v1.4.0 — Wi-Fi Recovery, Station Telemetry, and T-Beam 1W Support

openHop Modem v1.4.0 adds LilyGO T-Beam 1W support, improves recovery from Wi-Fi and network outages, and expands Station G2/G3 diagnostics with optional AGC recovery and Grove BME280 telemetry.

This release also fixes a GPIO safety issue where boards without configured battery sensing could unintentionally use GPIO0.

New Hardware: LilyGO T-Beam 1W

Added a dedicated firmware target for the LilyGO T-Beam 1W featuring:

• ESP32-S3
• SX1262 with external PA
• L76K GNSS
• SH1106 OLED
• Wi-Fi/TCP modem transport
• Native USB CDC
• Calibrated battery-voltage telemetry
• Board-temperature telemetry
• Automatic cooling-fan control

Cooling

The fan uses a temperature-controlled hysteresis:

• ON: 45 °C or above
• OFF: below 40 °C

The fan starts ON and remains on if temperature sensing is unavailable or returns invalid data, providing a fail-safe cooling state.

SX1262 drive is capped at 22 dBm. The board's external PA provides the higher antenna-side RF output.

T-Beam 1W RF output, TCXO behavior, battery accuracy, and cooling behavior still require physical-board validation.

Station G2/G3 AGC Recovery

Added an optional persistent AGC recovery setting for Station G2/G3 devices affected by reported receiver "deafness."

Recovery is deferred while the radio is:

• Receiving a packet
• Transmitting
• In standby
• Within the 10-second post-TX response window

AGC recovery is disabled by default because each reset briefly interrupts reception.

For affected stations, a 4-second interval is recommended. Setting the interval to 0 disables recovery.

Radio diagnostics now report:

• Successful AGC reset count
• Time since the last successful reset

AGC recovery is an optional workaround and is not guaranteed to resolve every reception issue.

Grove BME280 Telemetry

Station G2/G3 can now use an optional BME280 connected to the Grove I2C port.

Telemetry exposed through /api/stats includes:

• Temperature
• Relative humidity
• Absolute pressure

Both common BME280 addresses are detected automatically:

• 0x76
• 0x77

Readings are cached, failed or stale samples are marked unavailable, and missing sensors are periodically retried without interfering with modem operation.

Wi-Fi Recovery Improvements

Saved-network connections now use bounded connection deadlines and retry backoff instead of potentially waiting indefinitely.

During Wi-Fi recovery:

• USB modem processing continues.
• Radio processing continues.
• Saved-network reconnect attempts use bounded timeouts.
• The station interface is recovered when necessary.

During initial setup, the fallback setup AP remains available while the modem attempts to connect to the saved network.

After the modem has successfully joined the configured network once, later Wi-Fi outages do not automatically expose a new unauthenticated setup portal.

TCP Recovery

Network state changes now correctly invalidate stale TCP modem sessions.

This includes:

• Wi-Fi disconnects
• Lost-IP events
• IP address changes

Associated parser and authentication state is also cleared.

The displayed modem IP now follows the currently usable network interface instead of retaining a stale address.

Live RF Configuration

Supported RF front-end and AGC settings can now be applied immediately without rebooting.

Network-related configuration changes still require a reboot. API responses indicate when a reboot has been scheduled.

Radio Configuration Safety

Transmission is now blocked after an incomplete radio configuration update until the radio has been successfully configured.

Additional radio-setting return values are also checked before TX readiness is restored.

This prevents transmission using a partially applied or invalid radio configuration.

GPIO0 Battery-Sensing Fix

Fixed an issue where omitted battery configurations could implicitly fall back to GPIO0.

Battery sensing now defaults to disabled pins when no battery input is configured.

Invalid calibrated battery configurations are rejected before GPIO configuration occurs.

This prevents battery sensing from interfering with GPIO0 functions such as the PRG/display-page button on boards including the Heltec V3.

Setup Portal Security

Setup portal requests are now validated against the active AP interface before allowing:

• Configuration access
• Wi-Fi scanning
• Configuration changes

This prevents the unauthenticated setup portal from being accessed through the normal station interface while the modem is operating in AP+STA recovery mode.

Compatibility

• Existing modem wire-protocol command IDs are unchanged.
• Existing frame layouts are unchanged.
• No host protocol migration is required.
• Network-related configuration changes continue to require reboot.
• Station AGC recovery remains optional and disabled by default.

T-Beam 1W Power Note

Battery telemetry reports voltage only and does not estimate battery charge percentage.

For sustained high-power operation, the recommended power source is a 7.4 V battery pack capable of at least 2 A discharge. USB-C power may be insufficient for sustained high-power operation.

Testing & Documentation

Documentation and host regression coverage have been expanded for:

• Wi-Fi recovery
• TCP session recovery
• Setup portal isolation
• GPIO safety
• AGC maintenance
• BME280 telemetry
• Radio configuration safety
• T-Beam 1W behavior

What's Changed

• fix(station): reset SX1262 AGC periodically on G2 and G3 by @wishbone1138 in #77
• feat(station): expose Grove BME280 telemetry on G2 and G3 by @wishbone1138 in #78
• Add LilyGO T-Beam 1W support by @javitab in #79
• release: openHop Modem v1.4.0 by @yellowcooln in #84
• firmware: update generated firmware assets [skip ci] by @yellowcooln in #85

New Contributors

• @wishbone1138 made their first contribution in #77
• @javitab made their first contribution in #79

Full Changelog: v1.3.0...v1.4.0