r/LilyGO

Latest Changelog -> 2.6.8:

• Increased Gamestation Partitions sizes.
• Added option to erase App Partition
• Added option to always boot into Launcher
• Added "APP" menu item to reboot into the last installed firmware
• Enhanced NVS partition and partition schemes for UiFlow2
• Fix M5Stack Tab5 Wifi scan and WebUI in AP mode.
• New Device: Lilygo T-Watch-S3
• New Device: Lilygo T-Watch-Ultra
• New Device: Lilygo E-Paper S3 Pro H752-x .

Support the project

Website and Flasher Buy me a Coffee BTC: bc1q6m5sks6vhl38g8xyuzuazdv3wffsk58ffxk8rg

Astronomy Micro Station for LILYGO T-Display S3 Pro

A standalone astronomy display for the LILYGO T-Display S3 Pro (ESP32-S3).
Tracks the sun, moon, and light conditions — sunrise, sunset, golden hour, blue hour, twilight phases, moon phase and illumination — across four touch-navigated screens. Data fetched from ipgeolocation.io and cached locally for offline use.

https://github.com/sfrechette/astro-micro-station

I was very lucky (and grateful!) to recieve a pre-release T-Echo Card recently from LilyGo for testing.

Photos attached are from the unboxing, including the magnetic charger (the braided cord was a nice touch), and also a shot of the working firmware home screen. Included also is a side by side comparison with my Seeed T1000E so you can see the size difference. The T-Echo Card is a bit more chonky, and for good reason - there's so many features packed into this one little device it's going to take me a while to test them all.

I've had some fun building Meshcore firmware using Claude AI. Initial PR found here (extra eyeballs and refinements much appreciated): https://github.com/meshcore-dev/MeshCore/pull/2451

So far it's been just focused on the companion BLE radio build as there's a bit of refining and improving still required for that one. The device sent to me was the 868mhz version.

Working so far:

- Custom home screen UI for the very tiny OLED. Press A to cycle through the right pages (Status, Radio, BLE, Advert, GPS, Compass, Battery, Hibernate). Press A twice quickly to turn the screen on or off. Hold A to activate any of the toggles, including the compass calibration function.

- Torch function: quick double press of the C button activates the single white LED for a mini torch. Double press C to turn it off again. I tried activating all three for max brightness but that used too much power and caused a spontaneous reboot so we're working with just the one, which is probably bright enough for an emergency mini torch light.

- B button for reset.

- Compass working too. Might take a second calibration to get it perfect - it should be about 12 degrees off from an iPhone compass reading.

- GPS: uses the 9600baud default for the device but that works beautifully. Got a fix for the first time from cold boot in 45 seconds, which is the fastest fix of any mesh device I've owned and used in this area thus far. Also works when you disable/enable GPS in the Meshcore companion app.

- Sending and receiving: works well for Meshcore. I was able to pair, set device name, import and export configs, and send and receive messages in two byte mode and with regions without issue. Importing and exporting contacts and channels also works. I've got the default in the PR set to the usual max 350 contacts, 40 channels, 256kb offline queue size, but can confirm it also works with 500 max contacts, 8 channels, be 64kb offline queue.

As mentioned, the device used for testing is the 868mhz. The settings I tested are the Australia (Narrow) preset, being 916.575mhz, 62.5khz bandwidth, SF 7, CR 8. No issues noted thus far with lora tx or rx.

For comparison, I noted the RSSI and SNR values reported by my home repeater stats page on login:

T-Deck Pro (internal antenna):
RSSI -24
SNR 11.8

Heltec Meshpocket:
RSSI -36
SNR 11.8

T-Echo Card:
RSSI -41
SNR 11.8

T5 E-Paper S3 Pro:
RSSI -52
SNR 11.8

T-Echo Lite:
RSSI -56
SNR 11.8

Seed T1000E:
RSSI -37
SNR 12.8

**On the roadmap / still to test:**

- Battery improvements. My T-Echo Lite uses a maximum of about 15mah even when actively in use with the BLE app. I'm still working on refining battery usage for the T-Echo Card, and will report back with more precise readings. It's still higher than expected at present.

- Solar charge testing: it's unfortunately been too overcast to really assess this yet.

- More range testing with distant repeaters.

- Audio over lora: on the to-do list will be incorporating the audio voice note over lora functionality that I have built into the Meck firmware for the T-Deck Pro into this device, though I suspect it's going to be a lot more challenging given that's an esp32-s3 and this is a nrf52-based node.

Thanks for reading! Questions and comments welcome, here or on GitHub.

Obviously these are RF components, but what the hell are they exactly and what one does what? I've been digging for a while and find no technical answer. Just assumptions from content creators. If one were to find out what they do, a follow-up question I have is would you need to do any mods to enable functionality like you would with the BW16—where a capacitor is required to move from one footprint to another?

Does anybody have an idea when the external antenna version is coming back in stock?

And im thinking about getting other antennas/bigger ones to increase the Range.

Which antennas to buy or would that be a waste of money?

I tried anything with my cc1101+ with Bruce 1.13, like pressing the RST button. If u have any recommendations please share them.

As stated before this firmware has 2 variants: Mkeni which allows you to manage your device and send messages through a web guide over ethernet ( plugging the t display to your router) and Othello which is gaming centered allowing you to game over mesh. I also added mqtt configuration through the unit itself.

Added a gaming invite function since when I got my additional devices, game invites was sent to everyone but everyone joined that single game. It was a mess to fix.

All other functions seen in my previous video still applies. Focusing on the amoled version on this video which will be released first.

Contacts are now persistent but dealing with a persistent messaging issue. It's not saving to the sd card persistently. Wifi is still not working. The intent is to use wifi as a Hotspot that any device can connect to and you can configure, your device over wifi along with sending messages to contacts. I noticed when I opened the back of 2 of my devices, the wifi antenna was not plugged in. Not sure if it's intentional from the manufacturer but I can almost bet the 3 additional units I did not open up might be the same.

Again this video showcases the gaming functions.

Working through some minor bugs but she's almost ready. Finished building the web flasher which im excited about.