🐞 [Bug]: changing operator callsign may fail silently

nolith commented 2 months ago

Firmware Version

v2.3.13.83f5ba0

What did you do?

I have a 433Mhz node with Call Sign set to IU5BON, after finding other hamradio nodes with a long name in the format CALLSIGN-ESSID I decided to change mine to IU5BON-9 to better identofy multiple nodes on the same callsign.

The app allowed me to save the configuration but nothing changed.

Expected Behavior

The Call Sign, and node long name should change

Current Behavior

I connected the serial port and this is what I found while sending my modified callsign

INFO | ??:??:?? 719 Telling client we have new packets 10
INFO | ??:??:?? 719 BLE notify fromNum
DEBUG | ??:??:?? 719 [Router] Add packet record (id=0x9a4fd6ba fr=0x00 to=0x54, WantAck=1, HopLim=0 Ch=0x0 Portnum=6 priority=70)
DEBUG | ??:??:?? 719 [Router] handleReceived(REMOTE) (id=0x9a4fd6ba fr=0x00 to=0x54, WantAck=1, HopLim=0 Ch=0x0 Portnum=6 priority=70)
DEBUG | ??:??:?? 719 [Router] Module 'Admin' wantsPacket=1
INFO | ??:??:?? 719 [Router] Received Admin from=0x0, id=0x9a4fd6ba, portnum=6, payloadlen=26
ERROR | ??:??:?? 719 [Router] Can't decode protobuf reason='string overflow', pb_msgdesc 0x3c151aac
ERROR | ??:??:?? 719 [Router] Error decoding protobuf module!
ERROR | ??:??:?? 719 [Router] Can't decode protobuf reason='string overflow', pb_msgdesc 0x3c151aac
ERROR | ??:??:?? 719 [Router] Error decoding protobuf module!
DEBUG | ??:??:?? 719 [Router] Module 'Admin' considered
DEBUG | ??:??:?? 719 [Router] Module 'Admin' handled and skipped other processing
INFO | ??:??:?? 719 From Radio onread
INFO | ??:??:?? 719 getFromRadio=STATE_SEND_PACKETS
DEBUG | ??:??:?? 719 encoding toPhone packet to phone variant=11, 12 bytes
INFO | ??:??:?? 719 From Radio onread

So I tested with the CLI

meshtastic --set-ham IU5BON-9
Connected to radio
Setting Ham ID to IU5BON-9 and turning off encryption
Writing modified channels to device

But the device didn't upgrade its config, with meshtastic --info I still get Owner: IU5BON (5BON).

As a last attempt I did meshtastic --set-owner IU5BON-9 that worked but removed my IsLicensed flag as the iOS App was no longer showing me as an ham. At this point I did meshtastic --set-ham IU5BON-9 and now everything is ok.

Now the iOS app shows the right information but I am afraid of doing any config change from my phone as it may revert/not-work.

Participation

[ ] I am willing to submit a pull request for this issue.

Additional comments

Overall I found very confusing that setting the ham radio mode is not consistent across all the clients.

As another datapoint, a friend of mine did the same stuff on Android and was able to set the nodename as CALLSIGN-15 but he eneded up with a default channel with encryption that was surprising as the default encription key was automatically removed from me using both iOS and the CLI.

nolith commented 2 months ago

todd-herbert on discord pointed out to some relevant piece of code in the protobuf.

A few things:

the UI shows a 8 bytes limit but includes the null terminator, this is not in line with the short name where the protobuf limit is 5 and the UI states 4.
It is true that callsigns longer than 7 are very unlikely, but hamradio operators may have more than one device, other systems uses the -ESSID suffix (I think it's from X.25 specs) to identify different devices.
When operating from another country (when allowed) we must prefix out callsign with a code that identifies the country we are in (i.e. a few months ago I was in Nevada and I had to ID as W7/IU5BON) this will not be possible with the current settings.

Can we relax a bit the protobuf requirements for the callsign? In the end it goes into the long name that is 39 bytes

garthvh commented 2 months ago

The python api needs to be upgraded to set the ham parameters values properly. There is some overhead on protobufs of a byte or two.

garthvh commented 2 months ago

The app has been updated to only allow 6 characters, the size restriction is on the protobufs 8bytes is probably correct for 6 characters

meshtastic / Meshtastic-Apple