Femtofox - Tiny, low power Linux node!

[nova frost]

Okie dokie - batch of 10 to be ordered tonight.

[sour horizon]

Make it a bakers dozen, by the time people smell the fresh pastry! Is that enough dough to ice out new images @fiery finch @mild hare

[nova frost]

I've been promised interesting things in the festive interval. Hopefully armbian and a port of the SFC menu system...

The menu system still works which amazes me

[plain stone]

2/3rds of those who said yes are NYMesh folks so if there’s any benefit or convenience to you by treating us as a single shipment lmk and I can help arrange that

[nova frost]

Oh, that might be an idea.

[quasi onyx]

Very good idea

Expensive shipping one time lol

[mild hare]

Belladonna family. Christmas eve. username checks out.

[shrewd turtle]

the poll didn't give an option for those that were going to order more than one 😛

(j/k)

[leaden vale]

Dec 28 17:19:41 femtofox meshtasticd[667]: INFO  | 17:19:40 0 Init sensor: TSL2561
femto@femtofox:~$```My TSL2591 is scanning as TSL2561 and reading 0 lux ... any ideas how to fix?

[restive scarab]

what i2c address is it reading for the TSL25#1 during init? should be in the very first few lines in meshtasticd log

[leaden vale]

the i2c address is 0x29 for my 2691

[flint dew]

Im interested to buy one on next production run!

[nova frost]

I meant to order them last night but I spent 5 hours chasing ghosts.

[chrome tide]

https://tenor.com/view/ghost-careful-car-gif-17469346

[flint dew]

So you mean there is a chance to join your next order?

[nova frost]

https://tenor.com/view/good-luck-good-luck-gif-20034388

[quasi onyx]

haha

[leaden vale]

He makes me grovel 😔

[nova frost]

Bad news: JLC are out of e22-30db modules.

Good news: I've ordered some more.

Ugly: They have e22p modules in stock, but I'm not confident in the power requirements together with a 1A limit (original design) or 1.5A (new design).

[quasi onyx]

Only 915 on e22p last time i checked

[nova frost]

There was 1 868p

[quasi onyx]

Dem

[nova frost]

I need to get on with making the mikrobus boards, don't I?

[quasi onyx]

I have 1 if anyones interested 😅

63€+shipping

[restive scarab]

oooo non-CE fancy edition!

[quasi onyx]

indeed

[nova frost]

https://tenor.com/view/i'll-allow-it-gif-17514413855288578269

[shrewd turtle]

non-ce?

maybe i have a lot to learn 😛

to me CE is that little button that existed on our solar powered calculators growing up 🙂

[nova frost]

CE is community edition

Basically, I cut it back to a level where it wouldn't cost a fortune to order a batch of 2 if you didn't want to do any soldering.

If you want to spend a fortune, just ask 😉

[quasi onyx]

yea lol

[restive scarab]

yeah the CE version was DIY, missing the CH### usb-uart and....something with the power input/mosfets were different IIRC? vs Pro which had a couple nice extras and were the ones sold by Tom/Iris/OSC on Etsy

[quasi onyx]

im not on etsy 😅

and i joined way later

i mean i am on etsy but not selling

[nova frost]

She overestimated the Finnish appetite for Femtofoxen by one.

Or someone ghosted on the deal of the decade.

[quasi onyx]

nah it was always off by few xd

last time was same

then someoen bought it eventually

[nova frost]

Ah.

Got to have stock to sell it, I suppose.

[restive scarab]

yeah just gotta wait for some other group to find out they can purchase them and then sudden burst of orders - kinda surprised MC crowd haven't gotten to the Femtofox, but they sure do love their Ikokas

[leaden vale]

They keep complaining of "sold out" ... getting fed up of explaining the batches made to order concept

[nova frost]

They don't like me for some reason 😬

Well, that and the lack of widespread support for Meshcore on Linux.

[leaden vale]

I have a list of possible reasons , printed on A4 ... double sided

[nova frost]

I hope you used size 10 font, cos otherwise you're going to need another page.

[leaden vale]

8

To be fair you seem well liked on the other "community" , just wait til they get to know u 😉

[quasi onyx]

femtos are cool

i have one deployed and that will be the only one 🤣

[restive scarab]

my CE verison is sitting unpowered on my desk ever since wehooper's dual hat arrived - sorry/not sorry (the CE smolfox is powered on though with OLED + encoder, such a great little desk node)

[nova frost]

Yeah, the future is probably dual radios.

[restive scarab]

I def seeing it being HUGE for real remote infra nodes doing UDP bridging in the wild, for a home user it's way overkill, especially if someone else is bridging presets already

[nova frost]

No, everyone must have a dual radio node!

In fact, triple radios!

In fact, this should reflect the razor blade evolution

We will skip to 5!

[restive scarab]

hahaha

(picture of pdxloc's usb meshstick hub)

[nova frost]

Yes, exactly

[shrewd turtle]

yeah, a multi radio gateway designed for bridging would be gold (and i mean dual lora NON wifi band board)

[quasi onyx]

We can only wish

[shrewd turtle]

b&

[restive scarab]

E22P-900M30S + E80-900M2213S (latter does either 915MHz or 2.4GHz LoRa)

[forest current]

breathes heavily

[forest current]

I was working on this and then people lost interest and then I lost interest

luckfox lyras staring at me covered in dust

[nova frost]

I never lost interest!!!!!!!

I just fell asleep.

[forest current]

I still need a hat 🙃

2x wio lyra hat

You and Vid were both designing them but things fell off

[nova frost]

yeah, yeah...

Did I send you a meshtoad?

[forest current]

Yup

[nova frost]

Well, get that fired up, and I'll see if I can dig out a non-LNA 30db radio of some sort

and the Mikro-fox

[forest current]

https://tenor.com/view/frog-cool-frog-cool-best-frog-best-gif-23269161

[lavish sorrel]

I still have a meshtoad sitting on my desk that I can't get to work for the life of me.

Most recently I've been trying to get ANY LR1121 to work on a Lyra, even going so far as to try with Armbian, but all unsuccessful. (The armbian i shelved and accepted that I just need to wait for Vids overlays)

[floral marten]

There’s not a full fledged repeater or companion for Linux yet.

[floral marten]

This is easily done with a Nebra Duo Hat and two Meshtasticd running under Docker.

[restive scarab]

Ahhh that would certainly explain it. And yeah Nebra Duo Hat is awesome, zero issues with myne (that weren’t my own cfg yaml mess up) on a raspi zero2w, going 24/7 for 6ish weeks? so far. Happy Bender brought em to Austin’s attention

[floral marten]

Mine works fine on a CM4/Pi4 but I'm failing to get it to work on an actual Nebra. Wondering if something is wrong with the Nebra at this point. I've got a thread going at #1367293403867516979 message

[quasi onyx]

hmmmm....

unable to flash the os to sd card with balena

https://zipline.valzzu.xyz/u/yHa3Mu.png

[forest current]

Weird. Which OS?

[quasi onyx]

foxbuntu

https://zipline.valzzu.xyz/u/Tgf8s5.png

maybe its my pc

Yup, was my pc

tho doesent seem to go from 1%

well see

maybe its my sdcrad????

@nova frost do u know whats going on?

[nova frost]

Sometimes you have to restart balena

[quasi onyx]

nope

[nova frost]

There's some issue with the latest version

[quasi onyx]

done that did that

maybe ill install older version

[nova frost]

Yee, something something broken

I can't remember how I "fixed" it

[quasi onyx]

cant make it work with older either

[nova frost]

Different SD card?

[quasi onyx]

starting to think it might be this adapter

windows does show it in disk management but no disk in explorer

hmmm

okay

works

idk why this sdcard doesent

[forest current]

i meant which os are you running balena on lol

[quasi onyx]

windows

tried mint

both same result

switched sdcard now works

[cinder parrot]

Curious if you're successfully able to update the meshtastic firmware on it. Mine upgrades meshtasticd to the latest beta but then can't initialize it at all.

[mild hare]

Switch to daily branch update, upgrade and reboot. I'm not near a computer to help with steps but it worked for @Josh last night.

[forest current]

yeah i had this problem yesterday. it required a reboot after upgrading. i tried this on beta and daily, same for both

my guess is the deb post-install rules arent calling udevadm to reload udev rules

[cinder parrot]

I'd love to get some instructions on how to do this when you can. I'll give it a try.

[forest current]

have you rebooted it first?

[cinder parrot]

Right after upgrading? I believe so. May have to try again, though.

[forest current]

try again and try running sudo systemctl status meshtasticd after it boots, if it still doesnt work or says failed, you can edit /etc/apt/sources.list.d/meshtastic-(just tab-complete this i forget the full filename lol), and change beta in the url to daily, then run sudo apt update and sudo apt install meshtasticd, then reboot and check again

[cinder parrot]

I'll give this a try today and let you know how it goes!!

[cinder parrot]

Where is it that I edit the file name?

[nova frost]

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:meshtastic/alpha

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:meshtastic/daily

[forest current]

no dont do that, its already in there and the add-apt-key stuff is deprecated. just change the file in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/

theres only the one file in there

/etc/apt/sources.list.d/meshtastic-ubuntu-beta-jammy.list

[quasi onyx]

https://zipline.valzzu.xyz/u/PJdF23.png

okay have a nice day

gotta reflash aparently

[mild hare]

Try just reseating it first

[quasi onyx]

nope

i see

the whole sdcard just doesent exist anymore

https://zipline.valzzu.xyz/u/ulOrxO.png

[mild hare]

🪦

[quasi onyx]

welp, time to go buy a new one then i guess

[nova frost]

This is the one that wouldn't flash with balena?

[quasi onyx]

Its the one that did flash

[nova frost]

Oh

I've said it before: good quality SD cards are mandatory

[quasi onyx]

Just bought a SanDisk one

[sour horizon]

If it ever shows up try old trusty https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter/

[quasi onyx]

I have a usb stick that also shows no media 😅

[sour horizon]

Give it a zap, and wiggle

[quasi onyx]

holy shit this sdcard is so much faster than that broke

about 30MB/s

vs 12MB/s the old one

[sour horizon]

The DJI alert for slow speed cards is still burnt into my lcd

[quasi onyx]

okay and now the pico isnt getting internet 🤣

ethernet is connected

[sour horizon]

The wiggle and zap might have been too much? It’s not dns is it

[quasi onyx]

no ip either 🙃

switch activity led does light up

[sour horizon]

is this OEM nagu image you booting?

[quasi onyx]

foxbuntu

[sour horizon]

I haven’t booted since my last PR

Or rebooted anyway

[quasi onyx]

https://zipline.valzzu.xyz/u/1R1JDE.png
https://zipline.valzzu.xyz/u/EByWw2.png

one has ethernet plugged in and the second its not

so its detected

it worked on the sdcard that broke

[sour horizon]

It’s a wacky bit of eth0.up but did you take a power fault.

is or was Poe crowing never more?

[quasi onyx]

not a poe switch

[sour horizon]

That eliminates a crow but not inability to signal

Did it get a good wiggle?

[quasi onyx]

cable works on another device

[sour horizon]

What’s wireshark say

[quasi onyx]

on my own pc? or femto?

[sour horizon]

about dhcp

You should at minimal see some arps

[quasi onyx]

https://zipline.valzzu.xyz/u/d1zHFy.png

that works

[sour horizon]

Is one of those the femtofox

[quasi onyx]

this is femto

the pic

[sour horizon]

Well that’s good news?

[quasi onyx]

femto just has no ipv4

and no internet access

[sour horizon]

It’s fiddly about lighting up the interface

Tied to a script and the meshD

[nova frost]

Yeah, there's issues if the DHCP issues it an ipv6 address I think

[sour horizon]

I wondered that as well, but you said it worked before

[quasi onyx]

on a another sdcard

[sour horizon]

Why there is a IPv6 stack on this little fox is a head scratcher imo

Everyone knows Nat is so fetch

[quasi onyx]

i can try adding static ip

on my router

[sour horizon]

Yea like a cat I meow dejavú

It’s the disty

@fiery finch Where ya at

[quasi onyx]

lol

[nova frost]

She's gone back to the mountains...

[quasi onyx]

fucking now

set a static ip nad reneved dhcp

ip on routers side

[nova frost]

So ipv4 works?

[quasi onyx]

yea

[nova frost]

Told ya

[quasi onyx]

it just never got it for somereason

[nova frost]

It hates ipv6

[sour horizon]

I suffered similar plight I don’t run IPv6 and remember seeing a address and went as far as checking my network for anything advertising 6

It’s an obnoxious situation when v6 tunnels all over and you have no eyes to see it

Like the representative from district 9 who said ban VPN it’s a squirrely nut

Some things about @fiery finch I’m surprised I never heard from much more was they were very eager to get it booted and jetted

Anyone concerned it’s a packaged issue the rodeo has been wild lately

https://tenor.com/view/trump-ai-generated-fake-ai-fake-news-gif-5594058186073308474

If I were to pull a fire alarm 🚨

It would be too late

I likely would have also been on the 7th floor of building 7 had I not noticed it smelled

[quasi onyx]

mm

[sour horizon]

I have no evidence because I like to trust the best of others. But I have some observations

[sour horizon]

Steve miller said, hoo-hoo lemme tell ya a little story about Billy Joe and Bobby Sue

[mild hare]

https://tenor.com/view/the-dude-abide-the-big-lebowski-stir-gif-3523187

[sour horizon]

https://tenor.com/view/style-love-cowboy-gif-19682493

[cinder parrot]

Meshtasticd still failing to start after this 😢 I could very well be doing something wrong, I'm still pretty new to this side of things.

[flint dew]

Stop trying to make fetch happen 🤣

[sour horizon]

https://tenor.com/view/mean-girls-mean-girls-movie-gretchen-gretchen-weiners-lacey-chabert-gif-22957956

[quasi onyx]

hmmmmm

i see

alot of circuitry

[nova frost]

yes

things are getting complicated-er

[leaden vale]

I can help ... need a third i2c 👍

[sour horizon]

Some LED

[quasi onyx]

and expensive right?

[leaden vale]

Will it run Doom or Duke Nukem ?

[sour horizon]

I would pay £8 more if it ran nukem

[lavish sorrel]

Run: sudo -u meshtasticd bash
Then meshtasticd and see what outputs?

[cinder parrot]

I actually ran the errors through Claude and worked back and forth to fix the issue. Apparently it wasn't correctly recognizing the SX1262 radio unit for some reason. Also user permissions needed to be tweaked. It's up and running on 2.7.15 now 🎉

[floral marten]

Why not share the errors and the fix here, to help others?

Saying that Claude’s spicy autocorrect helped you doesn’t help anyone here.

You came for assistance. You found answers via a resource. Please consider paying it forward and let us know what was going on.

[cinder parrot]

I'll look back through the Claude session and see if I can grab the main issues and post them here. There were multiple disconnects and it was a whole afternoon of trial and error going back and forth with it, so I wasn't sure of the best way to communicate it all. Nobody else seemed to be having the same issues, but I'm more than happy to share if it would be of benefit to anyone.

[cinder parrot]

This is what fixed the radio recognition issue:

sudo ln -s /etc/meshtasticd/available.d/femtofox/femtofox_SX1262_TCXO.yaml /etc/meshtasticd/config.d/

Then this fixed the user issues:

[forest current]

Well the first part is in the instructions and is done via the sfc menu when you select your radio

Although it doesnt symlink afaik, it just copies

[hollow dragon]

It’s been a while since I’ve messed with my FemtoFox
it runs meshing-around very reliably any new upgrades to the OS?

[restive scarab]

just whatever is in apt

[nova frost]

https://tenor.com/view/rose-apt-rose-blackpink-rose-mak-rose-apt-rose-gif-5948498849163160762

[hollow dragon]

aloha -- how can i fix this?-bash: warning: setlocale: LC_ALL: cannot change locale (en_US.UTF-8) -- i've tried a few things --- advice

[nova frost]

@forest current you're awake. Any ideas?

[forest current]

try running ⁨sudo locale-gen⁩

if that whines, then run ⁨echo "en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8" | sudo tee /etc/locale.gen⁩ and then ⁨sudo locale-gen⁩ again

[hollow dragon]

MAHALO this worked
echo "en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8" | sudo tee /etc/locale.gen
[sudo] password for femto:
en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8 -- oops spoke to soon when I log out and back in again I get --- bash: warning: setlocale: LC_ALL: cannot change locale (en_US.UTF-8)
I see the changes in the local.gen file... hmm...

[forest current]

Throw this at the bottom of .bashrc and call it a day:

export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
export LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8

[shrewd turtle]

can femtofox run only ubuntu (foxbuntu), or can it run any variation of debian?

[nova frost]

Hardware support is a bit thin. There's Armbian now, tho!

[twilit mountain]

Armbian support has been added upstream 👍 if you're feeling brave.
Work is also underway to make the experience a bit easier out of the box (similar to foxbuntu).
https://github.com/mPWRD-OS/mPWRD-userpatches
^ WIP (I have not created a first-release yet)

[shrewd turtle]

armbian sounds ideal. don't have a femtofox, but will soon

not particularly a fan of ubuntu, nor snaps 🙂

i used to go through hell putting vanilla debian on my pi (back when it was ubuntu based), with uefi+arm and all

[twilit mountain]

Armbian lets you pick between Debian 12/13 and Ubuntu 22.04/24.04 but yeah.... Debian 13 is the play ❤️ snaps are cancer

[forest current]

Foxbuntu is a stripped ubuntu thats basically debian tbh

Think like

Headless Hardy Heron

Lol

Also with like 48mb ram usable I doubt you even could run snaps

[shrewd turtle]

hah, I remember those days of ubuntu 🙂

back when they used to let you order giant packs of free livecds/dvds

[green hound]

putting together a digikey order rn - when it comes to the TVS protection diodes, do I need either D1/D1A or D2 & D3? or do I just need to pick between populating D1 or populating D2/D3 and ignoring the other?

[nova frost]

Either:
D1
D1a
D2&d3

Have you ordered the PCBs yet?

[green hound]

gotcha, so if I grab D1A (the only one in stock on digikey canada, seemingly) I can leave out D2 & D3

[green hound]

I was sent a few unpopulated ones to hand-solder

[nova frost]

Aha

Nice

[green hound]

yeee

[nova frost]

The TVS diodes are a luxury, tbh

[green hound]

they're cheap enough that I don't mind adding them

going with the "bare minimum" of 2 caps for the wio-sx1262 variant feels like so little, haha

[nova frost]

They're a safety feature, for sure, but I've not traced any failures back to static that I can find.

[nova frost]

If you're plugging 5v in, then the Wio really just sips power.

[green hound]

if you've never seen a failure that the TVS diodes could avoid then maybe I will just leave 'em out

is there anything else at all that I should even consider adding aside from those 2 caps?

digikey is sold outta the JST PH connectors, unfortunately

I already have RJ45 sockets and plenty of spare pin headers, so if any quality of life/stability stuff is strongly recommended, I'll grab it

[nova frost]

Can't think

Sideways jst are sometimes available

[green hound]

tbh I'm not against just soldering the power wires when it's in whatever enclosure it's gonna live in lol

thanks!

[green hound]

Assembeld a working board with what I have on hand, getting no internet connectivity 😔

Eth status shows as "connected" so it seems my wiring is fine. It has an IPv6 address, but no IPv4 address, and I can't SSH into it. Internet connection check is failing. Anywhere I should start troubleshooting?

[nova frost]

Hmmm

Can you drop it down to ipv4?

I get a similar issue.

Have you got a usb-serial adapter?

[green hound]

How can I do that? Is that something I need to do router-side or can I configure it on the fox itself?

[green hound]

Yep, that's how I'm currently connected

After disabling ipv6 in sysctl.conf I'm getting no ip address at all

Not sure if this is any help at all but more info probably more better

[nova frost]

I delay-summon @mild hare

I also summon @forest current

[forest current]

Probably your router being stupid, either kick the dhcp lease for it on the router or wait up to 24 hours

It probably gave ipv6 and said i dont need to give ipv4, idk it doesnt make sense

Cant hurt to set a static ip and make sure it works though

[green hound]

Gotcha gotcha. I'll see about setting a static one. Otherwise I might just ssh into my router and clear the lease

[green hound]

I've assigned a static ipv4 address and cleared the leases on my router, no luck 😔

"destination host unreachable" whenever I try to ping anything

Can't ping the fox from my laptop either, same error

[green hound]

I'm starting to think maybe the ethernet cable just isn't plugged into my router... But then it wouldn't show any active eth interface when I run ifconfig would it 😭

[nova frost]

do you have an OTG usb adapter?

[green hound]

I've got one somewhere yea

Would that allow me to connect it to the Internet just to update meshtasticd and install some extras? That's all I really need

[nova frost]

you could stick a wifi stick in it, and try that way

and note that Jeff Geerling also struggled with ipv6 and this future-synthetic-colleague: #random message

[nova frost]

You can always try switching it off and on again...

[green hound]

Oh! I totally could huh. Do I need any extra drivers?

Can I rely on most of the common ones to kinda just work?

[green hound]

I've rebooted both so many times 🥲

[nova frost]

theres a few that work. I think there's a list in the wiki

[green hound]

Gotcha! I'll have to check

I probably have some scattered around my project bins

[proven plaza]

Is there currently a source where you can get pre-soldered boards? Or is the only option at the moment to order one yourself from jlcpcb.com?

[nova frost]

I've got a small batch here, waiting for radios.

Where in the world are you?

[proven plaza]

germany

[nova frost]

I have some e22p-868 modules on the way, too 😁

I'm trying something slightly different with this batch - interchangeable radio modules.

Since there's several different types out there, and the use cases are different.

If you poke me around Thursday this coming week, I'll know what's what.

[proven plaza]

Then I'll sharpen a stick so I can poke you with it.

[green hound]

Just following up on my Internet connection woes from yesterday

I've tried so many things and changed so many configurations, at one point eth0 had 2 unique IPs, neither of which were reachable from any other device on my local network

One was the static IP I set and the other was seemingly being assigned via dhcp

Still looking for my wifi adapter. But I think I've gotta give up on Ethernet until something a little more reliable than old Ubuntu is available

[nova frost]

#1302945239689990185 message

[green hound]

👀

Yooooo

That's super exciting, I'm hyped

[green hound]

found my wifi adapter! turns out it's explicitly listed as not working, damn lol

[green hound]

as tends to be my luck, the issue wasn't linux, it was my network 🥲
I pulled out my trusty gl.inet mango and hooked it up, set it up as a repeater for my home wifi, lo and behold....... Internet™

[nova frost]

That's good news

I think @mild hare has been working explicitly on making this stuff work in the next one.

[green hound]

I've noticed that every once in a while when I reboot my Femtofox, the node ID changes. Long/short name and anything else I manually configured stays the same. Is this typical behavior?

[nova frost]

Yeah, I see that occasionally, too

I think it's an artefact of the runonce stuff

Or possibly resetting it straight after a nodeinfo has gone out, and hearing it back when it reboots

[green hound]

Oh yeah maybe

[mild hare]

I'll keep an eye out for this on the armbian build.

[sour horizon]

So we can still request include of cowsay?

[mild hare]

Learned the secret to making apt not suck on a board with 64mb and no UHS support and it's not what you think. Have a filesystem that can actually be read (gpt) and chroot into it.

[sour horizon]

apt install cowsay 🐄

[mild hare]

Now if you could "remote chroot" into a running board, that would make it nearly painless. Say by rebooting into a "maintenance mode" partition with something like busybox so you could remote mount the full root and chroot into it and when done reboot back into live (all via ssh). just a theory.

theory is have an extra partition and toggle with a tool that throws a sed at /boot/armbianEnv.txt and reboots.

[nova frost]

Split the drive in 2?

Mirror/mirror

Idk, I quite like the idea of a maintenance mode.

[mild hare]

add a second tiny armbian root/file system as a "maintenance" or "rescue" boot option that does NBD over an ssh tunnel and lets you mount the main one fully since it's not running. then you just chroot to it like it's a local filesystem.

Problem though, only useful to linux people.

maybe wsl would work. may spend some time on it later.

[sour horizon]

wsl from boot-up? What about jsut a web ssh

A web client for embedded devices with a tab for local ssh fork the official web client and boop

[mild hare]

we aren't talking about the same thing

web client exists though

new TUI in progress too

[plain stone]

I’ve run into this a few times now including just this minute, to a bit of grief (on a MeshToad but sounds like the same #meshtasticd issue). At least one other PORTDUINO node here has as well. Even if you explicitly set the MAC in the config it seems to think that its own ID is already taken so it picks a new one.

[mild hare]

Bringing back memories. Was definitely a collision thing. Memory fuzzy on details though.

[mild hare]

18 minutes. Still sucks on 64mb but better than before. The package size isn't what is slow, it's the pre-install solver/parse stage.

[plain osprey]

I think it'd run much faster on alpine

[nova frost]

I mean, it's intended as an appliance, not as a performance dev machine

[mild hare]

Also runs faster when you don't use backports, desktop, non-free and other unneeded package sources. 😁

[plain osprey]

I have a suspicion it's might get better power consumption on alpine

I tried using debian on my ox64 64mb ram 1 core and it really sucked. Switched to alpine and it's was blazing fast. I think you'd get similar results on the luckyfox board.

[nova frost]

Feel free to try it. OSC is busy hacking away to try and whittle it down.

[plain osprey]

i dont have a pico mini yet unfortunately otherwise i would. just wanted to throw that out there.

[safe night]

FWIW, I agree, since it is an appliance, an alpine-like distribution would be much more lightweight. I don't think the machine would be much faster, but slightly less ram utilization and way fewer package updates.

[chrome tide]

Been MIA, due to illness. Hoping to get back into things, but it's gonna be slow..

[shrewd turtle]

hope you are better now!

[shrewd turtle]

some of us were around from the dial-up ages, patience was a valuable asset back then 😛

[chrome tide]

Days are a Rollercoaster right now.. if its not one thing, its another..

https://tenor.com/view/internet-internet-down-internet-slow-connecting-failed-connection-gif-23040144

[chrome tide]

LOL I have a TSR80, and a TSR80 level 2 in storage.. Would be fun to pull them out and see if they still work..

[mild hare]

I still have an Atari 800

[chrome tide]

Man the days of basic....

[hushed spruce]

My dad was huge into Atari ( I was taken to untold number of local Atari user group meetings as a kid). I have an Atari 400, two Atari 800, various floppy and cassette drives, an Atari pen plotter, and so much other stuff

[restive scarab]

The boxart for 2600 BASIC was way more impressive that trying to input BASIC on those funky controller keypads

[hushed spruce]

Programming Made Easy

[shrewd turtle]

heh, basic, and eventually qbasic was what bootstraped me into the tech world back in the day

there used to be a version of basic that used to be included in the original ibm bios's even

[nova frost]

BBC basic ftw

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rCupwBkrn0Y

[ornate blaze]

Hi all, just did a clean install of foxbuntu and after setting the password over serial, I ran SFC and updated meshtasticd. It does the update but then the service fails to start. So I did another clean install and set the radio type to ebyte e22900m30s and then did the update again, and it fails to start the service again:
Meshtasticd service status
× meshtasticd.service - Meshtastic Native Daemon
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/meshtasticd.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Drop-In: /etc/systemd/system/meshtasticd.service.d -override.conf
Active: failed (Result: signal) since Sat 2026-02-28 11:18:39 UTC;
2min 47s ago
Process: 1328 ExecStart=/usr/bin/meshtasticd (code=killed, signal=ABRT)
Main PID: 1328 (code=killed, signal=ABRT)
CPU: 437ms
Feb 28 11:18:39 femtofox systemd[1]: Stopped Meshtastic Native Daemon.
Feb 28 11:18:39 femtofox systemd[1]: meshtasticd.service: Start request repeated too quickly.
Feb 28 11:18:39 femtofox systemd[1]: meshtasticd.service: Failed with result 'signal'.
Feb 28 11:18:39 femtofox systemd[1]: Failed to start Meshtastic Native Daemon.
Feb 28 11:20:23 femtofox systemd[1]: meshtasticd.service: Start request repeated too quickly.
Feb 28 11:20:23 femtofox systemd[1]: meshtasticd.service: Failed with result 'signal'.
Feb 28 11:20:23 femtofox systemd[1]: Failed to start Meshtastic Native Daemon.
Feb 28 11:21:06 femtofox systemd[1]: meshtasticd.service: Start request repeated too quickly.
Feb 28 11:21:06 femtofox systemd[1]: meshtasticd.service: Failed with result 'signal'.
Feb 28 11:21:06 femtofox systemd[1]: Failed to start Meshtastic Native Daemon •

So I checked the radio type again and it was wrong, so set it back to what it should be and tried to start the service again:
Meshtastic service status
× meshtasticd. service - Meshtastic Native Daemon
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/meshtasticd.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Drop-In: /etc/systemd/system/meshtasticd.service.d Loverride.conf
Active: failed (Result: signal) since Sat 2026-02-28 11:27:38 UTC;
ago
Process: 2363 ExecStart=/usr/bin/meshtasticd (code=killed, signal=ABRT)
Main PID: 2363 (code=killed, signal=ABRT)
CPU: 128ms
Feb 28 11:27:35 femtofox systemd[1]: meshtasticd. service: Main process exited, code=killed, status=6/ABRT
Feb 28 11:27:35 femtofox systemd[1]: meshtasticd.service: Failed with result 'signal'.
Feb 28 11:27:38 femtofox systemd[1]: meshtasticd.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 4.
Feb 28 11:27:38 femtofox systemd[1]: Stopped Meshtastic Native Daemon.
Feb 28 11:27:38 femtofox systemd[1]: meshtasticd.service: Start request
repeated too quickly.
Feb 28 11:27:38 femtofox systemd[1]: meshtasticd. service: Failed with result 'signal'.
Feb 28 11:27:38 femtofox systemd[1]: Failed to start Meshtastic Native Daemon •
Feb 28 11:27:42 femtofox systemd[1]: meshtasticd.service: Start request repeated too quickly.
Feb 28 11:27:42 femtofox systemd[1]: meshtasticd.service: Failed with result 'signal'.
Feb 28 11:27:42 femtofox systemd[1]: Failed to start Meshtastic Native Daemon.

Any help would be appreciated. Off to play BL4 in the meantime...

[nova frost]

@mild hare this is what i was telling you earlier

[ornate blaze]

@leaden vale suggested I run sudo add-apt-repository ppa:meshtastic/alpha and then rerun the update from SFC.
I did that and then checked the service again and it was still failing like above, but then came back to it about an hour later and it seems to be running.
I have no idea what’s going on behind the scenes but maybe it’s just too slow for what the menus appear to be doing and I need to just let it do its stuff and come back later?

[restive scarab]

huh certainly possible. usually it's easier to diagnose by enabling debug logging in /etc/meshtasticd/config.yaml and then trying to manually run it not via systemd but directly as meshtasticd user ala sudo -u meshtasticd meshtasticd

[green hound]

If I want to use the 5V input on any of the Femtofox models but I don't have Q1 populated, is it a terrible idea to bypass it by bridging the 5V rail without it?

Or I guess more specifically, what is Q1 there for? It's right beside the TVS diode on the CE board but there's no TVS diode footprint on the Smol board

i.e.

[nova frost]

its for reverse polarity protection

the number1 leading cause of premature death of these is incorrect polarity

[green hound]

Ohhhh gotcha

Understood

I'll bypass it and just be extra careful of my polarity lol

[nova frost]

You should get some p-fets anyway

They come in handy for all sorts of things

[green hound]

I definitely will pick some up with my next digikey order

For now, I managed to cram everything into this box lol

Stock standoffs weren't long enough so I made my own with nuts and long screws muahaha

[nova frost]

Well... I suggest ordering a stock of stuff from LCSC. With their slowest, cheapest shipping it might arrive before your next project.

And inb4 you say "I prefer to buy American, thanks 😘", LCSC get them from the same enormous reel as digikey.

[green hound]

that is a very good point tbh

[green hound]

I don't wanna touch America with a 10ft pole rn 😭

[nova frost]

I'll dig out my standard "one of everything" BOM for you later

[mild hare]

https://tenor.com/view/mad-max-dog-amused-gif-22724037

[nova frost]

Yep, you got one of everything 😉

Need to order some more xb cutoff s, too

[quasi onyx]

Hahaha

[nova frost]

What size do you normally solder with?

[nova frost]

I, uh...

Yes

[green hound]

I like the ~0.6mm stuff

[shrewd turtle]

what else am I supposed to use llm for :D?

[nova frost]

Aka 04ohno size?

[green hound]

oh I thought u meant solder diameter 🤦‍♂️

I usually work with 0402

[nova frost]

Aka 04ohno then

[green hound]

yea lol

because I can just get it assembled from JLC

anything I want to be able to make by hand is all 0603 smallest tho

[nova frost]

I just made a spreadsheet that hacks the Uniroyal part numbers to give 100/200 of each value based on E3/6 and E12

[green hound]

That would be super super helpful to have

[nova frost]

Yeee

It gets a bit jank, but LCSC are good enough to accept a BOM list for an order, and even 1% resistors are less than a penny each.

[green hound]

I'm certainly not adverse to a bit of jank

[green hound]

out of curiosity, why can I not SSH to my femtofox through a traditional client like putty, but I can use the web terminal just fine

using the root/root or femto/femto login options both return invalid credentials even though they work fine in the browser terminal

[nova frost]

You did used to be able to do Femto/Femto

Root/root is disabled, maybe?

[green hound]

I guess so? I gave femto/femto like a dozen tries and it did eventually let me in

like just now

I can't use the web terminal because it disconnects me every 15-30 seconds 😔

[nova frost]

Ssh over LoRa?

[green hound]

lol if that were an option I feel like it would be somehow more reliable than this web client

I love the femtofox smol, but I am a little bothered that it doesn't expose UART2

I'd absolutely take UART over having to cram an RJ45 jack somewhere in this box

also, is it normal to just not be able to run Contact at all

[mild hare]

Meshrunner.

[nova frost]

Interesting you mention that, actually. I think armbian might unlock some interesting usb-otg modes.

[green hound]

👀

[nova frost]

But on the smol board, you can still access uart2

[green hound]

how so

I guess I could solder pin headers to the uart2 pins on the luckfox itself

[nova frost]

Yep, they're not connected to anything. I could/should remove the hole and put an interface, I suppose

[restive scarab]

yeah you def can, I had it on my smol at one point but once I got it all sorted (read: figured out the unplug/replug wifi adaptor while running ping until it starts responding dance) it's just been ssh (well mosh) to access

[nova frost]

Tbh, I need to revisit the smol board.

Usb port and a ch340 can't be that hard to fit on this thing.

I wish there was a decent way to hookup the ethernet

Maybe it's time to unleash the tinyfox....

[green hound]

Anything special I need to do to enable a GPS connected to UART4?

My wiring is good (I've triple checked) and I have GPS enabled in the position settings with location enabled on the primary channel. Been waiting ~20 minutes in case it's just taking a while to get a lock, but I'm not able to get any position data from it

[green hound]

oh hey I got it. needed to edit /etc/meshtasticd/config.d/femto_config.yaml and add

GPS:
  SerialPath: /dev/ttyS4

[nova frost]

@mild hare can we add that in, too?

[nova frost]

Does that work?

[green hound]

I mean, it does now

I don't know if it's genuinely related or not, but I started getting position packets after I made that change

assuming it's not coincidence, but it could be for all I know lol

[mild hare]

Of course we can but should we? Makes me think maybe an option thing.

Any down side to throwing it in and not using it?

[restive scarab]

does it slow down meshtasticd at boot while scanning for a potentially non-existant GPS like it does on nRFs?

[nova frost]

Just the option to switch it on and off. Something something "just type Meshtastic -d --F -m -L" and remember it's "-L" not "-l" or it will delete the cat"

[mild hare]

@nova frost I have a plan.

Add a femto-gps.yaml file to /etc/meshtasticd/available.d femto directory with just that info and since mpwrd-menu has an interface for enabling and disabling configs the user can enable it.

https://tenor.com/view/gru-reflection-minions-math-gif-24483062

Should work fine and kind of opens the door for other small config mods if it works (like i2c display, etc)

[nova frost]

Ok, don't forget that for each "root topic" in those yamls, it only uses the last file it read

There's no consolidation or owt

I remember we had a long debate about this for whether we swap whole files or grep/sed/whatever within the files.

[mild hare]

Not wanting to have multiple whole configs for Femtofox, maintainers might get pissed.

[nova frost]

Yep, we got it down to the 3, I think.

[mild hare]

Will experiment soon and see what works

[last leaf]

My dog ❤️

[sour horizon]

What was the crown prince on about?

[cerulean helm]

Any chance of this coming back? Or is it just out of stock temporarily?

[nova frost]

I have a small quantity nearly ready to ship

[nova frost]

Where are you located?

Is a better question!

[cerulean helm]

US

[nova frost]

Ok, I have a current batch with mikrobus-like sockets on, and radios that will fit them. The us-compatible radios I currently have are the OG e22-900m22s.

They'll be on sale at some point this weekend, once I've had chance to test them.

[cerulean helm]

Nice!

I'll keep an eye out

[nova frost]

I've just completed a batch of 20, so I'm pretty confident these will be ok.

I make these in my spare time, so it's not instant 🙂

[somber quest]

How can I get one?

[quasi onyx]

Dont think there is any currently available

[nova frost]

I have a handful here, yes I need to get them on etsy, thank you for reminding me

[cerulean helm]

I wasn't saying anything lol

[chrome tide]

I need some 0603 resistors for a project I have to fix, since my PSU voltage is more than an IC can handle.. Luckily it didn't burn up..

The IC is rated for 20v, and my PSU is 24v..

[nova frost]

I hope you're buying enough for all future projects as well?

[chrome tide]

I tend to buy bulk packs, even when I doubt I will need more.. LOL

[sour horizon]

Don’t you buy this way?

[chrome tide]

That's what I bought for my 0402s..

Then I found a baggy of 0402s.. :\

[restive scarab]

continuing avahi discussion from #alphanauts-testing .... the meshtasticd.service is advertising :80 which is.... not useful when the webui is running on :443/:9443 vs meshtasticd's API port on :4403

[nova frost]

Is that a Femtofox problem or a Meshtasticd problem?

[chrome tide]

meshtasticd

Well more so an avahi-daemon config issue for meshtasticd

The issue is that dev don't want to fix the mDNS hostname.. JB was interested in fixing it, then other devs basically said no..

[nova frost]

@mild hare do we have a list of this somewhere?

[mild hare]

@nova frost @twilit mountain and I were just talking about this. he has some ideas.

[sour horizon]

all them ports do get use officially like the web client can still http on hosted

I did just boot up a net new and it worked perfect with cert ignore

I’m not at a terminal but I wanna say the 80 redirects or says like the droids you’re looking for are not here

I would enjoy if the advertised host name was the short name

MeshtasticABCD.local

[restive scarab]

maybe instead of messing with avahi conf files just set hostname to meshtastic-abcd.local and then everything would be like "yes hello i am meshtastic-abcd.local"

[chrome tide]

That doesn't work.. I set hostnames for all my native linux, and it still shows as meshtastic.local

[restive scarab]

backup your /etc/hosts and /etc/hostname files, run this (at least on femtofox)

#!/usr/bin/env bash

short="$(meshtastic --info --no-nodes | grep -Fi Owner | awk '{print $4}')"
short="${short//(/}"
short="${short//)/}"
printf "setting hostname to "
echo "meshtastic-${short}" | sudo tee /etc/hostname
sudo hostname "meshtastic-${short}"
sudo sed -i -E "s/^127.0.0.1.*$/127.0.0.1     meshtastic-$short.local $short localhost/" /etc/hosts
sudo service avahi-daemon restart

[cerulean helm]

Any word on the new boards going up?

[nova frost]

I've been testing them this evening, but I'm microsleeping here so I'mma go to b3d

[cerulean helm]

Night!

[sour horizon]

I hope the test is running cowsay 🐮
MicroToMacro(while(!awake){
ndt.sleep(5000);}

[chrome tide]

This isn't gonna work either.. LOL

femto@femtofox-1:~$ meshtastic --info --no-nodes | grep -Fi Owner | awk '{print $4}'
(Check

This is what I get when running it w/o the awk..

femto@femtofox-1:~$ meshtastic --info --no-nodes | grep -Fi Owner
Owner: FemToFox 1 (Check out socalmesh.org) (F2F1)

[sour horizon]

Yea but adding all that into a DNS entry is gonna be like brrrrrr

We need .. boop

[chrome tide]

That's why I had suggested the last 4 of MAC, not Owner..

[chrome tide]

Since the config.yaml has a MAC setting in it, it should pull info from that regarding where the MAC is pulled. I.E. eth0 for most, so it should grab the last 4 of the MAC from that info.

[sour horizon]

That’s not ideal depending - using the last 4 of the device ID would match better overall

Hex it so it’s tidy for type

MeshtasticF2F1.local

If this goes to print, also the private key should be recycled after all install before first boot for extra stable flying

Regen the local ssl if the cow says ice scream

[chrome tide]

Last 4 of the MAC is the standard across tasmota, ESPHome, etc type software, which is where I was getting the idea from..

[sour horizon]

So in rev 1 it was very tail wag the dog to replicate an experience of a new node via mobile app?

I think newer ai can /think so .. I’m very excited to see

That said.

At boot it should have some forced config if it’s really secure

[chrome tide]

But using short name would be good also, actually..

I just want a way to use hostname to connect to my nodes, when I have multiple nodes on my network for testing. Cuz having multiple nodes using meshtastic.local doesn't work..

[sour horizon]

They do count up?

Try reserving the name meshtastic.local

[chrome tide]

Like there is no way to set hostnames on ESP32 devices that I have found.

Native Linux is different, since you set the hostname on the linux system..

[sour horizon]

sure but limitless compute is the fun - those QRP rigs ..

Try reserving the meshtastic.local to a null or a static device

I would go null

If you have a reset loop to kill it fast

for me it’s the bother of the auto default in CLI/API of that host

So I would change one node and oops jsut changed the other

[warm geyser]

yeah, you would need to compile it yourself to get a name other than meshtastic.local on esp32

https://github.com/meshtastic/firmware/blob/3fcbfe437087f6fc96093ba22a17e7f00db57d70/src/mesh/wifi/WiFiAPClient.cpp#L89 would be the line in question (it takes the value passed to MDNS.begin, by default Meshtastic, and lowercases it to produce the .local name advertised via mDNS)

you don't want to touch any of the txt record stuff below that though (all the MDNS.addService and MDNS.addServiceTxt stuff)

[chrome tide]

I would love to try and make it work, but my patients and stress levels don't allow me to code anymore.. :\ LOL

[warm geyser]

totally fair, haha. I figured I'd drop the information in case it would be useful, but I get not wanting to deal with it too

[chrome tide]

It's not the lack of wanting.. It's the lack of patients.. LOL I used to code when younger, now that I'm close to 50, I just stick to my networking..

I know JB was interested in making the changes, but some of the other people/devs in alpha channel shut it down..

[shrewd turtle]

not sure it helps, but I do this to customize what shows up under tcp/wifi under android app:
dmb@fadeface:~$ cat /etc/avahi/services/meshtasticd.service
<?xml version="1.0" standalone="no"?><!---nxml--->
<!DOCTYPE service-group SYSTEM "avahi-service.dtd">
<service-group>
<name replace-wildcards="yes">%h face</name>
<service protocol="ipv4">
<txt-record>shortname=face</txt-record>
<txt-record>id=!fadeface</txt-record>
<txt-record>pio_env=portduino</txt-record>
<type>_meshtastic._tcp</type>
<port>4403</port>
</service>
</service-group>

this is what i have set for non femtofox

[restive scarab]

ahhhh your name is more verbose... you want like print $7 or $8 - it's mostly klunky work around python-cli lacking --get-owner / --get-owner-short, other way would be to get it from full --export-config ... MAC from /etc/meshtasticd/ needs a bit more logic since you can have MACAddress OR MACAddressSource AND that can live in config.yaml AND/OR config.d/foo.yaml, not unpossible but less fun to slap together in 30secs 😬

[sour horizon]

If you are printing $7 or $8 and any $100 or $PCB holla at ya boy

[shrewd turtle]

if using armbian, any reason NOT to enable armbian-swap, and overcommit (200%)?

oh thats nice
[ 213.725840] oom-kill:constraint=CONSTRAINT_NONE,nodemask=(null),global_oom,task_memcg=/user.slice/user-0.slice/[email protected]/init.scope,task=systemd,pid=1073,uid=0
[ 213.725927] Out of memory: Killed process 1073 (systemd) total-vm:14244kB, anon-rss:0kB, file-rss:12kB, shmem-rss:0kB, UID:0 pgtables:20kB oom_score_adj:100

64mb aint easy

[sour horizon]

https://tenor.com/view/thumbs-up-salute-yes-approved-confirmed-gif-15727346887287896051

[shrewd turtle]

just a note in case anyone has same issue.... if you are using armbian, on femtofox, and use a usb network card who's driver needs 128kb of contigoues real ram, add this to kernel cmdline: sysctl.vm.min_free_kbytes=8192 . Maybe lower is better, but at least driver doesn't oops the kernel

[shrewd turtle]

hmm, i can't get the femtofox to stay connected to wifi with armbian

[nova frost]

How long does it take before it drops off?

[shrewd turtle]

i think it may have been a me problem actually. realtek cards have issues roaming in my household, for some odd reason I have 4 access points in my house 😄

it shouldn't have been roaming, but looking at logs, was flapping between 2 access points when my connection dropped

but to answer the question, is good for around 15 minutes

[nova frost]

Ah, fair. I've got mesh WiFi, but mine doesn't roam I think... Foxbuntu doesn't like the WiFi ap disappearing for a couple of minutes while it resets, which the cheap firmware in the ap causes to happen every night at 3am.

[shrewd turtle]

have some kind of channel optimization thing happening at your AP at 3am lol?

[nova frost]

No, I presume they have an unsolved memory leak or something, so they have a "maintenance mode" which resets it daily.

In it's defence it was the cheapest mesh WiFi I could find that worked

[shrewd turtle]

oh mesh wifi, missed that detail

interesting. i live in sticks, so have fiber to house, and then an extremely complicated over engineered homelab (opnsense, many switches), unifi handling/managing access points though. Unifi has some wifi channel AI thing that used to be scheduled by default at 3am that used to take the access points offline, do a site survey (wifi channel scanning of sorts i guess), and switch the radios to the 'optimal' channels

[nova frost]

Yeah, this is several tiers lower than unifi

I'm almost certainly a sleeper node of at least one state actor.

And I have a ring camera still in use...

[nova frost]

How's the Femtofox armbian working aside from WiFi woes?

[shrewd turtle]

so far so good, I did need to add a service to /etc/avahi/services to have auto tcp discovery work in apps, but just got meshtasticd started today, will know more soon

[mild hare]

[mild hare]

mPWRD-OS and Meshrunner BBS are separate.

Alphas coming soon.

[sour horizon]

sexIT I like it

I should say dit dit de K7Sex

Will the new os feature the potato or that flash didn’t pan out

[mild hare]

yours and mine not there. we'll talk packaging after smoke clears.

not kitchen sink distro but we got a mechanic for dudes like you and me

updates/packages are literally apt-get and pipx now. hint hint

keeping things so clean in mpwrd-os I'm kinda assuming just hand install meshrunner.

it'll make sense soon

[sour horizon]

If it’s not a 4 hour pip requirements will see I may just be watching from the beach

https://tenor.com/view/surf-board-drink-beer-gif-14294185

[mild hare]

this is the stuggle right?

[sour horizon]

Depends

.. get it

https://tenor.com/view/eyes-gif-26582049

[nova frost]

done - check etsy/DMs

[nova frost]

Check etsy

[cerulean helm]

Oh nice I like the radio being a module

Very reusable :)

[nova frost]

yes

I also sell mikrobus promicro boards... 😉

promikrobus, if you will

[cerulean helm]

:D

Recommendations for US antenna?

Oh that was easier than I thought it was going to be to find https://www.amazon.com/Meshtastic-Antenna-Devices-Magnetic-Connector/dp/B0FJY49R43

Theres also this one https://www.amazon.com/Meshtastic-Antenna-Outdoor-Hotspot-Magnetic/dp/B0FYQ2Y2FC

First one review claims it might not even be tuned for 915?

[mild hare]

outdoor long range or window or portable?

[cerulean helm]

Going to try outdoor. My receive is decent but transmit has been crap on the T1000-E

So hoping one of these may help

[mild hare]

i really like Alfa 915 antennas. They are tunable too.

I'm not a master by any means but they have served me well

[cerulean helm]

I'll try the second. Got a bit better reviews (a whole 2!)

[mild hare]

https://muzi.works/products/alfa-outdoor-antenna?variant=44821986902073

This guy is a mesher and I respect him as a seller.

[oblique violet]

Yes I have a few, they're good

[restive scarab]

T1000-E has teenie tiny antenna crammed inside the case, amazing Rx is not because of the antenna but the LR1110 radio so anything should work better but that's not really a node you can hook an antenna too without cracking the case and solder surgery

[cerulean helm]

Yeah which is why I ordered a Femtofox

As the fix :)

To be a CLIENT_BASE

T1000-E was just my starting point into this wonderful adventure :D

(Well and the Hackerpager before that)

[twilit mountain]

@mild hare and I are happy to announce the first Alpha version of mPWRD-OS!

https://github.com/mPWRD-OS/mPWRD-OS/releases/tag/v0.1.0

Features

• 🐧 Debian 13 trixie based.
• ❤️ Built with Armbian userpatches framework.
• meshtasticd pre-installed and working out of the box.
• meshtastic CLI pre-installed
• 🛠️ mpwrd-menu simple OS management utility.

We are welcoming testing on the following boards/hats:

• luckfox-pico-mini femtofox
• luckfox-lyra-ultra wehooper4 'Luckfox Ultra' Hat
• luckfox-lyra-plus waveshare pi pico sx1262 Hat
• Raspberry Pi 3, 4, or 5 (rpi4b) HAT+ autoconf

This can't yet be considered stable (DO NOT install on your tower node!)
But would love testing feedback 🍻 we're close!

[green hound]

Absolutely giving this a shot ASAP on my little portable femtofox!

[mild hare]

mpwrd-menu for quick start

Boot with serial or eth, need to complete first boot setup, if using eth root:1234

[sour horizon]

[🔨] creating virtual environment... [🔨] installing dadjokes... [🔨] done! ✨ 🌟 ✨ [🔨] installed package dadjokes 1.3.2, installed using Python 3.13.5 [🔨] These apps are now globally available
[🔨] - dadjokes
[🔨] Compiling mPWRD device tree overlays for rockchip-rv1106

[mild hare]

Installing systemd service...
Created symlink '/etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/meshrunner.service' → '/etc/systemd/system/meshrunner.service'.
MeshRunner service installed and started.

real    10m20.780s
user    2m32.957s
sys     1m15.883s
osc@luckfox-pico-mini:~/meshrunner$```

@sour horizon uses pywheels when possible

Actually got it down to just over 9 minutes on pico mini last night but didn't log it.

Oh, skip building locales if you are in a hurry.

[mild hare]

On first install steps. Takes a good while.

[shrewd turtle]

horizontal polarization of wifi antenna 😛

[cerulean helm]

Lot of faith in the duct tape there

[shrewd turtle]

absolutely! temporary setup of course

[mild hare]

mPWRD-OS?

[sour horizon]

I’m forked 17:49 580xz/2gb image trixie pico-mini.

Added vnode and spudbot which gives a “full dev kit” in a fox 🦊

Forgot how slow they are but it’s alive!

Very nice @twilit mountain and @mild hare

[mild hare]

I was guessing you would fork asap. It turn out good? Feeling clean?

[sour horizon]

I did fork rather fast yes haha
I didn’t do the normal user stuff but yes - looking clean. Few ideas might be worth bringing in (shrug)

This is much nicer way to build the image isn’t it

[mild hare]

Yes, ideas/feedback please! But gotta warn ya we skeet shoot most of our own ideas for cleanliness and there's not even cup holders lol.

[sour horizon]

Yea ideas up in the fork, cleaned it up for a little better presentation.

Not a huge fan of shot gets in my teeth and makes a mess down stream🦆

[twilit mountain]

❤️ forks! But I'll echo what @mild hare said.
If it's not maintainable it doesn't get included.
E.g. we'd love to include Meshing Around in the Mesh Apps 🙏 but it's not packaged (git clone does not count)

That's not a dis 😅 just trying to keep this all manageable.

[mild hare]

Meshrunner ain't in either.

[sour horizon]

Totally - just not sure I want it in a pipx in its current state

[mild hare]

Hell we argue over packages 😅

[sour horizon]

I just added a lot of them and with virtual it’s duplicate

I understand the release idea to keep packages tidy for consumer side - I just want my quick dev 🙂

[mild hare]

I been in this same sitch. I mean bbs and bots are meant to be edited, not just an "app".

[twilit mountain]

I wouldn't fret too much over that 😅 we're technically shipping meshtastic python bindings twice right now already (for contact)
There's value in keeping everything seperate 🤷 the disk space would be the only concern.

[mild hare]

Word, that's why fork makes sense. If we do things right maybe we'll see "flavors"

[twilit mountain]

E.g. if meshtastic does a major rev, contact can still keep using the old bindings in it's pipx venv

[sour horizon]

I do think it’s important to get vnode running - it will keep depends for pdx projects ahead of the game

[twilit mountain]

Ahh this is what you were talking about https://github.com/pdxlocations/vnode
@fast adder you have too many projects, I can't keep up!

@mild hare let's add vnode to the Mesh Apps list 👍 in mpwrd-menu

[fast adder]

It's just a baby, needs lots of love but feel free to test it out.

[sour horizon]

I confirmed it is possible it launches 🚀

(Still need to lab test it outside of this thread)

As I recall we had a bear of time getting crypto prior

Free ram 🐏 is around 4, so around prior

Speaking of ram I saw they now selling a single chip of dram and to save costs the 2nd PCB is a dummy dual channel board, 🐺 woof!

[cerulean helm]

Even more excited for my Femtofox now :)

[nova frost]

It's in the post, I swear!

[cerulean helm]

I saw! Thank you

[cerulean helm]

It grows

[nova frost]

ah, I will be interested to see if it can cope with that

I do caution you that the femtofox is the limited in both brainpower and memory.

[sour horizon]

Adding a SDR is a lot of everything

[cerulean helm]

Oh no, the SDR isnt for that.

I just already had it with the one antenna mast.

The second antenna mast is for the femto

[shrewd turtle]

64mb of memory is the challenge 🙂

speaking of that, is there any tips for making painful apt operations run faster :)?

first linux machine I had back in the day (desktop) had 64mb of ram, redhat linux 4 or 5 (not be to confused with rhel)

or maybe just some good coffee

[nova frost]

Painful as in they take a long time? Everyone moans they're not instant, but how often are you running it?

[shrewd turtle]

hopefully not often 😛

[twilit mountain]

Unfortunately we've already done quite a bit on that front 😬 (you should have seen it before the optimizations lol)

https://github.com/mPWRD-OS/mPWRD-OS/blob/main/extensions/performance/perf-apt.sh

https://github.com/mPWRD-OS/mPWRD-OS/blob/main/extensions/performance/perf-sources.sh

[nova frost]

I go back to: how often are you running it, and how long does it take? If it's longer than a couple of plays of A.P.T. then I can see an argument, but if it ain't broke...

https://tenor.com/view/rose-apt-rose-blackpink-rose-mak-rose-apt-rose-gif-5948498849163160762

[twilit mountain]

apt is pretty dang heavy 😬 can't avoid swapping which brings it to a crawl

[shrewd turtle]

yeah, its swapping that makes it slow. sdcard as extension to ram 😛

[twilit mountain]

Especially since apt is also trying to write to the SD as well 😅

[shrewd turtle]

how bad is it that I actually had to look up what A.P.T. was :/

[nova frost]

Apateu apateu

[shrewd turtle]

I recall now though 😛

[twilit mountain]

I also did 🙁 we're getting old

[nova frost]

Uhuh

[nova frost]

Mature.

Stable, almost.

[shrewd turtle]

wifi-sync systemd unit, where does that come from (I don't seem to have it on my armbian build, which was a day before alpha release)? Guessing that allows meshtastic app settings to sync up with networkmanager

[twilit mountain]

@mild hare I see a stub for this in mpwrd-menu mesh-services.conf but I don't see you actually installing it anywhere?

It's gonna need some special handling in the debian packaging when added 🙏 (See: the meshtasticd packaging, for example)

[twilit mountain]

afaik the wifi-sync feature is for enabling/disabling wifi via a special message over the mesh. (So wifi can be disabled most of the time and enabled when needed for administration)

It was a feature in foxbuntu that OSC is trying to bring forward into mPWRD-OS

[shrewd turtle]

ah ok, that can be useful

[cerulean helm]

Wonder how hard it would be to adapt a Lichee RV Nano into that footprint. RISCV and a whole 256 MB :)

[shrewd turtle]

does it support debian/armbian?

[quasi onyx]

awww cute

[cerulean helm]

Yep

https://github.com/scpcom/sophgo-sg200x-debian

[cerulean helm]

Also for how small and cheap it is, it does 5GHz

[nova frost]

We looked at it, but it was much higher power use, and the objective was to make it work realistically off battery

Femtofox is ~70mA @5v

But yeah, licheerv was a contender

I can fit anything to anything, but to what end? 😉

[cerulean helm]

:)

[sour horizon]

Nom, Can I get a meshtastic TI speak-and-spell with text to speech in the original phonetic

[cerulean helm]

Now we're talking

[sour horizon]

It’s ok to substitute the alpha for a oled for chirpy graphics - but I would like the colorful keys 🎹

[nova frost]

Yes. I'll need a budget of £500,000 and a staff of 50

[sour horizon]

Count me in for one head and like $50

I can bring some snacks too

[nova frost]

Might sound excessive, but the projected demand based on the requests last 5 minutes, we will have a turnover of $20T in the first year.

[sour horizon]

Whoop whoop

Spend it wisely

[restive scarab]

smolfox + wiosx1262 w/usb wifi is only pulling 10mA @5v for me, .01mA more when the OLED is active (SUCKIT ESP32)

[nova frost]

Ooh, on new Armbian?

[restive scarab]

foxbuntu!

[nova frost]

Need to finish some stuff, but I should retry

10mA‽

Whaaaat?

How?

Need to have another look see, obvs.

[twilit mountain]

with wifi 10mA? I call BS

[restive scarab]

gimme a sec on a call

[fervent pier]

can I have the number?

[restive scarab]

it's not a fullsize with E22, it's the smolfox with a wiosx1262 in client mute

[twilit mountain]

That is 0.1A

100mA

@fervent pier this is still the lowest I've seen out of any of these boards (Luckfox Lyra Zero W with wifi disabled).

[fervent pier]

I'm still after my unicorn but this is getting closer!

[twilit mountain]

Try out mPWRD-OS if you get a chance 🍻

[chrome tide]

Has the new OS been released for Femtofox ?

[sour horizon]

A early one has see up ^^

[chrome tide]

Is it the mPWRD-OS ? Cuz I downloaded the pico mini image..

[sour horizon]

Give it some testing

[chrome tide]

I'll try to work on it this weekend..

[twilit mountain]

We've got a first Alpha released. Don't put it on a tower (yet) but pls test ❤️

[chrome tide]

All my femtofox boards are in testing stages, none have been deployed..

[shrewd turtle]

i intend to deploy one possibly this weekend, have an extra solar node setup with one of those solar usb power packs from voltaic

only issue is that I can't see battery telemetry

i intend to keep wifi on as well, how much more consumption to these usb wifi cards add?

want my mqtt so can observe first solar 1w node

[sour horizon]

You can get data into a file or script and spit it out

Whole fun of the platform

To speed up apt, build your own img

[shrewd turtle]

heh that works, until you forget something 😛

[sour horizon]

Well it still works - it’s 8-20 min to build a new image which might be less than a apt update

I do find having all the dev kit handy for my own tinkering

[twilit mountain]

The Voltaic packs actually do expose this. Fun fact!

https://blog.voltaicsystems.com/reading-charge-level-of-voltaic-usb-battery-packs/
https://blog.voltaicsystems.com/updated-usb-c-pd-and-always-on-for-v25-v50-v75-batteries/

Pins vary based on the model (changed on the newer ones) but it's there ❤️

Those things are truly over-engineered masterpieces

[shrewd turtle]

awesome!

does luckfox allow booting from usb, or only sdcard?

[twilit mountain]

Only SD, SPI NAND, or emmc 😢

[twilit mountain]

Armbian did a pretty fantastic job making it easy ❤️ all props to them

After getting the boards themselves working 😅 making mPWRD-OS was a (relative) breeze thanks to userpatches being so great

[shrewd turtle]

from my own testing, looks likew i average around 1 watt with the usb wifi card (luckfox mini + femtofox stuffs)

ac1200 is the usb wifi card

without it 0.43 watts

[nova frost]

Sounds about right

[chrome tide]

I can burn it w/ Win32DiskImager, right ?

Gonna try it on my test board I have next to me.. It has I2C rotory, I2C LCD, I2C RTC, I2C BME280, and Wifi.. Hoping it doesn't keep crashing like it did w/ the original OS image..

Hmm... Doesn't appear to work for me.. I plugged it in, connected to comport, and it appears to be at a boot screen..

=> boot
Retrieving file: /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf
Failed to mount ext2 filesystem...
** Unrecognized filesystem type **
Error reading config file
=> bootd
Retrieving file: /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf
Failed to mount ext2 filesystem...
** Unrecognized filesystem type **
Error reading config file

Did I do something wrong ?

I used mPWRD-OS_26.02.0-trunk_Luckfox-pico-mini_trixie_vendor_6.1.115_minimal.img

[restive scarab]

Try Balenaetcher

[chrome tide]

With BalenaEtcher, same thing..

ҵi� 0
Retrieving file: /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf
Failed to mount ext2 filesystem...
** Unrecognized filesystem type **
Error reading config file

[shrewd turtle]

hmm i didn't have that issue. Is there a chance the image written was wrong or corrupted, or a bad sd card?

[chrome tide]

It's a Sandisk High Endurance 32GB, which was working perfectly fine w/ the original OS.. Doubt it's bad..

Downloading the xz file again, and will try to reimage..

Flashing .xz file this time w/ BalencaEtcher, it should be extracting it..

Nice, worked that time..

[twilit mountain]

I guess win32diskimager just wasn't smart enough to un-xz it properly?

[chrome tide]

No, I had extracted the xz file and used the .img w/ Win32Diskimager

[twilit mountain]

Well hmm I would expect that to work

Glad you got it figured out 👍

[chrome tide]

Dang it, forgot to plug in wifi before booting.. Oh well..

more to come in a hour or so, once it finishes generating my locale files..

Oh, wasn't that long, maybe 5-10 min..

LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Poor lil Pico mini, 192% load..

 Performance:

 Load:         192%              Uptime:         7m
 Memory usage: 56% of 53M        Zram usage:     7% of 255M
 CPU temp:     48°C              Usage of /:   6% of 29G

Umm...

root@luckfox-pico-mini:~# armbian-config
Initializing script
Command line is not complete. Try option "help"


root@luckfox-pico-mini:~#
root@luckfox-pico-mini:~# armbian-config help
Command line is not complete. Try option "help"

[mild hare]

@chrome tide mpwrd-menu

[chrome tide]

LOL I was just going off what the OS was telling me to use.. ;P

Hmm, the wifi NIC I'm trying to use, isn't detected it seems.. It shows when I plug it in, but nothing else.. This NIC worked on the original OS I used..

[mild hare]

I did test armbian-config during building and it worked but took a long time to load. Like a long time.

[chrome tide]

Ok, put a different WNIC in, and that worked..

Wow, the web page is an interesting touch..

[mild hare]

It eats ram only while it's open. Close it when not using it

[chrome tide]

It's femtofox/femtofox_SX1262_TCXO.yaml, not femtofox/femtofox_SX1262_XTAL.yaml right ?

[mild hare]

Tcxo for Femtofox pro

[chrome tide]

Did anyone make an exclosure for the board yet ? I know Alley Cat was working on one. And I know OSC sent me a resin printed one for testing. It's just a little to small for the hardware I am using, like the I2C rotory. and my LCD I'm using it WAY to big for it.. LOL

And no space for USB Wifi nic..

[restive scarab]

AllAboutJake made one that’s on printables, search for femtofox

[chrome tide]

My LCD is a 2.4" I2C..

[restive scarab]

None for that big an oled, Jake’s is 0.98 and alleycats is the 1.whatever inch

[chrome tide]

The Alley Cat resin enclosure I have is a 0.98 LCD I think..

[restive scarab]

Hmm the one that also fits rotary encoder?

[chrome tide]

Yup

[restive scarab]

Yeah that’s the medium sized oled

[chrome tide]

My eyes don't work that well anymore to see what's on a 0.98" LCD.. LOL

At least not for meshtastic..

[restive scarab]

The small are fine for handheld you can move close to eyes, 1.whatever is ok for desk node, I built a handheld with 2.4” and d-pad that’s devine… but caseless as still sorting PCB and firmware

[mild hare]

The AMOLED on this ebay pixel 7 pro ain't too shabby. 😉

[chrome tide]

Yea, I want this to be a desktop test node..

[chrome tide]

You offering to get me one ? ;P

[mild hare]

Hell naw

[mild hare]

Sorry I'm just always pointing out that the Femtofox was designed for solar.

[chrome tide]

I got a panel and a water proof enclosure for it.. But any info on how to set it all up ?

[restive scarab]

OSC's solar build is like 6 or 8 18650s IIRC

[mild hare]

Because they fit. 🙂

[chrome tide]

I don't have that many 18650s.. LOL

[mild hare]

Just a waveshare board.

[chrome tide]

I got one of those!

Maybe 2 or 3, actually.. LOL

I know I have some pi hat UPS boards..

Damn, still having the same issues w/ wifi.... :\

[mild hare]

"works on my machine" 😆 sry

[chrome tide]

Now it looks like none of my wifi nics are working.. Guess it's time to solder up what Nom sent me..

[chrome tide]

Hmm, interesting, it got an IP...

[shrewd turtle]

@chrome tide I may not have done it correctly, but I set it up via nmtui

some wifi cards require firmware, not sure what firmware packages are available

[chrome tide]

It's configured. That's not the issue, it seems like the kernel seg-faults..

[shrewd turtle]

ohhh that may have been issue I was seeing

[mild hare]

Add an issue on GitHub with the chipset and I can eyeball it later. About to have pizza.

[chrome tide]

Pizza was just delivered.. LOL

Now I have to take my FiL some, cuz I'm the only sober one.... :\

[shrewd turtle]

sysctl.vm.min_free_kbytes=8192 try adding that to kernel cmdline, assumming its the same panic I was seeing (which was related to not being able to grab a certain amount of consecutive memory)

[mild hare]

Let me know, that sysctl is something we have an extension for in mpwrd-os. Could be adjusted maybe.

[shrewd turtle]

not sure what the correct number is, thats likely too high, but hasn't broken yet

[mild hare]

It is kinda high

[chrome tide]

Panda Wireless USB NIC seems to be good so far..

[mild hare]

?

It's for my cyberdeck. Haven't tried on femto

[chrome tide]

I think that's the one I got.. I'd have to check amazon order history..

[chrome tide]

apt is still painful.. LOL

But I don't think that will ever change..

[mild hare]

It was even worse when we started.

[chrome tide]

netstat should be installed by default, fyi..

[mild hare]

GitHub issue

i2c-tools should be too.

[chrome tide]

I'll add to my issue

I think it's net-tools that netstats comes with..

[chrome tide]

https://github.com/mPWRD-OS/mPWRD-OS/issues/60

[restive scarab]

check if ss is installed, netstat was deprecated for it a while ago in Debian (but my muscle memory also still goes for netstat first)

[chrome tide]

ss isn't the same..

pi@nebra-1:~ $ netstat -an | grep 443
tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:443             0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN
pi@nebra-1:~ $ ss | grep 443
pi@nebra-1:~ $

That's on my Nebra node..

[restive scarab]

Oh I agree, same with ifconfig/ip

[chrome tide]

Yea, ip still shows the needed info tho..

[restive scarab]

In a wackier and tricker to parse format, let alone commands to change things

[chrome tide]

Agreed, but I really only use it to see MAC, so I can set DHCP reservations..

[restive scarab]

for port specific stuff I usually go for lsof over netstat, don’t just tell me it’s listening but what process is doing the listening

[nova frost]

The design is very human

[chrome tide]

WTH! vi is missing also!!!

[sour horizon]

Nano ate it for lunch

[chrome tide]

nano sucks.. just like pico.. LOL

[sour horizon]

:q!

The only vi command you need

[chrome tide]

I will once vi is installed.. ;P

:%s/<word to find>/<word to replace>/g Search for word, and replace w/ word, globally

https://www.atmos.albany.edu/daes/atmclasses/atm350/vi_cheat_sheet.pdf

[restive scarab]

or just use real sed instead of an editor 😉

[chrome tide]

sed doesn't work for everything. the search was just an example of many commands available in vi..

[sour horizon]

:yeet

[cerulean helm]

Why so large?

[mild hare]

Umm.

[cerulean helm]

:D

[mild hare]

It's a lifestyle choice

[cerulean helm]

I can't say much

I got OpenWRT on that

[mild hare]

I had it on a wrt54g once

[cerulean helm]

That was likely dd-wrt. The Broadcom baby brother

All my homies hate Broadcom now

[cerulean helm]

Seeing that adapter made me realize NOBODY makes a USB C WiFi dongle

So I just made my own

arduino@gadget:~$ sudo ./usb.sh 
[usb-gadget] Found UDC: 4e00000.usb
[usb-gadget] Stopping adbd service...
[usb-gadget] Tearing down existing gadget at /sys/kernel/config/usb_gadget/usb_net
[usb-gadget] Gadget torn down.
[usb-gadget] Creating gadget...
[usb-gadget] Binding to UDC: 4e00000.usb
[usb-gadget] Waiting for usb0...
[usb-gadget] usb0 up at 192.168.42.1
[usb-gadget] Done!
[usb-gadget]   USB IP  : 192.168.42.1
[usb-gadget]   DHCP    : 192.168.42.10,192.168.42.100,12h
[usb-gadget]   NAT via : wlan0
[usb-gadget]   UDC     : 4e00000.usb```

Thank you UNO Q

Technically Ethernet on USB but close enough

[mild hare]

I noticed this too. Had some made and messed up 2 traces lol.

[mild hare]

Nice to see gadget mode working!

[cerulean helm]

Completely bus powered too

USB 3 bus powered gadget. Qualcomm did one thing right

Max load is only 1 amp

Even with the LEDs

[mild hare]

"foxtail"

I should really order again with the fix. Stupid that in this day an age it's not already a thing

[cerulean helm]

Chipset on the other side?

[mild hare]

mpwrd-os made me forget, I can make pcbs, doh.

Old video

This is where I was right before @twilit mountain sidetracked me:

[cerulean helm]

Heh

[cerulean helm]

I think what annoys me the most about the Q is that they didn't give it an SD card slot. I'm already running out of room on both root and home. It technically has SDIO broken out on the bottom headers, but then you'd have to create a whole custom board for it.

Actually scratch that the most annoying part is powering it via VIN doesn't power the USB port except sometimes it does.

https://forum.arduino.cc/t/usb-power-disabled-if-using-vin-power-pin/1411831/21

[nova frost]

What's the pinout on the sdio?

There's a PCB for that™

[cerulean helm]

Super fine expansion headers. https://docs.arduino.cc/resources/pinouts/ABX00162-full-pinout.pdf

On the bottom

So no sadly there isnt a nice breakout for this

There's very few and they're made for the media breakout https://www.crowdsupply.com/image-quality-labs/iql-camera-bridge-for-arduino-uno-q

Actually how does that even work... The board side is also socket

Unless the pins are on the back of the breakout

Oh yep

[nova frost]

What's the pitch on those? They look like 2.0mm or something

Oki doke they're 1.27mm pitch

Aka smol

[shrewd turtle]

@mild hare is https://github.com/femtofox/femtofox/blob/main/foxbuntu/sysdrv/out/rootfs_uclibc_rv1106/usr/local/bin/femto-wifi-mesh-control.sh the script for controlling wifi sync (and poll state via meshtastic cli)?

the latest variation/version?

if so, was thinking of hacking it up to work on armbian for a quick test

[mild hare]

Nope a night or two ago I pushed the newest for mpwrd-os to mpwrd-menu in a testing branch so I can make sure it's solid. Once I merge it to mpwrd-menu main you'll be able to just apt-get upgrade and it will install as a disabled service.

And it will be included in the next images.

[shrewd turtle]

if you want someone to test earlier, lmk

not afraid of broken stuff 🙂

[mild hare]

Pretty sure rename this to a deb but it doesn't have the version bump so you may have to remove the installed one first. https://github.com/mPWRD-OS/mpwrd-menu/actions/runs/23285659060/artifacts/6001750653

Will test and try and get it into main tonight

[chrome tide]

Hmm, having some issues with the LCD I have.. Doesn't turn on..

I guess I could burn the old image back to an SD card and boot it up and grab everything I need from there..

Nvm, just had to set it correctly on the display page it looks like..

[polar ingot]

Sometimes my roof node freezes... it seems. unfortunatly it is powered by a POE splitter with a battery backup, so I have to climb a later, take it down, open the case, and power cycle it. Is the "boot" button broken out somewhere? or anyone have any other ideas? a waterproof button on the outside would be at least a little easier

or, I do away with the battery

[chrome tide]

Battery backup the switch, then you don't really need to worry about the node having a backup..

[nova frost]

on the pro version 1.3 there's a broken out zero ohm resistor jumper for a "kill switch"

hook it up to a garage door opener on the NC contact, and put the door opener into momentary mode?

[polar ingot]

Not a pro version 🙁

I guess knowing why it freezes and preventing that would prob be a better solution

[nova frost]

eh

whichever

[chrome tide]

Enable hostmetrics..

That might help figure it out..

[restive scarab]

remote syslog could work too if it’s already on network

[chrome tide]

Yup

[polar ingot]

seems like it could be dns..... lol

[chrome tide]

That's why I tend to use IP, instead of hostname..

[chrome tide]

I want one of these!!!!

[chrome tide]

Where is your wifi ? ;P

[chrome tide]

Ah, I printed that one for my node short named F2F1..

[polar ingot]

well something is borked.... serial says [!!!!!!] Failed to fix up PID1 enviroment.

before that some ext4-fs error seems the fancy sandisk High Endurance crapped the bed I guess

I was really hoping the battery backup would save sd cards

is there a way to run chkdisk or something from the uboot? Been a while since I messed with my foxes

[chrome tide]

fsck is the linux version..

filesystem check

[polar ingot]

yeah, but i thought it showed up unallocated when plugged into another pc

[chrome tide]

Oh from uboot...

[polar ingot]

e2fsck 1.47.4 (6-Mar-2025)
ext2fs_open2: Bad magic number in super-block
fsck.ext2: Superblock invalid, trying backup blocks...
fsck.ext2: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/sda```

I feel like i've been here before and theres no way to do it plugged into another pc

[chrome tide]

Uhh.. I think OSC said how to mount it once.. I just don't remember..

[polar ingot]

word

I wonder if I backed up my config... lol

[sour horizon]

Would be a good menu item

[polar ingot]

Well I guess I'll wait and see before re-formatting

Ive had so many sd card issues with these boards

[sour horizon]

Same total crap shoot I feel

I can take a card which has failed format it with other stuff use it and come back to femtofox and it’s fine

I do bash the shit out of them so

[chrome tide]

Use Win32DiskImager to take a backup of the SD card.. I've had 0, but I use Samsung Evo 32GB, or Samsung HE 32GB.. I only have 1 running a Sandisk HE 32GB..

[polar ingot]

I've always had great luck with sandisk in the past with like photography and stuff... but the luckfox just seems so picky. I thought these HE cards would slay

[mild hare]

I am still on the same he SanDisk 128gb since day 1 foxbuntu

Wish I had some trick to pass on.