Tactical Pirate — Changelog

This log records meaningful project changes after they have been implemented or tested. Experimental ideas belong on the Roadmap until they are proven.

M025 — Pretty Pirate Refit & Wi-Fi Recovery

Date: September 4, 2026
Target: LILYGO T-Embed CC1101 Plus / Project Destroyer
Result: Pretty Pirate visual refit commissioned and Wi-Fi scanning restored on production hardware. Baseline e122110.

Added and Improved

• Added the full-screen Ember boot sequence and approved TACTICAL PIRATE / STORMY SAILORS MAKER LAB / READY landing screen.
• Added the RGB565 artwork path for the 320×170 TFT and corrected RGB565 byte ordering.
• Rebuilt the Ember boot asset from the approved artwork to remove the left-edge artifact and restore the complete portrait.
• Refitted Main Deck and reachable lower decks to the Stormy Sailors black, green, brass and ivory instrument-panel palette.
• Improved physical TFT readability and corrected Ship’s Hold row/footer geometry.
• Added direct READY return and a five-minute safe idle return. The dedicated five-minute timed physical test remains pending.
• Hid unfinished IR/RF tools and the empty Weapons department from production navigation while retaining their implementation for future work.

Navigation and Hardware Acceptance

• Restored Main Deck short-click department entry and physically verified it.
• Physically verified long-hold MAIN escape from lower-deck screens.
• Commissioned the boot, READY, Main Deck, lower-deck navigation, Ship’s Hold layout, Hardware Status, BLE interface and applicable input handling on the production device.

Wi-Fi Recovery

• Corrected the Bridge Remote regression that prevented Wi-Fi scanning.
• Changed Bridge Remote operation from WIFI_AP to WIFI_AP_STA so the access point and station/scanner functions can coexist.
• Removed the false scan rejection caused solely by the Bridge Remote AP being active.
• Wi-Fi Scanner passed physical hardware testing.

Known / Deferred

• IR production workflow remains uncommissioned.
• Shaw/Motorola cable-box RAW replay remains deferred under GitHub issue #4.
• IR ADD COMMAND naming/exit remains deferred under GitHub issue #5.
• IR transmit range on the tested Toshiba/NEC target remains approximately four feet.

Commissioned baseline: e122110
Commit: Commission Pretty Pirate refit and Wi-Fi recovery

M024 — Tactical Pirate Hull and Main Deck Foundation

Date: August 29, 2026
Target: LILYGO T-Embed CC1101 Plus / Project Destroyer
Result: Tactical Pirate interface architecture and commissioning model established as the new Project Destroyer baseline. Hardware acceptance of the complete system remains pending.

Hull Architecture

• Locked the Tactical Pirate 320×170 Hull interface and visual hierarchy.
• Established the boot → Landing / Ready → Main Deck operating flow.
• Defined Hull-owned navigation with universal BACK, contextual ACTION and MAIN semantics.
• Established centralized navigation and menu behaviour instead of screen-specific control hacks.
• Operational menus are hardware-aware and must not advertise capabilities that the device cannot actually provide.

Ship’s Manifest

• Weapons
• Wireless
• Reconnaissance
• Engineering
• Ship’s Hold
• Ember’s Mischief

Capability and Commissioning Model

• Defined a central hardware capability model so firmware can distinguish operational, present-but-uncommissioned, absent and failed capabilities.
• Conditional support is planned for IR, PN532/NFC and nRF24 hardware based on actual fitted equipment.
• Ship’s Hold becomes the unified storage department rather than scattering files and captured material through unrelated modules.
• The Stormy Awareness Portal is part of the planned reconnaissance and reporting architecture.

Authorization and Recovery

• Potentially disruptive active capabilities remain governed by the Letter of Marque authorization model.
• The official firmware/update channel will be stormysailors.com.
• An offline SD-card update and recovery path is also part of the locked architecture.

Engineering Direction

• Project Destroyer remains the engineering programme; The Tactical Pirate remains the product identity.
• Bruce is explicitly excluded as a source for the current capability-harvest work. New components must stand on their own architectural, quality and licensing merits.
• The project will not claim completion merely because firmware builds or the interface looks finished. Physical acceptance on the exact hardware remains the commissioning standard.

M023 — IR Broadside v2 and Control Refinement

Date: August 25–28, 2026
Target: LILYGO T-Embed CC1101 Plus
Result: Firmware and automated verification passed. Hardware acceptance remains pending.

Added

• Added IR Broadside v2 replay handling for the bundled infrared remote database.
• Added automatic RGB encoder LED idle timeout.
• Added fallback support for infrared database files stored under /infrared on the SD card when /BruceIR/Database is unavailable.
• Added technical documentation for the IR Broadside v2 implementation.

Improved

• Updated infrared RAW replay handling to preserve long space timings correctly.
• Retained 16-bit mark timing while using 32-bit handling where required for long spaces.
• Preserved stored infrared duty-cycle information during replay.
• Changed validation so sequences are rejected only when a mark value genuinely cannot be represented.
• Changed encoder lighting so the RGB LED activates during use and turns off after approximately 30 seconds of inactivity.

Database Verification

• Audited 219 bundled infrared database files.
• Identified 381 long RAW space values requiring extended timing support.
• Found zero long RAW mark values requiring unsupported mark timing.
• Verified approximately 4.4 MB of infrared database material on the Tactical Pirate SD card.

Verification

• IR Broadside fixture testing: PASS.
• PlatformIO build for lilygo-t-embed-cc1101: SUCCESS.
• RAM usage remained approximately 40%.
• Flash usage remained approximately 25%.

Hardware Status

Hardware acceptance remains PENDING. Firmware flashing encountered intermittent USB communication problems. The build and automated tests remain successful, but the milestone will not be recorded as fully hardware accepted until reliable physical-device verification is complete.

Next

• Complete physical IR Broadside acceptance testing.
• Begin Operation Ember, the full-project reliability and anti-bug campaign.
• Continue plain-language operator documentation with supporting images where useful.

M022 — Weapons Department

Date: August 24, 2026
Target: LILYGO T-Embed CC1101 Plus
Result: Active testing tools consolidated, compiled, flashed and accepted on hardware.

Added

• Added Weapons Department as a dedicated Main Deck compartment.
• Added a display-native vector naval cannon icon in the Stormy Sailors brass-and-black palette.
• Added an acknowledgement screen stating Authorized testing only — Letter of Marque required.

Reorganized

• Consolidated Enhanced Deauth, Station Deauth, NetCut, BLE stress testing, NRF24 interference testing, RF interference testing and offline credential recovery under Weapons Department.
• Removed duplicate active-tool entries from the Wi-Fi, BLE, NRF24 and RF technical menus.
• Left passive capture, spectrum analysis, interference detection and other diagnostics in their normal technical departments.

Verification

• Completed a clean PlatformIO build for lilygo-t-embed-cc1101.
• Successfully flashed M022 to the Tactical Pirate hardware.
• Confirmed the Weapons Department menu, authorization notice and cannon icon on the physical 320×170 display.

M021 — Hardware Icon Evaluation and Vector Recovery

Date: August 24, 2026
Target: LILYGO T-Embed CC1101 Plus
Result: Native vector artwork restored and accepted for continued use.

Hardware Evaluation

• Tested the first 32×32 full-colour pirate bitmap package on the physical 320×170 display.
• Tested a second tightly cropped 48×48 revision rendered at a 96×96 footprint.
• Rejected both bitmap revisions after hardware testing. Detailed desktop artwork became muddy, weak and difficult to recognize on the embedded display.

Recovered

• Removed the custom bitmap renderer and embedded bitmap data from the firmware.
• Restored the firmware’s proven native vector icons using the Stormy Sailors brass-and-black palette.
• Retained the restored Settings route and its protection from Hide/Show Apps.
• Confirmed RGB controls under Settings → LED Config.

Verification

• Completed clean PlatformIO builds for each hardware-test revision.
• Successfully flashed and evaluated each revision on the Tactical Pirate device.
• Accepted native vector rendering as the current production approach.

Deferred

• Nautical vector redesign remains a future enhancement using simplified display-native geometry.
• Detailed full-colour pirate illustrations are retained for the website and project documentation.

M020 — Pirate Icon Foundation and Settings Recovery

Date: August 24, 2026
Target: LILYGO T-Embed CC1101 Plus
Build environment: lilygo-t-embed-cc1101
Build result: Clean PlatformIO build successful; firmware flashed to the device.

Added

• First complete Tactical Pirate artwork package containing sixteen 32×32 pirate-themed icons.
• Central RGB565 icon renderer with one-bit transparency masks.
• Dedicated carousel artwork for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Sub-GHz/RF, NRF24, NFC/RFID, IR Broadside, Files, GPS, Ethernet and Settings.

Changed

• Renamed the former Config carousel entry to Settings.
• Unmatched menus temporarily retain their proven vector artwork rather than displaying misleading icons.
• Firmware documentation now describes Bruce as the upstream foundation while recognizing original Stormy Sailors code and workflow.

Fixed

• Restored direct access to the Settings page from the Main Deck.
• Settings can no longer be hidden through Hide/Show Apps.

Known Issues and Testing

• Hardware review of icon centring, readability and colour remains in progress.
• LoRa, FM, Clock, Scripts and several secondary screens still require dedicated Stormy Sailors artwork.
• Back/Main Deck navigation still requires a complete screen-by-screen audit.