Bump the firmware version to 1.17.6a-zephcore and move the release
notes to RELEASE_NOTES_1.17.6a-zephcore.md, which the release workflow
publishes as the release body. The workflow's prerelease switch is
already on, so the configurator keeps offering 1.17.5c.
Notes corrected against the commits since 1.17.5c: the light-sleep
section now names the boards that sleep by default, explains the
1.17.1 DIO1 regression correctly (the button's EXT1 polarity disarmed
DIO1 on the Heltecs; the XIAO and Station G2 never had light sleep),
describes the pad holds and the USB console behaviour after the
console window, and says what the powersaving migration really does.
Added what was missing: get pm, GPS UART suspend on boards without a
power line, the optional XIAO nRF54L15 GPS, poweroff/shutdown and
get pwrmgt.*, the flush before reboot, the XIAO ESP32-S3 and Station
G2 button fixes, and a pre-release notice asking Heltec users for
light-sleep reports.
An nRF UARTE receiver starts at boot and never stops. The GPS UART
suspend in standby/off was limited to boards with GPS power control,
because suspending into a module that is still streaming NMEA could
hang the main thread waiting for RXTO (RAK3401, 1.16.6). Patch 0010
bounds that wait (4 ms, then the peripheral is disabled and the events
cleared) and resume re-arms from a clean state, so gps_power.cpp drops
the requirement: gat562_30s, muziworks_r1neo, rak3401_1watt, rak4631
and xiao_nrf54l15 now release the UART too.
Stress-tested with a temporary hook on the T1000-E, GPS streaming NMEA
at 115200: 900 suspend/resume cycles at random points of the stream,
no failure, slowest suspend 640 us (the bounded fallback never ran),
NMEA callbacks back at 1 Hz after every round.
xiao_nrf54l15 gets an optional gnss-nmea-generic on uart21 (D6/D7,
9600), as the RAK4631 and Heltec V3 have: a user-fitted GPS works on
the release image, and with nothing fitted the port, enabled upstream
and unused until now, no longer keeps its receiver armed. On the bench
unit: boots, GPS acquiring, 10 x gps off/on and two reboots clean.
Builds: rak4631 repeater and companion, rak3401_1watt, gat562_30s,
muziworks_r1neo, xiao_nrf54l15 repeater and companion.
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).
- retire 0018 (upstream 67151dfaf73 locks the shared multi-heap) and the
hal_espressif PSRAM-realloc backport (in the new hal pin)
- 0001: add LR1110/LR2021 to LORA_MODULE_BACKEND_NATIVE's depends on;
upstream 1263266b615 gated it on its own radios and LR boards silently
fell to loramac-node
- ble: build the persisted gatt_peer settings key ourselves in the old
format; bt_addr_le_to_str() changed to "P:AA:.." and would have orphaned
every key and sent every bonded phone a Service Changed
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- boot_info: label the ESP32 reset reasons Zephyr's hwinfo driver maps to 0
(USB-Serial-JTAG/JTAG reset -> DEBUG, power glitch -> BROWNOUT, CPU lockup,
eFuse -> HARDWARE); get pwrmgt.bootreason no longer says Unknown after a flash
- mqtt: the uplink credentials struct moves to adapters/mqtt/uplink_creds.h,
so the adapter no longer includes an app header (layout unchanged: the
struct is persisted raw)
- gps: one off-levels routine for standby/off and System OFF; the sleep line
stays asserted in standby and drops at System OFF, as upstream's
sleep_gps/stop_gps/powerOff; System OFF now asserts reset before cutting
GPS_EN
- doom: sprites solid with a one-pixel black halo, boss drawn 1.5x on the
floor; the L2 boss was invisible from the spawn on 1-bit panels
DESIGN.md is the reconciled high-level design after the 2026-09 restructure:
system context, roles, build-time composition, layers and dependency rules
(with the known exceptions), threading and event loop, end-to-end flows,
cross-cutting concerns and the upstream alignment policy. docs/adr/ holds the
nine decision records (ESP32 boot layout, S3 native USB, overlay precedence,
BLE privacy, Zephyr main pin, SX126x duty cycle and RX-busy gating, adaptive
contention window, storage backend, WiFi companion boards).
ARCHITECTURE.md stays the detailed component reference and links both.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- tests/ (114 host cases over production sources), the CI workflow
(ASan/UBSan on PRs and master pushes) and REGRESSION_TEST_PLAN.md
are tracked
- .gitignore grouped and deduplicated (173 -> 96 lines, same ignored set)
- 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
- doom: each turn shrank the view vectors (cos = 1 - ROT/8, scale
~0.993, plus fixed-point truncation), so the level seemed to grow
and after ~10 turns a zero wall height was divided by: usage fault,
reboot. The view is renormalised to unit length after every turn;
the ray step and wall height are clamped
- doom: the L1 demon spawned inside a wall tile, so it could not be shot
and the portal never opened; it now mirrors the imp at (11,4)
- doom: the 60 s UI lock engaged mid-game, so the exit tap went to the
lock screen; the Doom tick now keeps the lock and auto-off timers
alive. The user button no longer also fires (joystick press does)
- doom: sprites keep a brightness floor at distance (L2 boss is still
hard to see; open)
- get mem (MEM_STATS builds): walk threads with k_thread_foreach_unlocked;
the stack scan under the thread-list spinlock held IRQs off long
enough to trip the BLE controller's radio-ISR latency assert
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
- BaseChatMesh/ContactInfo/ChannelDetails restored to upstream text, ZephCore
changes fenced; added to the Shared-file list
- upstream names: handleCmdFrame, writeOKFrame/writeErrFrame,
addToOfflineQueue, queueMessage; dead dequeue removed
- handleCmdFrame split into handleCmd<Name>() in upstream order;
CMD_SEND_PATH_DISCOVERY -> _REQ
- CompanionMesh::handleCommand as the single CLI entry point; over-the-air
TXT_TYPE_CLI_COMMAND from flag-0x10 contacts (upstream command set only)
- V-contact moved to app/VContact.cpp, protocol constants to
app/CompanionProtocol.h; comment diet (image-identical)
- LoRaRadioBase -> LoRaRadio (final); SX126x/SX127x/LR1110/LR2021Radio
replaced by const LoRaRadioOps tables (radio_ops_<family>.cpp), one
linked per build; mains construct the radio in one line
- lr20xx: vendored Semtech SDK + HAL moved beside the driver (no app-tree
sources), DIO1 handler split (CCN 52 -> 10), zc_lora_timing.h adopted,
dead exports removed, header rewritten, comment diet (image-identical)
- semtech,lr2021 uses the lr1110 property names (irq-gpios, tcxo-voltage,
rfsw-*), compiled config byte-identical
- correct the stale "LR2021 is not CAD-probed" claim
- compile Semtech lr11xx_driver v2.7.0 from modules/lib/lora-basics-modem
(driver layer only) instead of the vendored fork; HAL moves next to the
driver (+abort_blocking_cmd); driver no longer builds app-tree sources
- split lr11xx_dio1_work_handler into per-IRQ helpers (CCN 46 -> 12)
- zc_lora_timing.h: preamble grace, payload deadline, 24-bit saturation,
shared with sx126x (patch 0003) and host-tested; sx126x CAD_RX Rx bound
now saturates instead of wrapping (SF12/BW7.81)
- semtech,lr1110 binding includes upstream lr11xx-base; boards use
upstream property names (irq-gpios, tcxo-voltage, rfsw-*)
- drop dead lr11xx_get_random/get_chip_temp_c; correct the IRQ-clear
invariant wording; comment diet (image-identical)
- CadController (stats, window, re-anchor, visits, staircase, safety,
starvation relax) and NoiseFloorEstimator split out of LoRaRadioBase
behind a 4-call CadHw interface; Zephyr-free, host unit tests added
- prefs mandatory: setPrefs() before begin(), LoRaConfig fallbacks and the
companion/observer placeholder prefs removed; LoRaConfig is the one
defaults source (invalid-prefs fallback now uses the board TX default)
- TX-wait thread stack owned by the base; reconfigureWithParams removed
- driver extension headers on the public include path
(zephyr/drivers/lora/*.h); patch 0003 include updated
- comment diet (image-identical); rationale moved to devdocs LLD 03
- Mesh, Dispatcher, Packet, packet pool and the core headers rebuilt from
Arduino MeshCore's text; ZephCore changes re-applied, each fenced
`// ZEPHCORE:` (diff vs upstream: 4540 -> 1147 lines)
- upstream header layout; MainBoard gains handleCommand/loop and the other
upstream members; RNG::nextInt back in Utils.cpp
- packet logging moved to the roles' log hooks (helpers/PacketLog.h)
- zero-hop direct ACKs deduplicated and length-checked as upstream
- RadioIncludes.h -> src/, LoRaConfig.h -> helpers/
- .editorconfig: shared files keep upstream formatting
Verified: 10 role builds, per-function disassembly review, bench DM/ACK
regression (T1000-E, Wio L1, XIAO S3 on 1.17.4) incl. via live repeater.
- boards/**/zephcore.yml: one manifest per board/preset (release roles,
variants, catalog metadata, capabilities); scripts/board_manifest.py
validates and serves them to build.sh, gen_provider_catalog.py and
docs/supported_boards.md
- cmake/zephcore_board.cmake: board dir -> platform, shared by app and
sysbuild; removes the board-name regex lists and 7 separate globs
- conf chain: exact-name role/debug classification checked against
Kconfig, idempotent across non-pristine reconfigures, version string
single-sourced (BT DIS rev generated), day-granular build epoch
- Doom easter egg: Kconfig default for the wio_tracker_l1 companion
instead of a build.sh-only flag
- catalog: maker for the LR2021 EVK (KeyError before); CI installs PyYAML
- user -DEXTRA_DTC_OVERLAY_FILE overlays now take precedence over derived overlays
Verified: identical .config, DTS and source lists for 97 board/role
configs; identical images for 4 reference builds; identical build.sh
command/artifact set and catalog content.
hwinfo_get_reset_cause() reads a latched register. It was read inline in
main_companion.cpp and cleared there, so the repeater, room server and
observer never read it and never cleared it: their flags carried into the next
boot, and whichever role read first defined what any later reader would see.
helpers/boot_info.c reads it once in a SYS_INIT at POST_KERNEL, logs it,
stores it and clears the register. That runs before main() on every role.
zephcore_boot_reset_cause() hands out the stored copy and reports false where
the platform has no support, which a caller can distinguish from a cause of 0.
The clear's return is discarded deliberately: ESP32 has no
hwinfo_clear_reset_cause() implementation, so the weak stub returns -ENOSYS.
The capture is still correct there; only the next boot's reading is not.
Logging in boot_info_init() rather than only in the consuming role matters
because the clear now happens everywhere. Without it a repeater that rebooted
on WATCHDOG or LOCKUP would have the evidence cleared and recorded nowhere,
where before it survived in the register for whoever read it over SWD.
main_companion.cpp reads the stored copy and renders through a table with one
row per RESET_* bit, so a cause with no label is no longer logged as bare hex.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
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