MeshTerm runs the same on the Cardputer Zero (C154) and the Cardputer Zero
Lite (C155): the Lite only leaves out a camera, motion sensors, and the
microSD card, none of which MeshTerm uses. The device manual, the README,
the manuals index, and the About page now say that both models are supported,
and the manual says that the Lite needs a card with M5Stack's system first.
M5Stack does not support hot-swapping a Cap on the Cardputer Zero, the Cap
LoRa-1262 included, and says that it may cause the device to malfunction.
The manual now puts that caution before its steps for the Cap, with M5Stack's
other caution (the antenna goes on before the power), and the steps turn the
handheld off first. It also says that MeshTerm switching the header off when
it quits does not make a Cap safe to remove. The About page says the same in
its own voice, and gains a section on the Cardputer Zero next to the uConsole
and the PicoCalc.
The README shows the Cardputer Zero's start screen (the store's capture,
three times its size) under the PicoCalc photo, and its quick start shows the
emulator command. The pip commands with the spi extra install from GitHub,
because mesh-term is not on PyPI yet. The platform comment and CLAUDE.md no
longer say that the hardware is not in hand: only a flag selects the platform
because the device-tree model is the CM0's generic string.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
MeshTerm is in M5Stack's app store since 0.11.0 (CardputerZero/packages#176).
The release skill now treats the store PR as part of the release: it is not
done until that PR merges, and the Discord announcement tells Cardputer Zero
owners to update from the store. The device guide no longer says that the
store may not have MeshTerm yet.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
The page no longer warns that the handheld is not supported. It now gives
three ways to install MeshTerm: M5Stack's app store first, then the same
package from a GitHub release, then the source code for developers. The
README, the docs index, and the hardware guide say the same, and the
hardware guide says that the launcher selects the platform.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
scripts/cardputer-zero/build-deb.sh runs on arm64 Debian 13 (the
Cardputer itself) and makes meshterm_<version>-<revision>_arm64.deb.
MeshTerm and all its Python packages, the spi extra included, go in
/usr/lib/meshterm, compiled to bytecode. The package depends only on
python3: the store app installs a missing dependency with apt-get but
never runs apt-get update, so a Debian dependency can fail. For the
same reason the package carries Terminus beside its OFL, because an app
from the launcher has no terminal for --fetch-fonts.
packaging/notices.py gets a site-directory mode, because the walk of
the closure asks for no extras and so misses the spi packages.
scripts/cardputer-zero/store holds the listing that czdev publish reads
and a 256-pixel icon. The screenshots are still to make.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
The four user guides and the manuals for the PicoCalc, the uConsole, and
the Cardputer Zero. Procedures are numbered steps, with a WARNING or a
CAUTION before each step that has a risk. The step headings use a colon,
and each link to them changed with them. Quoted error messages are in
quotation marks, and the menu question is quoted as the app shows it.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
The Cardputer Zero's launcher ends any app whose Esc is held: SIGTERM to
its process group at three seconds, SIGKILL three seconds after that
(cp0_esc_exit_policy.hpp in CardputerZero/launcher; M5's packaging guide
still describes an older Home-for-five-seconds rule). Its own hint never
reaches the panel while an app owns it, and MeshTerm took 3.4 s to exit,
so a held Esc ended in SIGKILL.
Now a tap of Esc is typed on its release, and a hold of one second
floats a "Hold Esc to quit" box whose bar fills over the two seconds
left. While it is up the app holds the device's transmit lock: nothing
new goes on the air, and a scoped channel send under way closes its
window first. Letting go gives the lock back and types nothing. Held to
the end, MeshTerm leaves the way Quit does, and the launcher's SIGTERM
joins that exit instead of interrupting it wherever the main thread
happened to be.
The exit itself fits: openhop-core's cleanup joined the radio's IRQ
thread, parked in an uninterruptible 30 s poll, for its full 2 s
timeout. The node drops that daemon thread from the books first. On the
device, under the real launcher, the process group now drains 1.3 s
after the SIGTERM, with no SIGKILL.
The emulator's window does the same on a held Esc, debounced for an X
server's release-press repeats.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
The Cardputer Zero's Cap carries a GPS on the header's UART, which the
device screen listed as "~ n/a" (pyserial's name for a port with no USB
identity): a companion to connect to, and with nothing remembered, the
lone port a command-line connect would pick. A wiring now names its
board's GPS (`gps_port`, `gps_baud`; the Cap's is /dev/serial0 at
115200), and wherever that radio is listed, its GPS port is not: the
device screen, `meshterm devices`, and autodetect.
The radio node reads it the way MeshCore companion firmware reads a
board's GPS: `gps` (off until switched on, remembered in prefs.json)
and `gps_interval` (0, every fix, once a second), reported and set as
custom variables, which is where Device config already shows them. A
valid RMC or GGA fix becomes the node's position, the one its
self-info reports and, with Share location on, its adverts carry. The
last fix is saved as the node shuts down. Standard library only, as
the node's contract asks; NMEA checksums are checked.
On MeshTerm's side, our own self-info is now refreshed behind the
answer after a minute, like the contacts, so screens opened after the
node moves show where it is; and the connect-time settings offer no
longer flags a position the running GPS moved.
Checked on the Cardputer: the ttyS0 row is gone from `meshterm
devices`; `config custom gps 1` opens the port, is saved, and reads
back on; the real-terminal test passes there.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
On the device MeshTerm ran, drew every frame, and stayed invisible: the
panel kept the launcher's last frame while a splash nobody could see
waited for a key. The panel is a DRM driver whose /dev/fb0 is fbdev
emulation, and the kernel copies to the glass only what it sees change
through the *mapping*. pwrite() put the pixels in the buffer, where
reading /dev/fb0 back showed them, and never on the panel. The frame
now goes through an mmap, as M5's own LVGL apps write theirs. Checked
on the panel.
Also scripts/cardputer-zero/type-text.py: paste a long string (an API
key, a Wi-Fi password) on another computer and it is typed on the
Cardputer's keyboard over SSH, into whatever app has the screen. Input
is hidden and travels on stdin, never on a command line.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Tried on a real Cardputer Zero for the first time. It draws on the
panel, takes the keyboard, and opens from M5's app launcher:
scripts/cardputer-zero/launcher-entry.sh puts a source checkout there
(and `remove` takes it off) until there is a store package.
Three things the hardware showed:
- The splash opened with the highlight on /dev/ttyS0, the Cap's GPS
UART, because serial is listed first as found. Below the companions
we've used, anything that looks like one now comes before a port
nothing vouches for, across transports.
- The title bar's battery is the handheld's own BQ27220, as the
PicoCalc's is. The host pack is now found by what it is (a Battery
supply that isn't a peripheral's), not by the PicoCalc's name.
- While the Cap is powered, I2C bus 1 turns noisy: a quarter to three
quarters of the gauge's reads fail with an I/O error (one in ten of
the clock's), none with the header off. A failed read is asked again,
a status that won't read keeps its last verdict, and a good reading
stands through six failed polls instead of blinking out.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
On a Cardputer Zero the device screen lists the Cap as "Cap LoRa-1262",
and --spi reaches it, with no profile: its wiring ships beside the
AIO's, listed when the board's own ext_5v_out switch says this is a
Cardputer Zero (spidev0.1 alone would claim every Pi with SPI on).
The Cap needs two things before the chip answers, and the wiring can
now say both. `leds` sets the switches the device tree hands to
gpio-leds — ext_5v_out powers the header, ext_usb_gpio_fun=0 keeps
the reset and interrupt pins on GPIO rather than USB — and puts them
back when the node ends, so the header is unpowered again after
MeshTerm quits. `pi4io_*` drives the Cap's PI4IOE5V6408 at 0x43, which
enables the RF path; a silent expander is reported as the Cap not
being attached.
Checked on the hardware: reset 26, busy 22, irq 23 on spidev0.1 (the
lines M5's factory test drives), the node comes up from a cold
header, and it hears the mesh at +12 dB.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
A click on one of the Cardputer Zero's keys drawn under the panel, or on a
chip of the lane along the panel's bottom row, types that slot's key. The
PicoCalc has no keys drawn, so its chips are where you click. Shift held
through the click types the slot's Shift companion. The app reads the bank
off the key that arrives, not off the Shift it saw, so the window spells the
shifted key itself, the way the desktop's Shift+F-key already was: F6 to F10
on the PicoCalc, xterm's shifted F4 to F8 on the Cardputer.
The drawn keys take the lane's own fills, resolved from the deck's styles
through the panel's palette, so a key and the chip above it are one colour.
They turn blue with the lane while Shift is down, and fill solid while
pressed. Losing focus lets go of Shift, which a release in another window
never would.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
`meshterm emulate cardputer-zero --mock` and `meshterm emulate picocalc-lyra --mock`
open a desktop window drawing MeshTerm as that device's own screen draws it. An
EmulatedDevice (emulator/devices.py) holds what differs per handheld: the panel, a
Linux console's top-left grid and bold-as-bright 4-bit palette for the PicoCalc, the
lane keys drawn under the Cardputer's panel, and how each keyboard spells Shift with
an F-key (the PicoCalc's F6-F10, the Cardputer's xterm-shifted F4-F8).
It is not a strict emulator, and the docs say so wherever they offer it: MeshTerm runs
on the desktop as itself, and the window mimics the display's and keyboard's
constraints, never the CPU or the OS. Inside it the platform resolves with own_display
(platforms.drawn_by_meshterm), so nothing offers to move to another terminal.
Global options typed anywhere (--mock, --port, --db...) reach the emulated MeshTerm.
The command refuses --json like specimen. The Terminus fetch moved into the package as
`meshterm emulate --fetch-fonts` (with --archive for a copy fetched another way),
replacing scripts/cardputer-zero/fetch-terminus.py. A build without Tk says to install
with pip or pipx instead of failing.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
"Host" already meant two things here: a TCP companion's network host,
and battery="host" for this machine itself. And with a PicoCalc preview
coming, the package is less a console host than an emulator of a
handheld's display: its panel, grid, font, colours and keys. So it is
meshterm.emulator, Platform.console_host is own_display, its desktop
window is window.py (EmulatorWindow) and its device front end
framebuffer.py, since "sim" and "device" now mean the radio simulator and
the device being emulated. MESHTERM_HOST_FONTS is MESHTERM_EMULATOR_FONTS.
The package's own description opens on what it is not: nothing runs the
handheld's processor or operating system; it mimics the display's
constraints so the window obeys the device's.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
M5Stack makes three Cardputers and only the Zero runs Linux; the PicoCalc
takes several cores and only the Luckfox Lyra runs MeshTerm. So the bare
names were ambiguous, and every reference to the two devices now carries
the variant: the --platform values and MESHTERM_PLATFORM, the Platform
constants (PICOCALC_LYRA, CARDPUTER_ZERO), their lane decks and every
screen's picocalc_lyra_lane / cardputer_zero_lane, the font inventories,
the lane chips' theme styles, the scripts/ folders, the two chrome test
files, and the docs and CLAUDE.md that name them.
There is no alias: --platform picocalc is refused with the three real
choices listed, rather than falling back to the desktop layout. The
PicoCalc is auto-detected from its device tree, so it needs nothing.
What names hardware or a user's data keeps its name: the PicoCalc
keyboard's input-device name, its battery's sysfs supply, and the serial
profile the Lyra setup script writes. .gitignore follows the firmware's
folder, and the changelog keeps the words each release used.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
docs/ was one flat folder: the user guides, the CLI manual, the device
manuals, the code notes and an old survey side by side. It is now
guide/ (features, configuration, connecting, terminals), cli/ (the
manual as its README, the cookbook), devices/ (which manual is yours
as its README, then one per device) and development/ (architecture,
the survey); screenshots/ stays put. The index follows the folders.
The device manuals are named for the device they are about: the
PicoCalc's is picocalc-lyra.md, since MeshTerm runs on the PicoCalc's
Luckfox Lyra core and on none of the others, and the uConsole's stays
uconsole.md, since its CM4 and CM5 run it alike. A new cardputer-zero.md
opens on a warning that the device is not supported yet, says what has
been built and tested only in the simulator, and how to try it there.
Every relative link was resolved from where it was written and rewritten
from where it now lives, and the repo-root spellings in code, config and
the release skill moved with them; the changelog's GitHub URLs too.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
