MCLite

Changelog

All notable changes to MCLite are documented here. The format is loosely based on Keep a Changelog, and the project follows semantic-ish versioning.

Targets: T-Deck Plus (mclite-vX.Y.Z.bin) and T-Watch Ultra (mclite-watch-vX.Y.Z.bin).

[0.4.5] — 2026-10-05

Fixed

• Auto-update now sets the clock at boot. The T-Deck has no battery-backed clock, so without a GPS fix it boots with no time. With WiFi → Auto Update on, MCLite already connected at boot to check for a new release, but it disconnected before the internet time sync (NTP) could run. It now waits up to 5 seconds for NTP first, so the clock is set at every boot even without GPS (#52, reported by @mueslimak3r).
• Time sent by the companion app now shows on the device. The app sets the clock when it connects. The firmware accepted that time, but the status bar clock stayed blank, because the device didn’t count it as a valid time source. It does now (#52).
• T-Watch keeps time from WiFi or the app across reboots. Only GPS used to save the time to the watch’s battery-backed clock, so a time from WiFi or the companion app was lost on reboot. Both are now saved too.
• “Discover Repeaters” in the phone app no longer errors. Selecting Discover Nodes → Discover Repeaters returned “Unsupported Command - Please update your companion firmware”, which was misleading: the firmware was current, it had simply never implemented the command behind that button. It does now, and the answers come back to the app. Fixing the button was only half of it: the replies come back as control packets too, and nothing in MCLite handled those either, so the request would have gone out and every answer would have been dropped on the way back in. Both directions are implemented, so the results actually reach the app (#51, reported by @Murphy15b).
• Rejected companion commands are named in the log. An unsupported command produced a generic error at the app and nothing at all on the device, so there was no way to tell which one it was. The serial log now says.

[0.4.4] — 2026-09-08

Added

• 12-hour clock. Times can show as 1:45 PM instead of 13:45. Off by default, so nothing changes unless you turn it on, in the config tool or in Settings → Display → 12-Hour Clock — no reboot, the clock switches within a second. It applies to every time the device shows: the status-bar clock, chat message timestamps, uptime, last-charged and the room sync time. That consistency is the point; a status bar reading 13:45 above a message stamped 1:45 PM would look broken. This changes only how times are displayed — what time it is still comes from gps.timezone / gps.clock_offset. On the T-Deck the longer clock leaves slightly less room for a long device name in the status bar, which shortens with an ellipsis. Asked for by @thumbtak2 (#50).
• The message length limit is visible while you type. The chat input allows 160 characters, but the radio’s limit is 160 bytes — and an emoji costs four of them, an accented letter two. So a message could look well short of the limit and still be refused when you pressed send. A small counter now appears above the input once a draft passes about three quarters of its budget, in amber, turning red at the point where the send would be refused. It stays hidden the rest of the time, and it counts against the same budget the send path enforces, so it cannot disagree with it — channels are tighter than direct messages, because the sender’s name travels with each channel message.
• The map opens on a regional view instead of a street corner. It used to open at the deepest zoom your tile pack happened to contain, which on a detailed pack meant landing with no idea where you were and zooming out before you could use it. It now opens at whichever level you have that sits closest to a town-and-road scale, in either direction — a city pack covering only close-in levels opens at its widest rather than its tightest, and a pack that jumps from continent to street picks the street. Idea from @jason-s13r’s fork.
• Offgrid presets: choose which offgrid frequency to meet on. The two official MeshCore clients disagree — the Android app puts offgrid on 869.945 MHz, MeshCore Open uses 869.000 — so there is no single value MCLite could hardcode and be compatible with both. Offgrid is now a preset you pick, in the config tool or in Settings → Radio → Offgrid Preset, alongside the existing on/off switch. Nothing changes unless you change it: the default preset, auto, is exactly what MCLite has always done (nearest of 433 / 869 / 918 derived from your normal frequency, with spreading factor, bandwidth and coding rate left alone), so an update moves nobody’s radio. There is also a complete preset, mclite_869, which fixes the modem settings as well as the frequency. That matters more than it sounds: because stock MeshCore changes only the frequency, two people whose normal regions differ — say EU/UK Narrow on SF8/CR8 and Netherlands on SF7/CR5 — land on the same offgrid frequency and still cannot hear each other, since LoRa cannot demodulate across a different spreading factor. Everyone who picks a complete preset agrees on all of it. It is MCLite-to-MCLite only, by definition. A custom preset takes your own frequency and, optionally, modem settings; leave a field empty to inherit your normal one. TX power is never changed by a preset. Reported by @chevdor, who tested against a real stock node and supplied the screenshots that settled it (#49).
• Define your own offgrid presets in the config. offgrid.presets[] takes up to eight named entries, each with a frequency and optionally its own SF / bandwidth / coding rate, and they appear next to the built-in ones both in the config tool and in the on-device picker. So a group can agree its own offgrid settings and hand them round in one config file, and if MeshCore settles on a different frequency you can follow it the same day instead of waiting for a firmware release. Same shape as the existing display.themes[]: hand-edited in config.json, and the config tool round-trips them untouched. A name that collides with a built-in is ignored, so a config can never redefine what auto does.
• Out-of-range offgrid values are refused rather than obeyed. Anything outside what the radio actually supports (frequency 150-960 MHz, SF 5-12, bandwidth 7.8-500 kHz, coding rate 5-8) is ignored and your normal setting is inherited for that field, with a note on the serial log. They are not clamped to the nearest legal value: quietly moving someone to 150 MHz because they typed a stray digit would be worse than doing nothing. The config tool now offers only valid choices for SF, bandwidth and coding rate, and flags a frequency outside the range instead of reporting “Ready to export”.
• Out-of-date translations now repair themselves. The device already re-downloaded its language files right after a WiFi firmware update, but that was the only route — so a device flashed over USB or from an SD card kept whatever language files were on its card, which is how most devices end up with strings older than their firmware. The mismatch was detected at boot and written to a serial log nobody reads. Now, whenever the device has WiFi up to check for updates — on boot, or from Admin → WiFi → Check for updates — it also brings stale translations forward to match the running firmware, whether or not there is a firmware update to install. It only touches languages already on the card and never replaces a file with one that is not newer. Check for updates still answers the question you asked — whether there is new firmware — and mentions translations only when they actually changed and there is no firmware update to report instead (“Firmware is up to date - translations updated”). Note it can only fetch what a published release contains, so a device running a build newer than its own release has nothing to pull. Suggested by @laserir.

Fixed

• The PIN keypad shows which key you pressed. On the T-Watch, the on-screen keypad for entering a PIN was the only keyboard in the app without the enlarged popover over the pressed key. Its keys are about 30x48 pixels, the field is masked so you cannot see what you typed, and wrong entries back off for longer each time — the one keyboard where you most need the feedback had none.
• A room’s last-sync time was shown in UTC. Every other time on the device honours the timezone you configured, but the room list built that one timestamp with its own code that skipped the conversion — so on a device set to, say, CET it read an hour or two behind everything else on screen. It now goes through the same formatter as the rest, which is also what makes it follow the new 12-hour setting.
• The Radio screen now reports what is actually on the air. Frequency, SF/BW and coding rate showed the configured values even while offgrid was running on different ones. With presets able to change the modem settings too, that would have been actively misleading, so those rows now show the resolved offgrid values (and the offgrid row itself shows the frequency to three decimals, since 869.000 and 869.945 are both in the list).
• A translation can no longer corrupt a message it is used to format. Some on-screen text is built by substituting a value into a translated sentence, and the translation comes from a file on the SD card. If that file is older or newer than the firmware, the placeholder in it can disagree with the value being substituted, and the result is anything from a meaningless long number in place of a frequency to a reboot. That is not hypothetical: it happens to every device flashed over USB, because the SD card keeps whatever language files were already on it. Those substitutions now check the translation against the built-in English one first, and fall back to English for that one line when they disagree. Worst case is now a single line in the wrong language instead of a corrupted screen. All 48 places that format a translated string are covered.
• The config tool no longer wipes a custom quick-reply list. messaging.canned_messages can hold your own list of up to eight replies instead of true/false, but the tool only ever had the on/off switch — so loading such a config, changing anything at all, and exporting wrote the switch back over your list and the device fell back to the eight built-in defaults. The list now survives the round trip. It became easy to hit once quick replies became editable on the device, since editing one there writes exactly that kind of list into config.json. Turning the switch off still clears the list, which is what the firmware does too.
• A config that predates the quick-reply setting no longer turns quick replies off. With canned_messages absent the firmware leaves them on, but the config tool showed Off and exported that choice — so loading an older config and re-exporting silently disabled the picker.
• Config tool: a badly formatted PIN no longer says “Ready to export”. The Admin PIN was not checked by the readiness gate at all, so an unusable one exported cleanly — and an unusable PIN means a device that can be locked out of Admin with no way back except editing the file on the SD card. A device PIN that is set but malformed is now flagged too, whatever the Lock mode, since the firmware drops such a PIN when it loads the config. Both fields show the red border and the reason.

Changed

• Config tool: the PIN Code field is always visible, on the same line as Lock and Auto Lock. It used to appear only after you set Lock to PIN Lock, while Admin PIN was always shown — so the screen looked like it had forgotten the device PIN. Its hint now says it applies in PIN Lock mode. Validation is unchanged: a PIN is only required when Lock is PIN Lock.
• Config tool: Admin PIN shows the same error text as the device PIN when it is not 4-8 alphanumeric characters. It already got the red border, but with no message explaining why.

[0.4.3] — 2026-08-29

Added

• Colour emoji. The emoji you can actually pick on the device — the 30 in the chat picker and the 6 reaction emoji — now render as full-colour glyphs, inline in chat bubbles and in the pickers. Everything else keeps using the existing monochrome font, so nothing goes blank: the chain is colour subset, then mono emoji, then plain text. Costs about 37 KB of flash on T-Deck (67 KB on T-Watch, which bakes larger glyphs) and no meaningful RAM. On by default; turn it off in Settings → Display → Colour Emoji or with display.color_emoji for the previous monochrome look, which some may prefer on the amber and high-contrast themes since colour glyphs cannot follow the palette. The on-device toggle reboots to apply, like the theme switch. Requested by @artoo-dv (#46), who also suggested the curated-subset approach that keeps the cost this low.
• Admin can be locked from the device, with a PIN to get back in. Settings → Security → Lock Admin hides the whole Admin hub; pressing 0 (T-Deck) or the side button (T-Watch) then asks for a new Admin PIN and re-enables Admin when it is correct. The PIN is separate from the screen-lock PIN — that one unlocks the screen, this one unlocks Admin — and locking is armed by typing it rather than tapping a second dialog, so you cannot lock yourself out with a mis-tap. Set it in Settings → Security → Admin PIN or as security.admin_pin. Wrong entries back off exactly like the screen PIN, on a separate counter. Without an Admin PIN set, a locked device can only be recovered by editing config.json on the SD card.
• Permissions are editable on the device. Settings → Security now carries Settings Access (Full / Restricted / Read-only), Manage Conversations and Show Companion, so a device can be locked down before handing it to someone without needing a computer and an SD reader. Tightening asks for confirmation first and says what is lost, including that a connected companion app is affected too. These rows are only editable while Settings Access is Full, so a device can tighten its own permissions but never loosen them; to undo a lockdown, edit config.json on the SD card. The permissions block is also documented in the README config reference for the first time.
• Per-conversation quick replies are editable on the device. A contact, channel or room can carry its own quick-reply list that overrides the global one, but until now that list could only be set from the config tool. Admin → Contacts / Channels / Rooms → pick one → Quick Replies now edits it directly. An empty list means that conversation follows the global list, and the screen says so rather than showing a blank page; deleting the last entry reverts it to global. The global list keeps its existing behaviour, where an empty list means the eight built-in defaults. Edits apply straight away in the running session, with no reboot.
• Message reactions. Long-press a chat bubble to react with an emoji (👍 👎 ❤ 😂 😮 😢); reactions appear as chips under the message and aggregate when several people pick the same one. Implements the MeshCore One reactions spec, so reactions sent from that app attach to the right message here and vice versa. Compatibility is limited to MeshCore One and MCLite for now — the spec rides inside ordinary message text, so on any other MeshCore client a reaction arrives as a plain message showing the emoji and an 8-character code. That is why it is off by default: enable in Settings → Messaging → Reactions or set messaging.reactions in config.json. Reactions you receive are always recognised and never shown as junk text, even with the setting off. Thanks @jason-s13r (#41).
• Edit canned messages on the device. The quick-reply list is no longer config-tool-only: Admin → Canned Messages (also reachable from Settings → Messaging) lists the current replies and lets you add, edit or delete them, up to 8. Starting from the built-in defaults materialises them into your config the first time you change one, so nothing is lost. Read-only when settings permissions are restricted. Thanks @jason-s13r.
• Two settings that were config-tool-only are now on-device. Settings → Messaging → Share Contact toggles the share button in a DM chat header, and Admin → WiFi → Auto Update controls whether the device checks GitHub for a newer release on boot. Both already existed as messaging.share_contact and wifi.auto_update in config.json; neither had a switch you could reach without a computer. The wifi block is also documented in the README config reference for the first time.
• Status-bar menu button (T-Deck). Optionally show a gear at the left of the status bar that opens Admin, and tapping it again returns home — a touch alternative to the 0 key shortcut, which nothing on screen advertised. It works from any screen, and is suppressed while the keypad is locked, while the map is open, or when security.admin_enabled is off. Off by default — enable in Settings → Display → Menu Button or set display.menu_button in config.json; the change applies without a reboot. T-Watch is unaffected: it already reaches Admin via the side (PEK) button. Idea from the MCLite-RPW fork by PA3RPW.
• OTA also refreshes SD translations. A WiFi firmware update (Admin → WiFi → Check for updates) now, right after flashing, re-downloads the language files you already have on the SD card (/mclite/lang/*.json) from the release it just installed — so strings added in a new version show up translated instead of falling back to English until you next re-copy the files by hand. It only refreshes languages already present (never adds new ones), validates each download before replacing the file (a failed or corrupt fetch leaves the existing one untouched), and never blocks or fails the firmware update itself. English-only devices are unaffected. Also clears the “lang file is older than firmware” serial warning after an update.

Fixed

• SOS and battery alerts could be silently cut short. Those paths send directly and never checked the message budget, and sos_keyword had no length limit, so a long keyword plus a location string went over — at which point MeshCore truncated the tail at a raw byte offset, which can split a character in half, with no warning and no failed-message marker. Both now clamp to the budget on a character boundary, and an over-long sos_keyword is trimmed on load.
• Reacting to a message you had retried didn’t work for the other end. A retry goes out with a fresh timestamp, but a failed-looking message is often one the peer did receive whose acknowledgement was lost — so they still hold it under its original identity. Both are now accepted.
• Tapping retry on a failed channel message did nothing. Channels normally can’t fail, but one that never reached the air does, and the button was wired only for direct messages and rooms.
• Messages from a peer with an empty or very long device name kept a stray ": " in front of the text, so the two devices disagreed about what had been said.
• Long-pressing a message that can’t take reactions now says so instead of doing nothing. This happens when a message carries no timestamp, which the reaction protocol needs to identify it.

• The colour-emoji consistency check no longer needs Pillow or network access — it inspects the committed files rather than rebuilding them, so it can’t fail spuriously on a library upgrade.

• Picking an emoji in a group could silently prepend “@[Name] “ to your message. The pickers are dismissed from the tap that chooses an item and deleted a moment later, so the finger was still down when the overlay disappeared — and LVGL then delivered that same press to whatever it had been covering. When a sender name happened to sit under the spot you tapped, it inserted a reply mention, which then showed up in front of the emoji. The press is now ended with the overlay, so it cannot leak through to the message list underneath. The same shape affected the quick-reply and reaction pickers and the PIN keypad.

• Long-pressing a sender name inserted a mention instead of opening the reaction picker. The name is a clickable element inside the bubble, so it swallowed the press; LVGL also sends a click on release even after a long press. Long-pressing a name now opens the reaction picker like long-pressing the bubble does, and a mention is only inserted on a genuine short tap.

• A T-Watch could be locked out of its own UI permanently, in two ways. The PIN entry screen only listened for physical key events, and T-Watch has no keyboard or trackball compiled in, so setting Lock Mode → PIN produced a lock screen with nothing able to type into it — surviving reboots, recoverable only by pulling the SD card. Separately, a PIN could never be set on that board either: the editor’s OK key ran the enter-then-repeat step twice and always reported a mismatch. The PIN screen now draws an on-screen keyboard on any board without physical keys, and the Admin prompts (never the screen lock) take ESC or a Cancel button.
• A PIN the device cannot type no longer arms a lock. pin_code and admin_pin are now ignored unless they are 4-8 alphanumeric characters. Anything longer than 8, or containing a symbol the entry screen has no key for, previously armed a lock nobody could open. A rejected PIN is left in config.json rather than erased, so you can still read it to correct it, and a lock: pin with no usable PIN falls back to the key lock.
• An incoming SOS while the screen was PIN-locked made the device unusable. The alert dialog took over input and handed it back to the screen behind the lock, leaving the PIN overlay on top with nothing able to reach it. On an emergency device, immediately after an emergency alert.
• Ordinary messages could be silently destroyed. Any message whose last line was eight Crockford-legal characters could be parsed as an emoji reaction and dropped — no bubble, no unread badge, no notification, nothing written to the SD card — and this ran even with reactions turned off. The parser now tests positively for emoji codepoints instead of guessing from byte values, so CJK, Cyrillic and Greek messages are safe, and it correctly accepts reactions it used to reject (keycaps, flags, skin tones, family sequences). Every message it does consume is now logged.
• Pressing Enter to send could destroy the draft. The Enter path bypassed the length check and the text cleanup, then cleared the input regardless — so an over-length message vanished without being sent.
• The three newest translated strings never loaded, because the loader’s cap was one below the number of strings. On every German, French and Italian device the last three keys were silently dropped.
• Reactions attached to the wrong text. A retried message went out with a fresh timestamp but kept its old identity, the local copy sampled the clock separately from what went on the air (including for SOS and battery alerts), and channel messages were measured without the <name>: prefix MeshCore prepends — so a long one was truncated on the air while the sender’s own bubble showed the full text. Reactions are also capped per message, so a peer can no longer push unbounded data into the list.
• Share-preset links leaked the sharer’s WiFi network name and password. Preset links are meant to be handed round a group; they now carry no WiFi at all. “New config” no longer keeps the previous session’s credentials either.
• Two permission dialogs claimed a change was irreversible when it is not — those two can be switched back on from the device while Settings Access is Full.
• Assorted: duplicate contact keys no longer produce two indistinguishable contacts (and are no longer deleted from your config file); wifi.auto_update survives on a device that has never joined a network; the Set Scope picker no longer strands an overlay or holds the repeater-request slot after you leave Settings; an abandoned permission-lock dialog can no longer reappear and be committed by accident; settings are saved after the editors close rather than before, so a reverted lock mode is actually written; per-channel quick replies apply to hashtag channels whose name was not already normalised; blank entries in canned_messages no longer truncate the chat picker; reaction chips aggregate ❤️ and ❤ as one emoji; the T-Watch screenshot shortcut works again while a PIN prompt is showing; and the config tool validates the Admin PIN.
• CI now runs the tests. Nothing in the pipeline did. It also checks that translations cover every string, are ASCII-only, carry the right version, and that the colour-emoji assets still match the picker — each of which corresponds to a bug that shipped.
• The PIN editor now says what it wants. Entering a PIN asks for it twice, but both prompts were captioned identically and a mismatch silently cleared the field, so the second prompt looked like the first had been rejected and a typo looked like the editor refusing everything. The second step is now captioned Repeat PIN, a mismatch says so, and saving or clearing confirms with a toast. The title also names which PIN you are setting, since there are now two.
• A PIN could not be cleared. The editor used “nothing pending yet” to detect the first of the two entries, which an empty PIN is indistinguishable from, so submitting an empty PIN looped forever instead of clearing it.
• admin_enabled is now actually enforced. It was only checked on the T-Deck 0 key and the status-bar gear, so on T-Watch it did nothing at all (the side button opened Admin regardless), and the Back buttons in Settings, Heard Adverts and the WiFi/USB/Bluetooth screens could walk straight back into a disabled Admin. All six routes are now gated in one place.
• A too-short PIN can no longer be saved. Every lock path requires at least 4 characters, but the PIN editor only enforced the 8-character maximum — so a shorter PIN saved happily and then did nothing, leaving Lock Mode set to PIN while the trackball hold quietly engaged the key lock instead. The editor now rejects 1-3 characters (clearing the PIN is still allowed), and choosing Lock Mode → PIN without a usable PIN opens the PIN editor straight away, reverting to key lock if you leave without setting one.
• Failed PIN entries now back off. A wrong PIN could previously be retried instantly, so a 4-digit code was guessable at machine speed. Three wrong tries are free (fat fingers), then each further miss waits 5s, 10s, 30s and 60s, with the countdown shown on the lock screen and typing ignored until it clears. A correct entry resets it; re-locking on auto-dim does not hand out fresh free tries. The counter is deliberately not persisted: anyone who can power-cycle to clear it can equally pull the SD card and read security.pin_code, which is stored in plain text. SOS is unaffected and still works while the device is PIN-locked.

[0.4.2] — 2026-07-23

Added

• Pick a scope from a nearby repeater. When setting a region scope — global (Settings → Radio → Scope) or a per-channel/room override — a new From repeater button asks a heard repeater for the list of regions it actually serves, so you don’t have to know the exact names. Pick a repeater, then pick one region from the reply; it fills the scope field for you to review and Save. The manual text entry is untouched — this just adds a shortcut. The picker lists direct-range (0-hop) repeaters the device has heard (tap the flood-advert button on the Heard Adverts screen to prompt discovery). Requires a repeater running firmware that answers the region query. Multi-hop repeaters are not supported — the query needs a route-direct path, and an overheard advert path isn’t a reliable one; configure scopes from a repeater within direct range. (#45)
• “Heard by N repeaters” on sent channel messages. A channel message you send now shows ✓ ↻ N once nearby repeaters rebroadcast it — the ✓ means sent, and ↻ N is how many distinct repeaters were heard echoing it back (the count climbs as echoes arrive). It’s deliberately different from a direct message’s ✓✓ (which is a real delivery ACK) — a channel echo only confirms a repeater relayed it. Always on; only meaningful where repeaters are in range. Thanks @jason-s13r (#39).
• Show received hop count. Optionally show how many hops a received message took (xN next to the time; x0 = heard directly). Off by default — enable in Settings → Messaging → Show Hop Count. (#39)
• Memory usage indicator (debug). Optionally show P% R% (PSRAM / internal-RAM used) in the status bar, and log internal-DRAM free / low-water / largest-free-block plus PSRAM over serial — handy for diagnosing memory pressure. Off by default — enable in Settings → Display → Show Memory Usage. Thanks @jason-s13r (#38).

Changed

• LVGL now allocates from PSRAM instead of internal DRAM. This frees scarce internal RAM for the things that can only live there — notably BLE companion mode. Measured on the T-Deck with BLE companion and an app connected: ~124 KB internal DRAM free with a ~111 KB largest contiguous block (negligible fragmentation); the redirect is effectively what lets that combination fit. Validated on both T-Deck (octal PSRAM) and T-Watch Ultra (quad PSRAM) with no perceptible UI slowdown. Falls back to DRAM if PSRAM is unavailable. Thanks @jason-s13r (#38).
• Chat bubbles are freed when you leave a chat, so a previously-viewed conversation no longer keeps its rendered bubbles in memory while you’re on other screens (they’re rebuilt from history on reopen). (#38)

Fixed

• A scope/region field with spaces no longer silently kills scoped floods. A scope holds a single region name; pasting a multi-region region def list (e.g. west pnw or wv eug) hashed the whole string into a transport key that matched no repeater, so hashtag/private-channel traffic was dropped while Public kept working. The config tool now rejects a scope containing a space, and the firmware keeps only the first token (with a serial note) across every input path — config.json, the companion set-scope command, and the on-device scope editor. (#36)

[0.4.1] — 2026-06-25

Added

• Manage rooms and channels from the companion app. The companion protocol gained the standard write/action commands the official MeshCore app uses, so things that previously failed against MCLite now work:
  • Room login (CMD_SEND_LOGIN): log into a configured room or repeater from the app. A blank password field uses the password already in the device config, and a wrong password instantly retries with the stored one. Thanks to the reporters (#32).
  • Add / remove channels (CMD_SET_CHANNEL): join a Public, hashtag, or private channel — or remove one — from the app. Adding applies instantly with no reboot — the channel is usable right away and its share QR shows the real key, not zeros, with the session staying connected. Removing a channel still reboots to apply (a known limitation — MeshCore offers no way to remove a channel from the running radio, so the device rebuilds its channel table from config at boot; the app reconnects on its own). Gated by the permissions.conversation_management setting, so a locked-down device still refuses it (#31).
  • Add / edit / remove contacts (CMD_ADD_UPDATE_CONTACT, CMD_REMOVE_CONTACT): add a contact, rename one, or delete one (and its chat history) straight from the app. Adding and renaming apply instantly (the app stays connected); removing reboots to apply (the app reconnects) — see the consistent add/remove model below. Editing maps to the contact’s display name; per-contact permission flags stay device-owner settings (the config tool / on-device Admin), and the app’s own contact flags remain app-local. Gated by permissions.conversation_management (#33).
  • Share a contact (CMD_SHARE_CONTACT) re-broadcasts a contact’s advert so a nearby device can add them, and reboot (CMD_REBOOT) is now honoured from the app’s button.
  • The app’s Local vs Flood advert buttons were already handled; confirmed during this work. With this, the companion can fully manage rooms, channels, and contacts (#31, #32, #33 all closed). A consistent rule across both contacts and channels: adding and editing apply instantly; removing reboots to apply (the app reconnects on its own). The reboot on removal is required for channels — MeshCore has no way to drop a channel from the running radio — and kept for contacts so the behaviour is uniform and predictable. Live changes are reflected on the device’s own UI too — a contact/channel added or renamed from the app shows up in the on-device conversation list and Admin screens right away, no reboot. In-place editing of a contact’s permission flags / a channel’s settings still arrives alongside on-device editing.

• Change device settings from the companion app. With permissions.settings set to full, a connected app can now set the device name, radio parameters (frequency / spreading factor / bandwidth / coding rate), TX power, the BLE pairing PIN, and the path-hash mode (1/2/3 bytes per hop). Values are range-checked; the device name applies instantly to mesh adverts (the Bluetooth scan name refreshes on the next reboot), while radio / TX / PIN / path-hash save and apply on a quick reboot (the app reconnects). Path-hash mode is especially useful on large meshes — it lets app users match a 3-byte network without hand-editing config.json (see #36). A device left at restricted or none refuses these. Identity keys, advert location (MCLite advertises GPS at the configured precision), and auto-add stay device-managed by design and are rejected.

• Set the region/scope from the companion app. The companion now honours CMD_SET_DEFAULT_FLOOD_SCOPE (set the persistent region), CMD_GET_DEFAULT_FLOOD_SCOPE (read it), and CMD_SET_FLOOD_SCOPE_KEY (a temporary session override), gated by permissions.settings = full. Together with the existing path-hash command, the radio’s region and path-hash size are now both configurable from the app — the two settings a large 3-byte mesh needs. A public #region round-trips exactly (MCLite derives the same transport key MeshCore does); a custom/private key that isn’t derivable from the name is refused.
• On-device contact/channel/room actions. Tapping a contact in Admin now offers Reset path (force flood rediscovery of the route) beside Delete; tapping a channel or room offers Set scope (edit that entry’s own region override, blank = inherit the global one) beside Delete. A configured override is shown as [scope:…] on the row in both the manage and read-only views.

• Edit region and path-hash size on the device. Admin → Radio now lets you change the region/scope and the path-hash size (1/2/3 bytes per hop) directly on-device (a roller for the size, a text editor for the region), gated by permissions.settings = full. Both apply on a quick reboot. Handy for matching a large 3-byte mesh without the config tool. A blank region means none (*); a bare name like region is treated as #region. The other radio params (frequency / SF / BW / CR / TX) stay on the existing region-preset picker + TX slider.

• More companion commands: reset a contact’s path (CMD_RESET_PATH — forces flood rediscovery of the route), export a contact (CMD_EXPORT_CONTACT — your own or a known contact’s signed advert, as a portable blob), and import a contact (CMD_IMPORT_CONTACT — the imported advert appears in Heard Adverts to review and save, keeping the contact list curated). Import is gated by permissions.conversation_management.
• Explicit un-scoped flood scope from the app. The companion app can now force flood sends out un-scoped, independent of the configured region (CMD_SET_FLOOD_SCOPE_KEY explicit-unscoped variant). Session-only — reverts to the configured scope on reboot. Gated by permissions.settings == "full".
• Send a request to a node that isn’t a contact (CMD_SEND_ANON_REQ). The companion app can query a node addressed only by its public key — without adding it as a contact first — and the reply is forwarded back to the app. The temporary node is never saved to the contact list. Gated by permissions.settings == "full". With this, MCLite now advertises companion firmware-version 13 so apps surface both this and the un-scoped-scope option above.
• Node status and path-trace from the app. Two more standard companion commands: status request (CMD_SEND_STATUS_REQ — ask a repeater/node for its status, e.g. uptime and counters) and trace path (CMD_SEND_TRACE_PATH — trace the route to a node and report per-hop signal). This completes the companion command set MCLite supports.

Changed

• Updated the MeshCore library 1.15 → 1.16. Brings RadioLib 7.6, an SF-dependent preamble (32 symbols for SF ≤ 8, matching the rest of the network for better low-SF link reliability), and upstream fixes (EU client-repeat frequency, WiFi reconnect, repeater neighbor-discovery when path-hash mode ≠ 0). Confirmed interoperable with 1.16 nodes — including message ACKs — at SF8.

Fixed

• Companion message sync no longer drops messages on connect. Two issues fixed: the on-connect history replay was capped (about two dozen messages) and walked oldest-first, so an active chat could lose its newest messages and other chats could sync nothing; and over WiFi a full transport send-queue could silently drop a message frame. Sync now streams the full stored history with no cap (newest included, all chats) and only removes a message once the transport confirms it was sent — so reconnecting shows everything you received. Works the same over WiFi and Bluetooth. (Note: messages you type on the device still don’t appear in the app — the MeshCore companion protocol has no outgoing-message frame; see the README.)
• Region scope without a leading # now matches MeshCore. A region/flood-scope written as a bare name (e.g. region instead of #region) was hashed literally, producing a different transport key than the rest of the network. MCLite now prepends # to a bare name before deriving the key — mirroring MeshCore’s implicit-hashtag behavior — so region and #region are the same region and interoperate. (#/$ prefixes pass through unchanged; explicit #region configs are unaffected.)
• Custom canned-message list (global) was lost on save. A canned_messages array configured at the messaging level was serialized back as a bare true, so the custom list vanished on the next boot — and with the new companion config writes, almost any settings change triggered it. Serialization now writes the array faithfully (and honors the on/off toggle, so a disabled state also persists). Per-conversation canned lists (per contact/channel/room) were always stored separately and were never affected. Thanks @jason-s13r (#34).
• Non-English devices ignored a configured global canned list in the chat quick-reply picker. The picker only honored a custom canned_messages array when the UI language was English; on other languages it always showed the translated defaults. A configured custom array is an explicit, language-independent choice and now wins regardless of language (translated defaults still apply when no custom array is set). Thanks @jason-s13r (#34).

[0.4.0] — 2026-06-22

Added

• Request contact telemetry from the companion app. The companion protocol now honours the standard CMD_SEND_TELEMETRY_REQ (39): a connected client (meshcore-cli, meshcore-proxy, custom apps, and the official app where its UI offers it) can ask MCLite to query a contact’s telemetry over the mesh, and the parsed reply is pushed back as the standard PUSH_CODE_TELEMETRY_RESPONSE (0x8B) carrying the raw CayenneLPP. Reuses the on-device telemetry path and its single pending-request slot (rejects with an error while a request is already in flight), and is gated by the existing messaging.request_telemetry setting. The first companion command that initiates a mesh request — it changes no stored state (same scope as send-message / send-advert).
• Share a contact over the air. Direct-message chats gain a Share button in the header that re-broadcasts that contact’s original signed advert at zero hop — a nearby device hears it and can add the contact straight from its Heard Adverts, no key typing. This is MeshCore’s standard contact-sharing mechanism (shareContactZeroHop); MCLite now caches each heard advert and backs saved contacts’ adverts to the SD card so sharing still works after a reboot. The button only appears when we hold a re-broadcastable advert for the contact (added from a heard advert, or heard this session). Gated by the new messaging.share_contact setting (on by default; set false to hide the button).
• On-device add/remove of contacts, channels, and rooms. With permissions.conversation_management (config-tool provisioned, on by default; set false to lock the lists down), the Admin → Conversations screens gain Add and Remove for every type: contacts (from a heard advert, or by entering a 64-hex key), channels (Public one-tap, hashtag by name, or private with a generated/entered PSK), and room servers (name + key + optional password). Mirrors the config tool’s rules (PSK derivation, Public’s fixed key, caps of 32/16/8, duplicate checks) so device-made entries round-trip cleanly. Changes save immediately and apply after a reboot (you’re prompted), and removing an entry also clears its chat history. When the flag is off, the lists stay read-only as before.
• More radio region presets + a roller picker. The region preset list grew to 19 entries (EU/UK/CH, US/Canada, several AU regions, Brazil, Czech Republic, EU 433, Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Switzerland, Vietnam, …), sourced from the MeshCore config API and kept in sync between the config tool and firmware. On-device the Radio region picker is now a scrollable roller (instead of a button grid) that pre-selects the current region. Importing a config whose radio settings don’t match a preset round-trips as “Custom” with the raw values preserved. Thanks @jason-s13r (#29).
• Chat header action buttons (DM). The chat screen moved to the standard windowed header (back · title · buttons), and direct-message chats gain two header buttons: Telemetry (refresh) opens the battery/location/distance modal and requests fresh telemetry, and Map (GPS) opens the map centred on the contact. The map button appears only when we actually have a position for the contact (telemetry / advert / heard) and updates live while the chat is open — it shows when an advert brings in a location and hides when a last-known fix ages out. Thanks @jason-s13r (#30).

Changed

• Contact telemetry is now a header button, not the contact name. Tapping the contact name in a DM chat no longer opens the telemetry/info pop-up — use the telemetry (refresh) button in the chat header instead (the name is now just the title). Part of the chat-header rework above (#30).
• Modal buttons are consistent everywhere. Every confirmation/chooser/info dialog (reboot, delete, offgrid, SOS alert, telemetry, firmware install, Heard-Adverts detail, …) now uses one shared modal widget with full-width, stacked buttons instead of cramped side-by-side rows, and the per-section settings editors (device name, boot text, SOS keyword, PIN, timezone) stack their Save/Cancel the same way — easier to read and tap on both boards.

Fixed

• Configured aliases now display everywhere. The map (global + contact-focused) and the companion app’s contact/room list were showing each node’s self-advertised name instead of your configured alias — MeshCore overwrites a contact’s stored name with the advertised one on every advert received. The map now resolves marker names from the local contact store (advert-stable alias), and the companion contact frames send the configured alias for contacts and the configured name for room servers (matched by pubkey). Heard-but-not- configured nodes still show their advertised name. (Companion aliases refresh on the next full contact sync.)

[0.3.9] — 2026-06-21

Added

• Step-wise admin permissions. Beyond the existing security.admin_enabled (global on/off for the Admin screen), a new permissions config block scopes what’s reachable inside Admin: permissions.settings (full / restricted / none) — restricted keeps only the basics editable (brightness, auto-dim, dim brightness, keyboard brightness, theme) and shows everything else read-only (no chevron); none makes all settings read-only. permissions.companion (default on) hides the Companion group (WiFi/USB/Bluetooth) when off — configured services still run. permissions.conversation_management (default off) is reserved for a future release (on-device add/edit/remove of contacts/channels/rooms; they stay read-only views for now). All three are provisionable from the config tool. Defaults are fully permissive, so existing configs are unchanged.
• Settings reorganised into per-section screens + Admin is now a pure hub. The on-device Admin screen no longer mixes settings, diagnostics and shortcuts — it’s three labelled groups of links: Companion (WiFi / USB / Bluetooth), Conversations (Contacts / Channels / Rooms, read-only views), and Settings (Device, Radio, Display, Messaging, Sound, GPS, Battery, Security). Each section is its own screen mirroring the config tool, with all of its editable settings and its read-only diagnostics in one place (no more duplicated rows across Admin and Device Settings). Newly editable on-device: Radio (region preset picker — EU/UK/CH vs US/Canada — plus a TX-power slider and an advert-interval picker; frequency/SF/BW/CR/scope/path-hash stay read-only), Messaging (history, max-per-chat, location format, retries, telemetry request/badges/auto-refresh, canned messages, allow-mute), and GPS (enable, location-advert precision, timezone, clock offset, last-known max age). Offgrid mode and the live Heard-Adverts count now live at the top of the Radio screen. Each hub link carries an icon (gear for settings; @/#/R for contacts/channels/rooms; Wi-Fi/USB/Bluetooth for companion), and the 3rd-party licenses moved to an About block at the bottom of the hub. Radio/GPS changes reboot once on exit (same batched-save model as theme/language). The old single “Device Settings” screen is superseded by this layout.
• Selectable UI themes. Choose a color palette — Dark (default), Light, Amber (a “military” night mode that preserves night vision), or High contrast — on-device (Admin → Theme, reboots to apply) or via display.theme in config. Custom palettes can be defined under display.themes (start from a built-in base, override any color with #RRGGBB). Default appearance is unchanged. On/off switches now use the theme accent colour too. Thanks @jason-s13r (#24).
• Per-row Info + Map buttons on the Heard Adverts screen. Each heard node now has an explicit info (eye) button that opens its detail dialog, and — when the advert carries a location — a map button that opens the map centered on that node. Back now returns to the Admin screen. Thanks @jason-s13r (#15).
• Map screen pan buttons + windowed chrome. The map gains an on-screen D-pad (up/left/centre/right/down) alongside the existing drag-to-pan. On the T-Deck the map now keeps the status bar visible and uses the standard lv_win header with a back button (the T-Watch stays full-screen). Thanks @jason-s13r (#22, supersedes #20/#21).
• Uptime + last-charged in the Admin Battery section. Shows when the device booted (wall-clock + relative) and when charging last stopped (with the level at the time). Thanks @jason-s13r (#23).
• On-device Device Settings. A new editable settings screen (Admin → Device Settings, behind the existing admin.enabled gate) for changing device name, boot text, language, theme, security (lock mode / auto-lock / PIN), sound (SOS keyword/repeat, low-battery alert), and display (brightness, auto-dim, keyboard backlight, emoji, screenshots) directly on the device — no config-tool round-trip needed. Thanks @jason-s13r (#27). The theme picker now lives here (removed from the read-only Admin info screen).
• Mention tag uses square brackets — tapping a sender’s name inserts @[name] so names with spaces stay intact. Thanks @jason-s13r (#26).

Changed

• Device Settings saves once on exit. Edits update the device live (brightness, etc.) but the SD write is now batched — config.json is written a single time when you leave the screen, instead of on every change. Theme/language changes reboot once on exit (toast on selection) rather than immediately, so you can change several settings and apply them together.
• Translation files now carry a release version ("version", e.g. 39 for 0.3.9). On boot the firmware logs a serial warning if a loaded language file is older than the firmware’s string set, so missing translations (English fallback) are diagnosable — re-export the lang files from the config tool to refresh.
• Auto GPS refresh now defaults off (messaging.auto_telemetry). A fresh device no longer emits periodic telemetry requests on the mesh unless you opt in — quiet by default, matching the advert changes in 0.3.8. Existing configs that set the field are unaffected.
• Standardized screen chrome. The Admin, WiFi, USB, and Bluetooth screens now use the same windowed header with a left-arrow back button as the rest of the UI. Back from a companion/WiFi screen returns to Admin; back from Admin returns to the conversation list. Thanks @jason-s13r (#16–#19).
• Conversation-list row icon order now matches the status bar — mute · GPS · battery · last-seen eye · time, with the time pinned to the right edge so the times line up in a column down the list.

[0.3.8] — 2026-06-16

Added

• Location-advert privacy precision. The location-advert setting (now gps.location_precision) can coarsen the position you broadcast: Off · Exact · ~100 m · ~750 m · ~3 km · ~12 km · ~50 km (Meshtastic-style grid snapping, centred in the cell). Only the broadcast advert is coarsened — telemetry replies to authorized contacts and the in-chat GPS insert always use your exact position. Default off; old location_advert: true/false configs are read automatically (true → exact). Scheme adopted from @jason-s13r.
• Zero-hop “Local” advert button on the Heard Adverts screen (alongside the existing flood/mesh-wide one) — announce yourself to immediate neighbours without flooding the whole mesh.

Changed

• No more periodic flood adverts by default (issue #13). MCLite previously broadcast a mesh-wide flood advert every ~9 minutes, which congests established meshes (one device was measured generating ~half of all adverts on a 110-repeater network). Now the device sends a single flood advert on boot and otherwise only advertises on demand — matching how stock MeshCore clients behave. Inbound reachability relies on MeshCore’s flood-route discovery + the existing flood-retry. Thanks to @stucamp (#13) and @jason-s13r.
• Opt-in periodic advert — a new radio.advert_interval_min config field (config tool → Radio) re-enables periodic flood adverts for ad-hoc / SAR / private meshes. Default 0 = off; if set, enforced to ≥60 min (1-hour floor) — 720 (12 h) recommended, like a repeater.
• GPS button inserts your location into the message instead of popping a “Send Location?” confirm. Tapping the GPS icon in chat now appends @ <coords> to the input so you can add context and send with the normal Send button (mirrors the @mention insert; byte-guarded against the 160-byte limit).

[0.3.7] — 2026-06-15

Added

• Tap a shared location to open it on the map. When a received (or sent) message contains a GPS position — decimal lat, lon or MGRS/UTMREF — an underlined “Open in map” link appears under the bubble; tapping it opens the map centered there. Touch-only (doesn’t touch trackball navigation), and shown only when map tiles are present on SD (same rule as the telemetry Map button). One link per message — a “both”-format position links the decimal. Adds a reverse MGRS→lat/lon parser (util/mgrs.h) and a coordinate detector (util/coordparse.h), both unit-tested.
• Screenshot to SD (debug aid, off by default). With debug.screenshots enabled in config, capture the current screen to /screenshots/*.bmp (24-bit BMP, opens on any PC) — T-Deck: Shift+$; T-Watch: double-press the side (PEK) button. Uses LVGL’s snapshot into a PSRAM buffer; a toast confirms the save. (Overlays on the top layer — toasts/PIN/SOS — aren’t captured.)

[0.3.6] — 2026-06-12

Added

• Emoji in chat — received emoji now render inline (a monochrome OpenMoji font with a Montserrat fallback, so plain text is unchanged and unknown glyphs degrade gracefully). An on-device emoji picker (display.emoji, default on, can be disabled) adds a smiley button to the chat input for composing from a curated set; it won’t let you push a message past the 160-byte limit. Incoming/outgoing text is sanitized (strips emoji variation selectors that render as boxes, normalizes “smart” quotes to ASCII). Adopted from the @jason-s13r fork; OpenMoji is CC-BY-SA 4.0 (see LICENSES.md).
• Three-step volume — the status-bar bell now cycles max → mute → mid → max instead of a binary mute, and the built-in chime and custom WAV notifications scale to the level. Default is max (loudness unchanged); SOS stays fixed and loud; always-sound contacts still override mute. Note: custom WAVs are now volume-scaled, so they play at the chime’s level rather than their raw file loudness (@jason-s13r, #11).

Changed

• sound.enabled is now a true master switch. Previously false just booted the device muted (still toggleable via the status-bar bell, and SOS/always-sound contacts could still make noise). Now false means fully silent — no notifications, no chime, and no SOS sound — and the status-bar bell is hidden so there’s no per-session volume toggle. Set sound.enabled: true (the default) for the previous behavior with the 3-step volume bell.

Fixed

• A last-known position restored after reboot no longer reports “~0s ago” before the clock has synced. The saved fix carries an absolute timestamp but millis() resets on reboot, so until GPS re-locks (or NTP/WiFi syncs the clock) its age can’t be computed — it now shows “Last known position” instead of a misleading 0s (which also avoided sending a stale position over the mesh as if it were current). Once the clock syncs, the real “~Xm ago” age is shown again.
• A failed send now shows a toast instead of silently drawing a FAILED bubble. When a message can’t be queued — e.g. the static packet pool is drained by a burst — you get a “Send failed - try again” toast (the failed bubble is still there to tap-retry). Previously the only signal was the bubble’s small status icon.
• Map tile loader hardening. The slippy-tile PNG decoder now rejects any tile larger than the standard 256×256 (a corrupt or non-standard PNG could previously overflow the fixed scanline buffer) and validates tile coordinates (zoom 0–19, indices within range) before touching the SD card — out-of-range tiles grey-fill cleanly instead of building nonsense paths. Missing/undecodable tiles already grey-filled; this closes the oversized-tile gap.

[0.3.5] — 2026-06-11

Fixed

• Translations past ~128 keys reverted to English. The i18n loader capped SD-loaded strings at 128, but the language files now hold ~197 keys — so on German/French/Italian every key past the cap silently fell back to English (e.g. canned_5–8, plus the offgrid / firmware-update / WiFi / USB / BLE / map / heard-adverts / toast screens). Raised the cap to 256 and added a boot-time warning if a language file ever exceeds it.
• Config tool wiped stored WiFi on edit. The tool’s file-import never loaded the wifi section, so importing a device’s config.json, editing it, and re-exporting produced an empty wifi block — clearing the device’s stored SSID/password on the next copy to SD. WiFi (and the persisted BLE pairing PIN) now round-trip correctly, including through the share-link and start-fresh paths.

[0.3.4] — 2026-06-11

Added

• Auto-refresh contact GPS — keeps the map markers / convo-list badges of contacts who don’t broadcast their own location fresh, by quietly re-requesting telemetry GPS before the cached fix goes stale. Throttled (one request per scan, respects the EU duty cycle, yields to manual requests) and self-limiting (stops asking a contact that doesn’t answer). New setting messaging.auto_telemetry, default on, can be disabled.
• Per-conversation quick replies — any contact, channel, or room can carry its own canned list (max 8) that overrides the global quick-reply list for that chat only; leave it empty to fall back to the global list. Editable per card in the config tool. Turns a conversation into a command menu — e.g. a Home Assistant / automation bridge (“Open gate”, “Lights on”, “Status?”).
• Last-known location persists across reboots — the most recent GPS fix is saved to SD (/mclite/last_location.json, throttled) and restored on boot, so the map opens to your last position without waiting for a fresh fix (@jason-s13r, #10).
• Advertise from the companion app — the MeshCore phone/desktop app’s Advertise button now works while connected (BLE/WiFi/USB); previously it was rejected as an unsupported command. Honours the app’s flood vs local (zero-hop) option. The on-device advert button and the automatic periodic advert are unchanged.

Changed

• The device-info / admin screen is now fully localized — every row label routes through the translation table (de/fr/it) (@jason-s13r, #9).
• Conversation history now loads only the most recent max_history_per_chat messages per chat at boot (previously the whole file was loaded into RAM). Bounds memory if a history file is larger than the cap — e.g. after lowering the setting. No visible change; the runtime cap was already in place.

Fixed

• Telemetry retry is no longer cancelled by the contact-info pop-up’s own timeout when the mesh’s outbound queue is busy (the two timers now stay in lockstep) — the retry fires under congestion as intended.
• Closing the contact-info pop-up now cancels its in-flight telemetry retry, so no stray flood request goes out for a pop-up you already closed.
• Muting a chat is now absolute: it silences notifications even for a contact flagged always_sound (always_sound still overrides global mute, unchanged).
• Messages that exceed the 160-byte limit (e.g. emoji or accented/non-Latin text — which can be ≤160 characters but more bytes) are now refused with a “Message too long” toast that keeps your text, instead of silently failing to send while still drawing a (failed) bubble.
• A timed-out telemetry request now releases the radio’s single telemetry slot when the exchange ends (previously the slot stayed held after a no-response request). Without this, auto-refresh contact GPS would stall for the rest of the session after the first contact that didn’t answer, and slow/multi-hop contacts could be backed off too eagerly; both are resolved.
• Auto-refresh no longer lets a single un-sendable contact block the rest of the round-robin, and max_history_per_chat: 0 now consistently means “unlimited” on both load and prune (previously prune at 0 would wipe the conversation).

[0.3.3] — 2026-06-10

Reliability + contact-location improvements, plus a batch of community contributions (@jason-s13r’s fork PRs).

Added

• Unified contact location — one source of truth for where a contact is: fresh telemetry (accurate) → their advert GPS → a heard advert. The convo-list GPS badge now appears for any known position (not just telemetry), and the telemetry pop-up shows that position even without a telemetry reply — marking advert-sourced coordinates approximate (~) and offering the Map button — and on a request timeout it shows the known position instead of a bare “No response”. Telemetry stays primary; the 30-min window is unchanged.
• Flood-routing retries for better delivery when a direct path degrades — on DM retries (#5) and on telemetry-request retries (#6, with a “Retrying…” state and queue-aware timeout extension).
• Per-chat mute (opt-in, messaging.allow_mute, default off) — long-press a conversation to mute; muted chats don’t beep or wake the screen (SOS always does), with an indicator in the list and chat header (#4).
• Vendor row on the device-info screen showing the firmware’s source repo (owner/repo) — handy with fork flashing (#7).

Fixed

• Chat scroll-to-bottom is more robust on an empty chat area / on open (#3).

Thanks

• @jason-s13r for PRs #3–#7.

[0.3.2] — 2026-06-09

Map unification + fixes from a careful review of 0.3.0/0.3.1.

Changed

• The contact “Map” button and the status-bar GPS icon now open the same map (one screen, one set of controls). Opening from a contact just centers on that contact and pre-selects it — drawn slightly larger with a highlight ring and its name in the bottom bar — while still showing every other contact / telemetry / heard-node location and your own position (a distinct green/amber dot).
• Reload rebuilds all markers and re-checks your own position; Center always jumps to your own location once a fix is available (even when the map was opened from a contact), falling back to the location the map opened on when there’s no fix.

Fixed

• Center button now uses your own location on a contact-opened map (previously it only ever recentered on the contact).
• The status-bar GPS icon stays visible (dimmed) and tappable when GPS is disabled in config, so the general map remains reachable.
• @mention no longer truncates a near-full message draft (skips the insert when it wouldn’t fit).
• Companion: the contacts since field is read via memcpy (removed an unaligned read).

[0.3.1] — 2026-06-09

Fork-adoption batch (features adopted from the jason-s13r/MCLite fork) plus map polish.

Added

• GPS location in adverts (opt-in, gps.location_advert, default off): broadcast your position so contacts see you on their map. Uses MeshCore’s native advert location (full precision); sends a LIVE fix or a still-valid last-known one. Unencrypted broadcast — hence opt-in. Read-only status shown on the admin GPS screen; toggled via the config tool / SD only.
• General map — tap the status-bar GPS icon to open a map of your own location plus every heard node / contact that carries GPS, drawn with the same chat / repeater / room / sensor symbols as the heard-adverts list. Tap a marker for its name; Reload button re-scans heard nodes without panning.
• NTP time sync — when WiFi is connected and GPS hasn’t locked, set the clock from an NTP server using the configured POSIX timezone. GPS still overrides once it locks.
• @mention — tap a sender’s name in a channel/room to insert @name into the message box.
• Fork-aware OTA — build-time overridable update repo (MCLITE_REPO_OWNER / MCLITE_REPO_NAME, default laserir/MCLite) so forks can self-update from their own releases.
• Web flasher repo/fork picker — choose which repo’s published releases to flash.

Changed

• Map markers render as filled colored dots (type color + black rim) with a contrasting symbol, so they read against any map tile; selection ring sits just outside the dot.

Fixed

• Map markers are now reliably tappable (tap-slop dead-zone so a jittery tap selects instead of micro-panning; wider hit tolerance).
• Map markers no longer blink out near the viewport edge across zoom levels (consistent rounding + wider clip).

[0.3.0] — 2026-06-09

Added

• Companion mode — bridge the radio to a phone, desktop, or CLI over the standard MeshCore companion protocol, in parallel with normal on-device use (messages appear in both):
  • Bluetooth — pairs with the official MeshCore iOS/Android apps (6-digit passkey + bonding).
  • WiFi — reachable from meshcore-cli / meshcore.js / meshcore_py on the LAN.
  • USB — wired serial companion (debug logs muted while active so they don’t corrupt the protocol).
  • Messaging works; config is read-only. One transport at a time.

Changed

• Refreshed README (Quick Start + balanced companion docs).

Notes

• WiFi and Bluetooth can’t run together (shared radio/RAM); the device handles the switch and offers a reboot when needed.
• Known limitation: messages typed on the device don’t mirror to the companion app (the protocol has no firmware-composed-message event).

[0.2.2] — 2026-06-07

Fixed

• WiFi over-the-air firmware updates no longer crash the device (TLS handshake + on-stack buffer overflowed the loop-task stack). SD-card install and USB flashing were unaffected.

Notes

• 0.2.1 was withdrawn — its WiFi installer had the crash above. Update from 0.2.1 via SD card or USB.

[0.2.0] — 2026-06-01

Added

• T-Watch Ultra support — second target board (touch-native UI, AMOLED, RTC, haptics).
• On-device firmware update — install a .bin from the SD card, or check & download updates over WiFi (the WiFi path was hardened in 0.2.2).

[0.1.8] — 2026-05-05

Added

• Heard Adverts — 64-entry rolling list of every advert the radio decodes, with type icons, last-heard age, per-hop path, and a one-tap Save to add a chat advert to contacts (applies next boot). Manual-advert button announces yourself on demand.

Changed

• Config saves are atomic (stage → .bak → rename) with boot fallback to config.json.bak, protecting the identity keys against a torn write.

Fixed

• Discovered contact log printed the raw packed path_len byte instead of the hop count.

[0.1.7] — 2026-04-29

Added

• Room server client — join MeshCore community message boards (up to 8), with auto-login + backoff, disconnect recovery, per-room flags (read_only / allow_sos / send_sos / scope), sender resolution, and persisted sync_since. Admin “Rooms” section + config-tool Rooms card.

Changed

• Contact/conversation caps raised for the extra rooms (40 contacts / 56 conversations).

[0.1.0] – [0.1.5] — 2026-03 / 2026-04

Foundation releases: the core standalone MeshCore companion firmware for the T-Deck Plus — encrypted DMs and channels, SOS alert system, GPS location sharing (lat/lon + MGRS), telemetry, message history on SD, internationalization (de/fr/it), the offline config tool, and the browser web flasher — iterated across 0.1.1–0.1.5.

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