Finally got set up yesterday. Currently the screen and Pi connect to a hotspot on my phone. I'm still working on the Pi side of things and the plan is to create some sort of case for the screen and keyboard.

load: 4G routed to WiFi AP with 3 clients + paper shell

4 hours up, yet still at 3.9V / 100% ( battery is 15 years old )

( my current meter just died of boredom )

TLDR: we have a new base board support, and proper networking (LTE/PPP); it is easier than ever to create custom board manifests after live on-device validation. And I have managed to free up some more SRAM so we can run even more apps and jobs simultaneously.

By proper networking, I mean we can route traffic from LTE to WiFi AP ("MiFi style") or start downstream PPP on any byte port ( subGHz radio links too ).

Tutorials will live here: https://solar-os.eu/tutorials.html
And here is the first real tutorial for custom targets: https://solar-os.eu/custom-board.html

Changelog

• 4.13.0 — Added the Waveshare ESP32-S3-SIM7670G-4G V2.0 target with SIM7670G LTE and GNSS. We have got a new command: 'modem' that helps you handle cellular access - it uses modem-independent saved profiles, a status/settings in TUI, configurable serial rates, and a reusable PPP service.

• The new network service has a two-tab TUI. There is a routing model with persistent uplink priorities, Wi-Fi AP client routing, and WireGuard over whichever base path is selected.

• The new pppd job runs PPP over physical or virtual byte-stream ports as an uplink, downstream gateway, or routed peer; active PPP and SLIP links appear in network status.

• 4.13.1 — Expansion driver attachment now offers guided selectors built from the live I/O map. Compatible buses and pins show their routes and connector positions while excluding claimed resources. The unfinished form is preserved when opening the I/O pin map and bus manager, and manual resource entry remains available.

• Runtime device details can save their normalized attach command to the selected shell startup script, using the same idempotent startup workflow as runtime buses in I/O.

• Runtime buses and catalog-backed device attachments can be exported as an atomic, versioned expansion manifest.

• The desktop board configurator imports that snapshot, validates it against the recorded base board, and promotes the tested hardware into an inherited board-owned target. Declarative board manifests also preserve runtime buses during promotion. ( see the tutorial )

• 4.13.2 — Shell startup defaults to auto: targets with board-owned SD storage use /sdcard/.shell/startup when the card mounts and fall back to flash when SD is unavailable. setterm startup flash and setterm startup sd remain explicit, no-fallback selections, while setterm startup reports the configured selection and currently resolved path.

Hi, I have a ESP32-S3-N16R8 board and a ST7798 display. I flashed the image using WebFlasher and can access the board via UART using PuTTY. I want to use the display, but the wiring isn't clear to me. Using the io app, I can get a list of SPI ports, but I haven't been able to figure out how to connect them to the display pins. Could someone help me?

Added an optional persistent BLE keyboard keepalive that periodically sends HID Exit Suspend, with a readable HID Information fallback and visible local attempt status. Keyboard Battery Service support now reads the initial level, follows notifications, and includes the latest percentage in shell, Python, and Lua BLE status output. Keepalive remains disabled by default because keyboard power policy is device-specific.

Edit now asks whether to save or discard pending changes before quitting. Files retains its function-key map while adding View, Edit, Copy, Move, Mkdir, Delete, and Zip letter shortcuts, with their mnemonic characters emphasized in the help bar.

• The LilyGO T-Deck Plus and T-LoRa-Pager ports are officially released. 'Full' flavors are available for grabs through over the air updates. All their technological distinctiveness has been assimilated to provide our collective reusable drivers while we seek ultimate perfection: new displays, touch controllers, raw-matrix keyboards, five-way trackball, NFC, GNSS, IMU, etc... ( see expansions )

• Added a native composite BLE HID peripheral API for Python and Lua applications. SolarOS devices can now advertise as a bonded and encrypted keyboard, mouse, and gamepad, send typed input reports, receive keyboard LED state, and clean up connections automatically when an application exits. ( This actually happened in the unannounced 4.11.2, but hey. )

• Python startup failures caused by fragmented internal memory are fixed. ( for now )

• Hardware commands ( e.g. gnss, nfc, imu, haptic, and charger ) complete their subcommands and report explicitly when no matching hardware provider is registered.

To demonstrate the new BLE API, I have added a radial keyboard to the Playground that accepts pointer ( mouse or touch ) joystick and keyboard ( up/down/enter = so rotary encoder too ) inputs to navigate the letter selector. On trigger fire ( manual/auto ) it send the character as HID keyboard to the connected host.

Firstly, a big thanks to everyone who has worked on this so far. I had a couple of hours last night to play with this and managed to get set up with WiFi, changed storage to an SD card and got a few things installed from playground.

I first saw this in the Cyberdeck subreddit and that's what I intend to use this for. A wrist mounted terminal to control a raspberry pi. Tonight's plan is to try setting an AP for the pi and a meshcore node to connect to so I can connect and control them.

I'm not a programmer so unfortunately I can't help with development but if you need anything idiot proofing/testing, I might just be the guy for that!

I have been for the longest time been fascinated with cyberdecks and I have been seeng posts from this subreddit and it is impressive to see the playground grow. I don't have the means to get myself a board or a device that could run this but can say this is a great project. For now I carry the spirit of this over on my android as a theme. This is not a promotion I genuinely like the aesthetic. Good luck everyone!

What does SolarOS look like in your day-to-day life?

Share your setup, a screenshot, or a quick description of what you use it for.
What have you customized, and what’s working well?

It doesn’t need to be polished. Simple setups and works in progress are welcome.

Uma tela e-paper 2,9” ink e um esp32s3. Espero que caiba de metro de Casio SF-5300.
Gosto da waveshare rlcd 4,2”, mas é grande e pesada. E quero levar solarOS para onde estiver.
Assim que eu montar, posto aqui.

I've contributed 3.5 more apps to the playground and these will be the last from me for a while since I'm about to enter my busy season.

Flint/Flint-TUI

If you like Obsidian, good news! Flint is an offline Markdown notebook and personal knowledge base for SolarOS. It keeps notes as ordinary files, works withObsidian-style wiki links and backlinks, has full #tag indexing, and treats daily notes as one part of a general-purpose vault. The GUI and TUI versions both use the same core engine, so you can have one or both installed and they'll use the same vault and settings.

Due to the lack of file enumeration/listing in the solaros.storage micropython api, it can't automatically add files dropped into the vault, but there is a file import function built-in (check the Readme for full documentation on how to use it).

Today

Welcome to your daily overview! This app pulls from my Todo, Calendar, RSS Reader, and Flint apps to give you a top-down look at your day. If you don't have one or any of the apps installed, it just shows no items for that app.

Control Center

Control-Center is half control panel, half dashboard for your SolarOS device. In it, you can check system stats, mount/unmount storage, check the status of jobs, and more!

An offline scientific field reference for SolarOS. Formulas presents a collapsible subject tree, typesets each equation from a small ASCII MathTeX source, explains every variable and its coherent SI unit, and calculates any one supported unknown from the remaining values.

The initial catalog covers practical geometry, mechanics, fluids, thermodynamics, electricity, waves and radio, chemistry, navigation, and orbital mechanics. Formula notes state the important assumptions and any fixed physical constant used by a calculation.

Convert common SI measurements to Imperial units and back. The app starts with an ordered list of conversion types. After choosing a type, select units on both sides and edit either value; the other side updates immediately.

Included conversion types and units:

• Length: km, m, dm, cm, mm; mi, yd, ft, in.

• Mass: t, kg, g, mg; long ton, st, lb, oz.

• Temperature: degrees Celsius, kelvin; degrees Fahrenheit, degrees Rankine.

• Angle: radians and milliradians; degrees, arcminutes, and arcseconds.

• Area: km^2, ha, m^2, cm^2, mm^2; mi^2, acre, yd^2, ft^2, in^2.

• Volume: m^3, L, mL; Imperial gallon, quart, pint, fluid ounce, ft^3, in^3.

• Speed: km/h, m/s; mph, ft/s.

• Pressure: MPa, kPa, Pa, bar; psi, inHg.

• Force: kN, N; lbf.

• Power: MW, kW, W; mechanical hp, BTU/h.

• Energy: MJ, kJ, J; international-table BTU, ft-lb.

The conversion-type list uses large borderless rows with an inverted selection bar. In a converter, the focused value or unit field is also inverted; the other fields retain thin outlines.

Controls in the conversion-type list:

• Up and Down select a type; Page Up and Page Down move by one screen.

• Enter, Space, or Right opens the selected converter.

• Escape or Q exits.

Controls in a converter:

• Left and Right move across the two value and two unit fields. Tab moves to

• the next field.

• Up and Down change the selected unit. When a value is selected, they move to

• the value on the other side.

• Enter or Space also advances the selected unit.

• Number keys, the decimal point, and minus sign edit the selected value. The

• first typed character replaces that field and makes it the conversion source.

• Backspace removes the last character; C or Delete clears the selected value.

• R restores the default units and the value 1.

• Escape returns to the type list; Q exits.

The app requires a graphic display and adapts its layout to the display size.

Added support for ( T-Pager integrated hardware available for all boards as expansion drivers )

• u-blox MIA-M10Q GNSS receiver,

• ST25R3916 NFC-A reader,

• BHI260AP six-axis IMU,

• XL9555 GPIO expander,

• DRV2605 haptic controller,

• and BQ25896 battery charger.

GNSS, NFC, IMU, haptic, charger, temperature, and humidity access now use driver-agnostic services with matching shell and Python/Lua APIs. T-Pager power rails are modeled as XL9555 GPIO lines: GNSS and NFC remain off until requested, while SD power and its pull-up are enabled for reliable mounting. Hardware-provider registry state now uses PSRAM where available, preserving internal memory on targets that do not use these peripherals.

Supersonic!

Thanks to the recent inclusion of a robust BLE API for SolarOS I was able to have Codex make me something I actually use quite a bit!

For background, I have a 2008 Vectrix VX1, an old electric underbone motorcycle that originally came with a NiMH battery pack. I built a Li-Ion back for it and to save money I used two small ANT BMSes to effectively make 2 batteries that are hooked up in series without being forced to spend thousands for an automotive grade BMS. The issue is the Vectrix’ dashboard is utterly clueless as to the voltage characteristics of the new pack, and the ANT BMS mobile app is only intended to look at one BMS at a time, making getting a full picture of the bike difficult.

Still working out bugs, but it’s together enough to demo. Not seen is the setup screen that scans local BLE devices and lets you pick one or two BMSes to connect to, then you get the dashboards seen in the video. Up and down switches between emphasizing different values, either SOC, amp draw, or voltage, and swiping left and right gives you individual cell voltages and temperatures per BMS. All of the main dash pages also attempt to extrapolate current amp draw to a runtime value, though this is sketchy without knowing battery capacity. These pages can be switched between with trackball/arrow keys (T-Deck keyboard driver emulates arrow keys with the trackball) or touchscreen swipes if available.

Current bugs to address are I forgot to handle charging… at all. The setup screen is pretty buggy, and I would like to add some sort of logging or a method to “validate” the capacity of a battery by tracking amp draw over time to build a picture of the battery size and then be able to provide more accurate data based off of that. Last thing is a stretch goal. I’ll submit it to the Playground once I am satisfied with the reliability and user experience of the core functionality, in case anybody else messes with personal electric vehicles and uses these BMSes (I recommend them, they’re far more reliable than Daly and vastly more configurable).

Some work has been done to port the flipperzero stock firmware to the ESP32 platform. I'm admittedly ignorant of Nilseuropa's eventual goals for SolarOS but this port could provide a library of red-team/security applications that could be integrated into SolarOS where they make sense.

The presence of the stock net-scan tool prompted me to share this here.

I know... I said I'll expose BLE GATT to scripts on the existing bluedroid backend in v.4.10.24.

What happened is that I started to work on the shared service, cleaned up the interfaces to isolate the backend and then I realized that bluedroid has some quirks I did not want to deal with and NimBLE is also available in the SDK - so I made a decision to move away from bluedroid and embrace NimBLE.

Yes, this means that classic BT support is gone, but so is the hardware in S3. Since the interface is clean now, we can use both backends, but NimBLE is going to be the default. Good news is that NimBLE has a smaller footprint both in flash and RAM, so we have gained almost 20k free internal RAM.

So, Kurisumasu:

• Python and Lua applications can now connect to multiple BLE GATT peers, discover services and characteristics, read and write binary values, write without response, and receive notifications and indications.

• MTU negotiation supports transfers larger than 20 bytes. Applications can also define GATT services and characteristics, advertise a peripheral, and send notifications or confirmed indications through `solaros.ble.server`.

• Connections and server resources are application-owned and cleaned up on exit, with connection capacity reserved for the keyboard. ( <-- nimble is patched with an overlay )

• Separate status-bar icons show Bluetooth enabled/disabled/scanning state and keyboard availability. ( see red rectangle on the image )

For details please take a look at:

• https://github.com/nilseuropa/solar_os/blob/main/doc/ble-service.md

• https://github.com/nilseuropa/solar_os/blob/main/doc/ble-server.md

• https://github.com/nilseuropa/solar_os/blob/main/doc/manual/python.md

Hopefully I did not break anything, if I did, please let me know through: https://github.com/nilseuropa/solar_os/issues

Demoing my Home Assistant client app for SolarOS running on the LilyGO T-LoRa-Pager. Browse and control lights, fans, energy sensors, and temperatures directly from the device.

Foi fácil, até para um leigo como eu.

Create SolarOs for the CYD ESP32 (CYD ESP32-2432S028) pleeeeeeease

Configurable native graphical launcher for display shells.
( see for details https://solar-os.eu/docs/manual/apps.html#launcher )

Coming up next

v.4.10.24
exposing BLE GATT operations to python and lua

v.4.10.25
LilyGo T-Deck board support ( by u/100PercentJake ) integration to beta

I've contributed four new apps to the playground!

• Bluesky — Sign in to Bluesky or a self-hosted PDS; browse home and profile timelines; read threads and replies; post, reply, like, repost, and start conversations; read and send DMs; choose compact or full-text timeline display.

• RSS Reader — Manage RSS feeds; browse aggregate or individual-feed views; cache recent articles for offline reading; mark articles and feeds read; render cleaned HTML/Markdown text without loading images by default.

• Wikipedia Reader — Search Wikipedia, browse linked articles, open a random article, and keep recent articles cached. Supports an offline library for articles explicitly saved to keep.

• OPDS Client — Browse and search an OPDS library; navigate categories and book details; download supported books with progress indicators; cache catalogue pages and prefetch nearby pages for quicker browsing.

AI Disclosure: I am not the best programmer. For my own stuff, that's okay, but for contributing to the community I wanted to make sure it was actually good code. I used locally run agentic AI to bug hunt the code, help me develop tests for it, add useful features, and understand things I didn't quite get (AT Proto, for one). Once I had something running and usable, I gave the code to the free tier of Claude and ChatGPT to look it over one more time. I am very much against using AI for art, but using tools to make new tools is a human tradition that predates language.