb02df (PSRAM realloc)
Storage and prefs (slice 9)
- prefs are now prefs.json through upstream's ConfigSerializer (ported
verbatim), with upstream's key names for shared fields and ZephCore's
own under "zc"; on first boot the binary new_prefs / repeater prefs is
migrated and kept, so a downgrade still boots with the old settings
- helpers/PrefsCodec: both legacy binary layouts (companion 272 B,
server 311 B) as Zephyr-free codecs; sanitizeNodePrefs is the only
validator
- fix: server prefs could be replaced by a truncated file when a write
failed; identity, prefs and channel writes go through one checked
atomic replace (ZephyrFsUtil)
- fix: a corrupt cad_auto byte turned adaptive CAD off instead of the
default on
- fix: a deliberate 300 s GPS duty on a repeater was rewritten to 48 h
on every boot (that migration now runs on legacy files only)
- one identity loader for all roles (IdentityFile); an unusable key
file is always parked as .bad before regenerating
- server store no longer stamps repeater defaults on room server and
observer; companion first-boot volume policy moved into the store
(adoptVolume)
- ZephyrDataStore 1435 -> ~850 lines
liquidraver