v3.4 — 2026-07-12

Downloads

File	Use it when
firmware.bin	Updating a board that already runs this firmware — upload it through the gateway's web updater (Settings ▸ Open Firmware Updater →, or http://<gateway-ip>/ota). This is the OTA app image.
firmware.factory.bin	First flash of a blank board, over USB — bundles bootloader + partition table + app. Write it at flash address 0x0 (e.g. with the ESP web flasher).

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Gives the dashboard the companion's look, folds backup & restore into the
Settings page, teaches the gateway and the companion to tell each other which tabs
they have, and fixes a group of real robustness bugs — most importantly a web
server that froze during a paced batch and a watchdog reboot on large walls.
Drop-in upgrade: no module, MQTT or wiring changes, and backups themselves are
untouched.

Changed

• A new look — the Home Assistant design language. The dashboard is restyled to
  match the companion (which ships the same look), so the two feel like one product.
  It follows the browser/OS light or dark preference; there is no theme setting.
  Purely cosmetic — no control moved or changed behaviour.

• Backup & restore moved to Settings. The Backup Calibration and Restore
  Calibration cards now sit at the end of the Settings page; the Backup tab is
  gone. Nothing about the backup format or the restore-by-serial behaviour changed —
  only where the controls live. (The backup file is assembled in the browser from the
  existing module/EEPROM endpoints; restore posts to /api/flap/restorebysn.) An old
  #backup deep link now lands on Settings rather than breaking.

• Batch pacing no longer blocks the web server. POST /api/rs485/batch used to
  produce its step_ms stagger by sleeping between frames, on the web task — and
  the HTTP server handles one connection at a time, so a paced batch froze the whole
  web UI for the length of the cascade (up to the old 8 s cap) while further
  connections piled up in the TCP accept queue holding window buffers. The handler now
  stamps each frame with a due time, hands it to the RS-485 task (which already wakes
  every 5 ms) and returns immediately. The cascade on the wall is unchanged.

  Two contract notes: 200 now means accepted, not transmitted (sent counts
  frames accepted), and the 8 s total-pacing cap is replaced by a queue depth of 127
  paced frames in flight. A frame goes out immediately instead of paced when
  step_ms is 0, when it is longer than 48 bytes, or when the queue is full — so a
  cascade beyond 127 paced frames loses its stagger past that point. A whole-page
  redraw is one frame per module, so that only bites above 127 modules.

• The companion URL is persisted on a debounce. Two companions pointed at one
  gateway each re-register their own URL on their ~30 s heartbeat, so the stored URL
  flipped back and forth — and saving on every change meant an NVS write every ~30 s,
  forever (observed in the wild). The URL now applies to RAM instantly (the tab is
  live at once) but only reaches flash once it has held still for two minutes. A
  contested URL therefore never gets written at all, which is the right answer; a
  companion re-registers within a heartbeat of any reboot, so nothing is lost.

New

• Tab advertisement (POST /api/companion). The companion may now send tabs —
  the deep links its own UI offers — and the response always carries gwTabs, this
  firmware's. Each side then renders the other's real tabs instead of a list hard-coded
  on the far side, which is what made the Backup tab above a two-release problem.

  Both halves are optional and independent, so every old/new pairing works: an older
  companion advertises nothing and the dashboard falls back to its built-in companion
  tabs; an older gateway returns no gwTabs and the companion falls back to its own list
  (which still includes Backup, because a pre-3.4 gateway really does have that tab).

  An advertised list is taken whole or not at all — any malformed entry, a bad id
  (not [A-Za-z0-9_-]{1,24}), a label over 24 printable ASCII characters, more than 10
  tabs, or a list over 384 bytes drops the list, and the peer then shows its built-in one.
  The list is runtime-only (no flash writes: the companion re-sends it on every heartbeat)
  and is cleared when the companion deregisters.

Fixes

• Watchdog reboot on a large wall. GET /api/flap/modules sent one chunk per
  module. Each chunk could block on a slow client for up to the 3 s socket timeout, so
  ~41 modules × 3 s exceeded the 120 s web-stall threshold — the supervisor logged
  STALL: Web=0 and rebooted the gateway. It never fired below ~40 modules, which
  is why it hid for so long. The response is now coalesced into ~1400-byte chunks, feeds
  the watchdog on each flush, and aborts early if the client has gone away.

• A changed MQTT broker now takes effect. POST /api/config/mqtt saved the new
  host/port but never told PubSubClient about it, so the client kept dialling the
  boot-time broker and failed forever with rc=-2 until a reboot. It now re-points
  the client and resets the failure counter.

• TCP connect timeouts were never actually set. Several call sites used
  setTimeout(), which on NetworkClient sets the read timeout and leaves the
  connect timeout at its 3 s default — the MQTT client and three web handlers all
  meant the latter. They now call setConnectionTimeout().

• The dashboard re-downloaded its whole page on every navigation. GET / now sends
  an ETag and answers a matching If-None-Match with 304 Not Modified (~53 KB
  saved per navigation); the favicon and logo are cached for a week. The dashboard also
  gates its periodic polls so they can't stack up on the one-connection web server.

New

• Tab advertisement (POST /api/companion). The companion may now send tabs —
  the deep links its own UI offers — and the response always carries gwTabs, this
  firmware's. Each side then renders the other's real tabs instead of a list hard-coded
  on the far side, which is what made the Backup tab above a two-release problem.

  Both halves are optional and independent, so every old/new pairing works: an older
  companion advertises nothing and the dashboard falls back to its built-in companion
  tabs; an older gateway returns no gwTabs and the companion falls back to its own list
  (which still includes Backup, because a pre-3.4 gateway really does have that tab).

  An advertised list is taken whole or not at all — any malformed entry, a bad id
  (not [A-Za-z0-9_-]{1,24}), a label over 24 printable ASCII characters, more than 10
  tabs, or a list over 384 bytes drops the list, and the peer then shows its built-in one.
  The list is runtime-only (no flash writes: the companion re-sends it on every heartbeat)
  and is cleared when the companion deregisters.