Roadmap

Roadmap

What OpenESL wants to get better at, roughly in order. Nothing here has a date: it is a spare-time project, and the order changes when hardware turns up or someone sends a pull request. Smaller items are open issues.

Next

• More label models, with red first. SoluM M2 labels, on the same ZBS243 chip as today's two, so the radio, updates and flashing stay the same and only the panel is new:

  • the 2.9" black/white/red (ST-GR29000) (#255): in the firmware as experimental, waiting for someone to try it on a real label,
  • the 4.2",
  • the 2.6" and 1.6".

  The image format, the AP's drawing and the designer already have a red plane; what is new for each model is its entry in shared/models.json, the panel settings in the label firmware, and testing on a real label. The larger screens also need fewer round trips for their bigger images (#180). Have one of these, or another label? See Adding hardware.

• Choosing the radio channel on the AP's Settings page, instead of the fixed channel 25 (#256; #217 for the wireless C6).

• Measured battery life. The figures in the power budget are calculated; they will be measured on real labels and published, and the label can save more while the panel refreshes (#261).

Later

• Labels that find the AP by themselves: a label that loses the AP tries a few channels and stays on the one that answers (#258).
• Several APs in one place: one AP keeps the labels and the API, and extra radios cover more rooms (#259).
• Security on the radio: content and label firmware that only your AP can send (see SECURITY.md for what is not protected today) (#260).
• Better range in practice: signal history per label on the Dashboard, and measured range per antenna and transmit power (#261).
• Home Assistant without polling: the AP tells the integration when a label checks in or gets a problem, instead of the integration reading the list of labels every few minutes (#270).
• Layouts: rotated text (#176), fonts without new firmware (#177), more fields and UTF-8 (#182), date and week in layouts (#183).

Some day

• Labels with other chips, which also means flashing with an ordinary debug probe instead of the jig:
  • SoluM M3 "Newton" (SiLabs EFR32), also sold in black/white/red/yellow and with a button,
  • Hanshow Nebular (nRF52).
• Buttons, LED and NFC on the labels that have them, passed on to webhooks and Home Assistant.

Want to help?

Testing on labels and boards we do not have is the most useful thing right now. Open an issue or read Contributing.