1.2.5 of android app and device code now ready for alpha testers!

Thank you to the awesome alpha testers who so quickly reported the problem of message RX sometimes not working! In the process of fixing this bug I discovered that for a long time, we’ve been unnecessarily delaying rx message processing by up to hundreds of milliseconds.

Also: if you use the python tool, you’ll want to update it to get some important fixes there…

Second public alpha of this major release chain.

Caveats:

  • Unless you truly want to be an ALPHA tester, you should stay with the 1.1.x device and app releases for now
  • Some security features are not yet turned on in this 1.2 release, that will take another couple of weeks (though channels are still encrypted with your key)
  • firmware builds are now region independent. You must use the android (in the settings tab) or python (with --set region X) tools to set the region for your radio and location. However, we try to preserve old region info, so if you are updating it will try to keep your region correctly. If we don’t know your region we guess and use USA frequencies.
  • The URLs sent by meshtastic 1.2 can only be understood by mesthastic 1.2 or later

Major changes:

  • Settings & channels can now be changed remotely via messages inside the mesh (not yet ready for testing by ya’ll yet - first I want to make a python testharness)
  • We now ‘piggyback’ acks on application layer replies, this substantially reduces airtime consumed
  • Multiple channels are simultaneously supported (not yet ready for testing though - please wait until I write a full wiki on the topic)
  • Lots of internal cleanup which will result in smaller/faster packets

The new firmware is here (it is in the app for OTA updates also)

If your curious these were the fixes: Comparing 1.2.4...1.2.5 · meshtastic/Meshtastic-device · GitHub

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Btw: no real changes in the Android app, I only rebuilt it to pull in the latest firmware.

Thanks, much more responsive that 1.2.4.

I am having issues with the Bluetooth pairing dropping off after a about 120 seconds. Tested over 2 Android handsets and 3 T-Beam devices.

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Ooh that’s a good point. The place where that timeout was shared with the apps changed so possibly I mucked that up.

After update no change, even the version stayed on 1.2.4, but after reinstall and new pairing everything works as before. Great!

Upgraded OTA using 2 androids and 2 TBeams. Upgrade went ok.
Messages are passing between them and they show up on eachothers maps
I think I see the same as @DingoOz, When the screen goes dark on the TBeam it takes a while and the app shows ‘sleeping device’ (cloud with arrow), then after 20-30 secs there is a ‘no connection cloud’ (cloud with line). Watching it for some time it seems to alter between not connected and sleeping and back to not connected by itself.

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btw: I forgot to fix a problem (found in the new stress test) where android text messages might not show the “received” checkbox. It is fixed now and will be in the next build.

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I confirm that I see the same connection issue as @DingoOz and @claesg .

Should the default operation of the meshtastic python tool (that is, just running “meshtastic” with no arguments) perhaps just be print the help menu? (kind of like just entering “pip3”) I’m honestly not even sure what the current default behavior is, and I’ll often just type “meshtastic” to see if the command is available from my current shell.

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great idea - can you put it in as a bug on meshtastic-python so we don’t forget to do it?

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