You sir, are a god among men.well done 
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Even with that obvious exaggeration that means a lot coming from you, sir. 
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Big props for the honestly and integrity! Also killer product and service!
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A4:c1:38:0d:0f:10
Davega sees it now, says “connecting”, then bootloops
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I’ll PM you. The restarts are unexpected.
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Jan the man back at it again! 
Only some versions of the app ask for password and I only saw it on first connect after install. Password is changeable somewhere in the settings menu of the app. Default password is “123456” if I remember it correctly, someone please confirm this. I didn’t need a password when I downloaded the app from electricskateboarding.co.uk, I did however need the password when I downloaded the latest version from lithiumbatterypcb.com.
v5.x firmware coming
DAVEGA firmware code size reached 1516 kB as of the v4.09rc5. With the current partitioning, there’s only 20 kB left for more code. This needs addressing, else soon it wouldn’t be possible to add more features.
The current partitioning is:
- OTA1 - 1536 kB
- OTA2 - 1536 kB
- data - 960 kB
The data partition is excessive. Most units don’t store more than a few kB of data. The units with a custom splashscreen are an exception but they still use less than 120 kB.
The plan is to repartition as follows:
- OTA1 - 1792 kB
- OTA2 - 1792 kB
- data - 448 kB
That is, shrink the data partition by 512 kB and add 256 kB to the OTA partitions (which hold the code).
Just to give you some perspective, the code size increased by 49 kB between v4.00 and v4.09rc5, so adding 256 kB is quite a big deal and should last for a couple of years of development.
What this means for the user?
The repartitioning can’t be done over WiFi. Therefore, migrating from v4.x to v5.x will be the same process as migrating from v3.x to v4.x. You will need to get your DAVEGA connected to the USB port and run a v5.x installer that I will provide soon.
After the upgrade, you can forget about the USB port for at least another year.
DAVEGA hardware v1.2
I want to get the v5.x firmware sorted out before switching to the new v1.2 hardware. The v1.2 units will come without a USB port and thus migrating to v5.x would be more problematic (though not impossible). Therefore, all v1.2 units will ship with the v5.x firmware pre-installed.
There are already a few v1.2 units out there running the v4.x. The owners will receive an external USB-UART module to be able to migrate.
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DAVEGA hardware v1.2
The current v1.1 hardware design is going to be retired in about two weeks and will be replaced by the new v1.2 design.
What’s new?
From the user perspective, the changes are very small.
- 3.3V input replaced by 5V input
- USB port replaced by USB-UART headers
The new design is more robust and should be less prone to power-loss/restart that’s sometimes experienced with the current design.
Also, it will no longer be possible to damage the units by accidentally connecting 5V where 3.3V is expected. This has happened several times in the past.
Price remains the same (for now).
Why the change?
Getting rid of the dependency on the ESP32 development boards
Depending on these boards has been a real pain. I have had several bad batches that I wasn’t able to use at all. The “good” batches still typically contained 10-20% of bad pieces. While I believe I have done a good job in quality checking and it was extremely rare that a bad piece made it all the way to the customer, this still was a major source of frustration. Sometimes I only discovered a glitch after having the whole PCB soldered up, at which point I just tossed everything into my “DAVEGA graveyard” box since trying to fix it doesn’t make sense economically.
Also, soldering the development board to the DAVEGA PCB is rather tedious since it’s necessary to do it such that the two PCBs touch in order to keep the profile thin.
Minimizing dependency on ICs
With the current global IC shortage, a minimalistic design makes a lot of sense. The v1.2 only requires the ESP32-WROOM and a voltage regulator. So far there hasn’t be a shortage of either. I’m still going to pile them up, just in case. 
What about the missing USB?
First thing to note is that it should be very rare that anyone will need to use the USB. These are the situations where people needed the USB in the past:
- I’m on v3.x, my DAVEGA froze and I need to do a clean FW installation.
- This hasn’t been reported a single time since v4.x, so I believe it’s no longer an issue.
- I need to migrate from v3.x to v4.x or from v4.x to v5.x.
- All new units will ship with v5.x. I don’t foresee a need to migrate to v6.x in the future. If there’s ever v6.x it will most likely require a completely new hardware.
- My DAVEGA got damaged and I need to transfer my data to another unit.
- This will be possible to do completely over WiFi in a near future.
Yeah, that’s all very nice but what if I still need the USB for some other reason that you didn’t think about?
The v1.2 still has UART headers where you will be able to connect an external USB-UART adapter.
I already have the adapter designed and PCBs should arrive this week. Here’s a render:
It will feature a USB-C connector and pogo pins. To connect it, you will simply press the pogo pins against the headers and hold it in place.
One nice thing about this solution is that it won’t require taking the DAVEGA out of the housing.
The adapters will be available in the DAVEGA e-shop for 10-15 EUR.
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Can I update from v3.x(?) straight to v5.x with the new installer?
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Yes, I believe that will be possible. At least I can’t see anything that should prevent it.
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Good, cus my davega has been getting a ton of glitches and visual errors and shit that I have just been way too lazy to do anything about 
Hopefully updating to the new firmware fixes them 
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You may want to make sure you dont have anything adding noise to your battery wires or 5v. I had a buck converter connected before that added a stupid amount of noise to the battery lines and that caused the DAVEga to glitch out by displaying funny colors and only partially updating the screen.
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What kinds of things should I check for? My circuit goes:
Battery > ESCs > Motors/Robogotchi/Davega/Puck Receiver
I dont have a buck or any other device in the circuit anywhere. Could the placement of the davega wire be the cause? My wire runs across the top of the battery, could EMF from a high-current load be causing interference with the signal to the davega?
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DC doesn’t cause a lot of noise afaik. Bucks do, because they are switching current on and off. You’d need to go ham on your throttle (and by that I mean several thousand times per second at least) to produce even the slightest kind of noise. Which wouldn’t get translated to battery lines anyway, because the ESC won’t even pick all those inputs up.
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That’s kinda what I figured, yeah.
Not sure what the problem might be outside of that though. It’s either hardware or software, and i’m hoping for software cus it’s easier to fix
If its hardware then I have to tear up my grip tape to get a new wire in place, assuming it’s a faulty wire.
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Interesting. I have seen a similar thing on one of my boards. It only happens while charging. Since I haven’t had any reports of the issue from customers I didn’t really pay a lot of attention to it. I will look some more into it now.
I’m afraid I might have some bad news for you. 
Anyway, let me see if I can find the root cause on my board and hopefully if we put our findings together we’ll get to the bottom of it.
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The ESC can emit a ton of conducted (through the wiring) and radiated (through the air) EMI. The input caps to the ESC filter a lot but more can still be around. There’s no way to predict if you’re dealing with this but any data wiring or low power wiring being placed near any high current power wiring increases the risk of EMI-caused data corruption.
Sharing an ungrounded heat sink can create havoc too. The heat sink becomes an antenna, blasting EMI into the other device.
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I’ve got lots of pics of the visual glitches I have been getting, if those would be useful for you to see. I can post them here or we can PM, whatever works for you 
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