meshcore-analyzer/RELEASE-v2.6.0.md

v2.6.0 — Audio Sonification, Regional Hop Filtering, Audio Lab

🔊 Mesh Audio Sonification

Packets now have sound. Each packet's raw bytes become music through a modular voice engine.

• Payload type → instrument + scale: ADVERTs play triangle waves on C major pentatonic, GRP_TXT uses sine on A minor pentatonic, TXT_MSG on E natural minor, TRACE on D whole tone
• Payload bytes → melody: √(payload_length) bytes sampled evenly, quantized to scale
• Byte value → note duration: low bytes = staccato, high = sustained
• Byte delta → note spacing: small deltas = rapid fire, large = pauses
• Observation count → volume + chord voicing: more observers = louder + richer (up to 8 detuned voices via log₂ scaling)
• Hop count → filter cutoff: more hops = more muffled (lowpass 800-8000Hz)
• Node longitude → stereo pan
• BPM tempo slider for ambient ↔ techno feel
• Per-packet limiter prevents amplitude spikes from overlapping notes
• Exponential envelopes eliminate click/pop artifacts
• "Tap to enable audio" overlay handles browser autoplay policy
• Modular voice architecture: engine (audio.js) + swappable voice modules. New voices = new file + script tag.

🎵 Audio Lab (Packet Jukebox)

New #/audio-lab page for understanding and debugging the audio:

• Packet buckets by type — representative packets spanning size/observation ranges
• Play/Loop/Speed controls — trigger individual packets, 0.25x to 4x speed
• Sound Mapping panel — shows WHY each parameter has its value (formulas + computed results)
• Note Sequence table — every sampled byte → MIDI note → frequency → duration → gap, with derivation formulas
• Real-time playback highlighting — hex dump, note rows, and byte visualizer highlight in sync as each note plays
• Click individual notes — play any single note from the sequence
• Byte Visualizer — bar chart of payload bytes, sampled bytes colored by type

🗺️ Regional Hop Filtering (#117)

1-byte repeater IDs (0-255) collide globally. Previously, resolve-hops picked candidates from anywhere, causing false cross-regional paths (e.g., Eugene packet showing Vancouver repeaters).

• Layered filtering: GPS distance to IATA center (bridge-proof) → observer-based fallback → global fallback
• 60+ IATA airport coordinates built in for geographic distance calculations
• Regional candidates sorted by distance — closest to region center wins when no sender GPS available
• Sender GPS as origin anchor — ADVERTs use their own coordinates; channel messages look up sender node GPS from previous ADVERTs in the database
• Per-observer resolution — packet list batch-resolves ambiguous hops per observer via server API
• Conflict popover — clickable ⚠ badges show all regional candidates with distances, each linking to node detail
• Shared HopDisplay module — consistent conflict display across packets, nodes, and detail views

🏷️ Region Dropdown Improvements (#116)

• 150+ built-in IATA-to-city mappings — dropdown shows SEA - Seattle, WA automatically, no config needed
• Layout fixes — dropdown auto-sizes for longer labels, checkbox alignment, ellipsis overflow

📍 Location & Navigation

• Packet detail shows location for ADVERTs (direct GPS), channel texts (sender node lookup), and all resolvable senders
• 📍 Map link navigates to #/map?node=PUBKEY — centers on the actual node and opens its popup
• Observer IATA regions shown in packet detail, node detail, and live map node panels

🔧 Fixes

• Realistic mode fixed — secondary WS broadcast paths (ADVERT, GRP_TXT, TXT_MSG, TRACE) were missing hash field, bypassing the 5-second grouping buffer entirely
• Observation count passed to sonification — realistic mode now provides actual observer count for volume/chord voicing
• Packet list dedup — O(1) hash index via Map prevents duplicate rows
• Observer names in packet detail — direct navigation to #/packets/HASH now loads observers first
• Observer detail packet links — fixed to use hash (not ID) and correct route
• Time window bypassed for direct links — #/packets/HASH always shows the packet regardless of time filter
• CI: docker rm -f — prevents stale container conflicts during deploy
• CI: paths-ignore — skips deploy on markdown/docs/license changes