chore: refresh Mesh America catalog for beta_12

The GPS NMEA UART used Arduino's default 256-byte RX ring (~66 ms of slack at
38400 baud). On the busy touch UI a single long LVGL/map frame stalls the loop
past that window, dropping bytes and corrupting NMEA ephemeris subframes — each
loss costs the receiver ~30 s, turning a ~1-minute fix into several minutes or,
with frequent stalls, never acquiring. Confirmed on-device: peak UART backlog
hit 448 B at idle, well past the 256 B default. Bump the ring to 4096 B (~1 s of
slack) before the core opens Serial1 in sensors.begin(). App-side (no core
re-tag); gated to ENV_INCLUDE_GPS so both touch boards get it. A -DGPS_BUF_DEBUG
backlog probe is included (compiled out of releases).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

deploy/meshamerica-catalog.json

@@ -16,19 +16,19 @@
           "role": "gui",
           "title": "Touch UI",
           "version": {
-            "beta_11": {
-              "notes": "New keyboard navigation — drive the whole UI from the keyboard, no touchscreen needed: the WASDZ cluster moves the on-screen selection in the actual direction you press (W up, A left, Z down, D right), S selects, Q goes back, and each bottom tab has its own hotkey (E Messages, R Contacts, T Home, U Map, I Settings) shown as a small letter on its icon. On by default; toggle it any time in Settings → Keyboard.\nEvery navigation key is hotkey-bindable — the directions, select, back, the per-tab hotkeys, and the new scroll-up / scroll-down keys (default F / C) — remap them all under Settings → Keyboard.\nThis lays the groundwork for upcoming keyboard-first devices like the Tanmatsu T-Pager that have no touchscreen, and it already gives every T-Deck a fast, reliable way to use wadamesh entirely from the keyboard.\nThe selected item now shows as clean reverse-video (a bright outline for switches) instead of a coloured border, and the highlight only appears while you're actively navigating with the keys.\nThe Home hotkey mirrors tapping the Home tab — press it again on Home to flip between the Commander screen and the app drawer.\nFixed a reboot that could occur when receiving a message, especially during advert/message floods — a use-after-free while a list rebuilt mid-scroll (#27).\nAfter a crash, the device now detects it on the next boot and offers to save the crash report so you can send it in, instead of you having to dig through Settings.\nMap options can now switch the zoom control between the slider and a +/- button pair, like older builds (#26).\nRoute replay now opens on a wide overview so you can see where the hops start and the whole path at a glance — and you can pan and zoom the map freely while it plays.\nNew \"App drawer as home\" option (in the app drawer's cog) makes the launcher your home screen instead of the Commander view, for people who prefer the app grid.\nThe in-progress Tanmatsu (ESP32-P4) port source is now part of the public tree.",
+            "beta_12": {
+              "notes": "Fixed GPS being slow to get a fix — or sometimes never acquiring at all — on the T-Deck. The GPS receives its data over a small serial buffer, and on the busy touch UI a heavy screen redraw could stall long enough to overflow it and drop the satellite data mid-stream, which forced the receiver to start over. The buffer is now 16x larger, so those redraws no longer cost you the fix — acquisition is back to normal (a fix in about a minute instead of several, or none).\nMore and more people are picking up wadamesh lately — which is genuinely awesome — and it's surfacing feature requests and bug reports fast, in big numbers.\nI can't get back to every post in every channel, but I'm on it: I'm prioritising the fixes and quality-of-life improvements, and I'll be working through them later today. Thanks for all the reports and for the patience!",
               "files": [
                 {
                   "type": "flash-wipe",
                   "name": "wadamesh-heltec-v4-tft-merged.bin",
-                  "url": "https://firmware.wadamesh.com/releases/TOUCH/beta_11/wadamesh-heltec-v4-tft-merged.bin",
+                  "url": "https://firmware.wadamesh.com/releases/TOUCH/beta_12/wadamesh-heltec-v4-tft-merged.bin",
                   "title": "Full install (bootloader + firmware)"
                 },
                 {
                   "type": "flash-update",
                   "name": "wadamesh-heltec-v4-tft.bin",
-                  "url": "https://firmware.wadamesh.com/releases/TOUCH/beta_11/wadamesh-heltec-v4-tft.bin",
+                  "url": "https://firmware.wadamesh.com/releases/TOUCH/beta_12/wadamesh-heltec-v4-tft.bin",
                   "title": "Update (app only)"
                 }
               ]
@@ -48,19 +48,19 @@
           "role": "gui",
           "title": "Touch UI",
           "version": {
-            "beta_11": {
-              "notes": "New keyboard navigation — drive the whole UI from the keyboard, no touchscreen needed: the WASDZ cluster moves the on-screen selection in the actual direction you press (W up, A left, Z down, D right), S selects, Q goes back, and each bottom tab has its own hotkey (E Messages, R Contacts, T Home, U Map, I Settings) shown as a small letter on its icon. On by default; toggle it any time in Settings → Keyboard.\nEvery navigation key is hotkey-bindable — the directions, select, back, the per-tab hotkeys, and the new scroll-up / scroll-down keys (default F / C) — remap them all under Settings → Keyboard.\nThis lays the groundwork for upcoming keyboard-first devices like the Tanmatsu T-Pager that have no touchscreen, and it already gives every T-Deck a fast, reliable way to use wadamesh entirely from the keyboard.\nThe selected item now shows as clean reverse-video (a bright outline for switches) instead of a coloured border, and the highlight only appears while you're actively navigating with the keys.\nThe Home hotkey mirrors tapping the Home tab — press it again on Home to flip between the Commander screen and the app drawer.\nFixed a reboot that could occur when receiving a message, especially during advert/message floods — a use-after-free while a list rebuilt mid-scroll (#27).\nAfter a crash, the device now detects it on the next boot and offers to save the crash report so you can send it in, instead of you having to dig through Settings.\nMap options can now switch the zoom control between the slider and a +/- button pair, like older builds (#26).\nRoute replay now opens on a wide overview so you can see where the hops start and the whole path at a glance — and you can pan and zoom the map freely while it plays.\nNew \"App drawer as home\" option (in the app drawer's cog) makes the launcher your home screen instead of the Commander view, for people who prefer the app grid.\nThe in-progress Tanmatsu (ESP32-P4) port source is now part of the public tree.",
+            "beta_12": {
+              "notes": "Fixed GPS being slow to get a fix — or sometimes never acquiring at all — on the T-Deck. The GPS receives its data over a small serial buffer, and on the busy touch UI a heavy screen redraw could stall long enough to overflow it and drop the satellite data mid-stream, which forced the receiver to start over. The buffer is now 16x larger, so those redraws no longer cost you the fix — acquisition is back to normal (a fix in about a minute instead of several, or none).\nMore and more people are picking up wadamesh lately — which is genuinely awesome — and it's surfacing feature requests and bug reports fast, in big numbers.\nI can't get back to every post in every channel, but I'm on it: I'm prioritising the fixes and quality-of-life improvements, and I'll be working through them later today. Thanks for all the reports and for the patience!",
               "files": [
                 {
                   "type": "flash-wipe",
                   "name": "wadamesh-tdeck-merged.bin",
-                  "url": "https://firmware.wadamesh.com/releases/TOUCH/beta_11/wadamesh-tdeck-merged.bin",
+                  "url": "https://firmware.wadamesh.com/releases/TOUCH/beta_12/wadamesh-tdeck-merged.bin",
                   "title": "Full install (bootloader + firmware)"
                 },
                 {
                   "type": "flash-update",
                   "name": "wadamesh-tdeck.bin",
-                  "url": "https://firmware.wadamesh.com/releases/TOUCH/beta_11/wadamesh-tdeck.bin",
+                  "url": "https://firmware.wadamesh.com/releases/TOUCH/beta_12/wadamesh-tdeck.bin",
                   "title": "Update (app only)"
                 }
               ]

release-notes/beta_12.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,8 @@
+# beta_12 — GPS hotfix (one user-facing note per non-blank, non-# line; # lines are section comments)
+
+# --- GPS fix (headline) ---
+Fixed GPS being slow to get a fix — or sometimes never acquiring at all — on the T-Deck. The GPS receives its data over a small serial buffer, and on the busy touch UI a heavy screen redraw could stall long enough to overflow it and drop the satellite data mid-stream, which forced the receiver to start over. The buffer is now 16x larger, so those redraws no longer cost you the fix — acquisition is back to normal (a fix in about a minute instead of several, or none).
+
+# --- A note from Kaj ---
+More and more people are picking up wadamesh lately — which is genuinely awesome — and it's surfacing feature requests and bug reports fast, in big numbers.
+I can't get back to every post in every channel, but I'm on it: I'm prioritising the fixes and quality-of-life improvements, and I'll be working through them later today. Thanks for all the reports and for the patience!

scripts/build/gen-flasher-meta.py

@@ -5,7 +5,9 @@
 #   - manifest-heltec-v4-tft.json   install dialog, so it must equal the tag)
 #
 # These live next to the rolling bins at firmware.wadamesh.com/latest/, so the
-# flasher always reflects the current release without a site redeploy.
+# flasher always reflects the current release without a site redeploy. The
+# manifests themselves point at the IMMUTABLE per-tag bins (see below) to dodge
+# the latest/*.bin 4h edge cache.
 #
 # Usage: gen-flasher-meta.py <tag> <outdir> [notes_file]
 #   notes_file: one note per non-empty line (plain text); optional.
@@ -35,7 +37,13 @@ for fn, (name, binf) in BOARDS.items():
         "new_install_prompt_erase": True,
         "builds": [{
             "chipFamily": "ESP32-S3",
-            "parts": [{"path": f"https://firmware.wadamesh.com/latest/{binf}", "offset": 0}],
+            # Point at the IMMUTABLE per-tag bin, NOT latest/. The latest/*.bin URLs
+            # are stable filenames cached 4h (max-age=14400) and overwritten in place,
+            # so for up to 4h after a release the flasher could hand out the PREVIOUS
+            # beta's bytes while version.json already advertised the new tag. The
+            # per-tag path is never overwritten, so its (24h) cache is always correct.
+            # The manifest itself is max-age=300, so this new path propagates in <=5min.
+            "parts": [{"path": f"https://firmware.wadamesh.com/releases/TOUCH/{tag}/{binf}", "offset": 0}],
         }],
     }
     with open(os.path.join(outdir, fn), "w") as f:

src/main.cpp

@@ -473,6 +473,17 @@ void setup() {
   #error "need to define filesystem"
 #endif
 
+#if defined(ENV_INCLUDE_GPS) && (ENV_INCLUDE_GPS == 1)
+  // GPS UART resilience (slow / never-acquires TTFF fix): the core opens Serial1 for the
+  // NMEA GPS with Arduino's default 256-byte RX ring — only ~66 ms of slack at 38400 baud
+  // (~270 ms at 9600). A single long LVGL/map frame stalls this loop past that, dropping
+  // UART bytes and corrupting NMEA ephemeris subframes. Each corrupted subframe costs the
+  // receiver ~30 s of re-acquisition, so a busy UI turns a ~1-minute fix into several
+  // minutes — or, with frequent stalls, never. A larger ring absorbs the stalls. MUST
+  // precede the core's Serial1.begin() inside sensors.begin(); setRxBufferSize is a no-op
+  // once the UART is already running.
+  Serial1.setRxBufferSize(4096);
+#endif
   sensors.begin();
 
 #ifdef DISPLAY_CLASS
@@ -621,6 +632,22 @@ void loop() {
   }
 #endif
   the_mesh.loop();
+#if defined(GPS_BUF_DEBUG)
+  // Bench diagnostic (build with -DGPS_BUF_DEBUG only; absent in releases): peak GPS UART
+  // backlog accumulated between sensors.loop() drains. A peak above the old 256-byte default
+  // proves loop stalls were overflowing the default ring — i.e. NMEA was being lost, which
+  // is the slow/never-acquires TTFF mechanism. With the 4096 ring above it can climb past
+  // 256 without loss, so a >256 reading is direct proof the fix matters on this unit.
+  { static size_t s_gps_peak = 0; static uint32_t s_gps_log = 0;
+    size_t bl = Serial1.available();
+    if (bl > s_gps_peak) s_gps_peak = bl;
+    if (millis() - s_gps_log > 5000) {
+      s_gps_log = millis();
+      Serial.printf("[GPSBUF] peak=%u B / 5s (old cap 256, now 4096)\n", (unsigned)s_gps_peak);
+      s_gps_peak = 0;
+    }
+  }
+#endif
   sensors.loop();
 #if defined(ESP32)
   // GPS time guard (Ricky Leong's "stuck at 1902"): MicroNMEALocationProvider