firmware/.github/nightly/release_notes.md

Help Test 2.8 - Flash a Nightly, Send Feedback

We're preparing the 2.8 release, and we need your help shaking it out on real hardware. The web flasher now has a built-in feedback form. Flash a nightly, use your node like you normally would, and tell us what you find. Every report on a real board moves the release forward.

⚠️ 2.8 nightlies are experimental, pre-release builds and can be unstable. Please read the warnings and only flash hardware you can afford to fully erase. Back up your config first.

Big changes

There are a number of fundamental changes to 2.8 that require a heads-up. Please review some of these higher profile changes so that you are aware of them before installing:

• Node numbers (ID) are now derived from the public-key identity of the node
• XEdDSA based packet signing
• Reduction of long-name to 25 bytes
• Precise position no longer allowed on known-keys (public mesh. Please use private channels for this)
• Telemetry and position are off-by-default and must be opted into
• Ground-up redesigned NodeDB storage and traffic management
• Completely new allocation of LoRa Regions and presets, including ham specific carve-outs

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How to help in 3 steps

1. Flash a 2.8 nightly from the web flasher onto supported hardware.
2. Make sure your apps / clients are up to date with the latest release in order to support the 2.8 firmware features like packet signing.
3. Use it normally for a while - send messages, move around, let it mesh, sleep, and wake. Try the features you actually rely on.
4. Open the feedback form in the web flasher and tell us what happened - good, bad, or broken. "Works great on my board" is genuinely useful data too.

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Where we most need coverage

The more different boards and setups we hear from, the better. Especially valuable:

• A variety of supported boards
• Both radios and roles - routers, clients, repeaters, and low-power/sleep configurations.
• Different regions and channel/modem-preset combinations.
• Bluetooth pairing and reconnection from Android and iOS.
• Upgrade paths - flashing 2.8 over an existing 2.x install and confirming your config/keys survive.
• Peripherals - GPS, screens (OLED/E-Ink/TFT), sensors, and buttons.

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What makes a feedback report actionable

The feedback form captures a lot automatically, but the more of the following you include, the faster we can act:

Include	Why it helps
Exact board / variant	Behavior is often board-specific (e.g. rak4631, heltec-v3, t1000-e).
Build identifier	The nightly version / commit / date you flashed, so we can reproduce against the right build.
What you did	Concrete steps leading up to the problem - the shorter the repro, the better.
Expected vs. actual	What you thought would happen, and what actually happened.
How often	Every time? Once? Only after a reboot or after X hours?
Logs / screenshots	Serial or app logs, and photos of the screen or error, when you have them.
Environment	Region, phone OS + app version, and anything unusual about your setup.

Especially flag these

• Boot loops, hangs, watchdog resets, or unexpected reboots
• Config, channel, or key loss after flashing or upgrading
• Regressions - something that worked on your previous (stable) firmware but is now broken
• Meshing / DM problems between a 2.8 node and nodes on other firmware
• Power regressions - noticeably worse battery life

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Good feedback vs. vague feedback

Vague: "It's broken, keeps rebooting."

Actionable: "On a rak4631 flashed with the 2.8 nightly from <date/commit>, the node reboots every time I open the Android app (v2.7.15) and tap Position. Happens every time. Serial log attached, region US."

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Note

Thank you for testing. Reports from real hardware - including the boring "everything works" ones - are exactly what let us promote 2.8 from nightly preview to a stable release with confidence.

Changes

Radio & mesh protocol

• Packet Signing via XEdDSA (#10478) plus a BaseUI signing status UI (#10841), unsigned-packet policy hardening with test coverage (#10858), and runtime-toggleable MESHTASTIC_LOCKDOWN hardening for nRF52 (#10349, opt-in via #10712).
• Traffic Management Module for packet forwarding - dedup, rate limiting, role-aware policing (#9358 base, #10706 dedup/rate-limit expansion, #10745 next-hop cache overflow store, #9921 congestion-aware position interval/hop-exhaustion tuning).
• Automatic variable hop limits based on live mesh activity and message-size estimation (#10176).
• Mesh beacon feature and admin controls (#10618 base implementation, #10839 second pass adding beacon admin/config).
• Noise floor tracking with a sliding-window estimate (#9347).
• Hash table index for O(1) packet history lookups - improves routing/dedup performance on busy meshes (#9499).
• New amateur-radio regions: 70cm (#10627), 1.25m/125cm (#10638), 2m/~144MHz (#10623); EU regions merge plus Narrow/Lite region enablement for EU (#10675, #10120); LoRa region preset map for cleaner per-region defaults (#10736).
• TinyFast and TinySlow modem presets added to config and menu (#10597).
• LoRa config changes now apply live without a reboot (#9962); LoRa settings expansion and validation improvements (#9878).
• Position privacy: direct-send position packets are clamped to channel precision (#10383), and public/known-key position precision is clamped similarly (#10665) and honors explicit channel settings to prevent location leaks (#10513).
• Licensed operators are now prevented from rebroadcasting packets to/from unlicensed users, for regulatory compliance (#9958).
• Packets with missing/invalid hop_start (pre-hop firmware) are now deprecated/blocked (#9476).
• Spoof detection added for UDP multicast packets (#9905).
• Low-bandwidth conversion support added to MeshRadio (#10595).
• ATAK Plugin V2 implemented (drops legacy unishox2 compression) (#10105), including TAKTALK voice/text chat message and room data structures.
• Ethernet HTTP/HTTPS API server ported to RP2350 + W5500 boards (#10573), plus Ethernet OTA support for RP2350/W5500 (#10136).
• Optional LED_LORA indicator to show LoRa TX activity (#10465), and an LED indicator for LoRa RX (#10674).
• GPS time sync: device now sets its clock from GPS every 30 minutes (#10737); GPS is skipped at startup if the LoRa region is unset, to save battery (#10386); GPS model/baudrate now cached across reboots to skip a full sweep (#10544).
• Config: position & telemetry broadcast are now opt-in rather than always-on (#10929).
• Extra-repeat tolerance - device tolerates a configurable number of heard repeats before cancelling its own rebroadcast, with tolerance suppressed when the mesh is busy or dense (recent local branch work).

UI / display - BaseUI

BaseUI is the current default graphical UI (src/graphics/Screen.cpp, draw/UIRenderer, draw/MenuHandler, draw/CompassRenderer, draw/NotificationRenderer, draw/NodeListRenderer).

• "Ham Mode" - first implementation (#10663).
• Color support for TFT-equipped nodes (#10233).
• Status-message display added to Favorite/NodeList screens (#9504, #10197).
• Hex picker UI added for entering hex values (#10650).
• Save/restore of frame visibility state across sessions (#10576).
• BLE pairing PIN now shown via a proper on-screen banner (#8902).
• Compass rendering/behavior improvements (#10166).
• Emote handling refactor (#9896).

UI / display - InkHUD

InkHUD is the e-ink-optimized UI (src/graphics/niche/InkHUD).

• Offline map tiles with zoom controls (#10785) and general GPS UX improvements (#10846).
• Full touch support for the T5 E-Paper S3 (#10286) and a full InkHUD port for the LilyGo T5 E-Paper S3 Pro (#10211).
• "Wipe all messages" option (#10721).
• T-mini E-Ink S3 support added (#9856).

UI / display - MUI

MUI is the older/legacy graphical UI menu system, still selectable alongside BaseUI (draw/MenuHandler's MuiPicker/switchToMUIMenu).

• WiFi map-tile download adapted for Heltec V4 (#10011).

UI / display - shared / cross-cutting

Touches the display driver layer or more than one UI system at once.

• InkHUD and BaseUI message store unified into a shared implementation (#10596).
• T-mini E-Ink S3 support landed for both InkHUD and BaseUI (#9856).
• Board-specific TFT driver support and simplified TFT ifdef chains for easier porting (#10827, #10803); faster TFT color conversion (#10814); touchscreen variant flags (VARIANT_TOUCHSCREEN/ENABLE_TOUCH_INT) added for new touch boards (#10815).

Backend / developer-facing features

Memory & stability infrastructure

• MemClass.h - a central memory-class ladder providing fail-safe-small defaults across constrained platforms (#10901).
• MemAudit - per-subsystem heap accounting reported in the boot log (#10900).
• nRF52 heap tiers and SoftDevice RAM reservation right-sized, freeing an extra ~8KB heap arena (#10898, #10903).
• Native Portduino malloc shim added for more realistic memory behavior in simulation (#10677).
• Bluetooth memory freed automatically when Wi-Fi is enabled or Bluetooth is disabled (#10398); Bluetooth wait is skipped entirely when disabled (#10571).
• NodeDB "warm store" - new persistent warm-tier node storage layer (#10705 base, #10746/#10759 right-sizing for constrained platforms, #10809 fixing associated spiLock deadlocks).
• 2.8 NodeDB shrink/decoupling/restructuring to reduce per-node memory footprint (#10413).
• Flash hardening, filesystem platform unification, and a write-behind LFS cache for STM32WL/nRF52 - a storage-format break (#10171).

New APIs / module-author infrastructure

• MCP server added for interacting with Meshtastic devices and driving a testing framework / TUI, later extracted to its own repo (#10194, #10861).
• Native "sensors" simulation support for Portduino (#10748); PortduinoSetOptions to override the realhardware flag for tests (#10157).
• Hardfault handler added for STM32, making crashes visibly obvious in logs (#10071).
• BinarySemaphorePosix implemented with proper pthread synchronization for native builds (#9895).
• NimBLE parameter overhaul, including a fix attempt for incompatible BLE bond cleanup (#10741).
• STM32 ADC support added to AnalogBatteryLevel (#9369).
• JSON library dependency removed from firmware builds while retaining full JSON support in meshtasticd (#10152) - reduces firmware footprint for module authors relying on the JSON path.
• Improved manual build flow / developer build ergonomics (#8839).- External Notifications module logic fully reworked for more flexible notification rules (#10006).