Altruist Firmware

Firmware for the Altruist environmental sensor station, built on ESP32-C6.

Architecture Overview

In the Robonomics sensors architecture, the Altruist plays two roles:

• Datalog reporting: Signs and sends measurement datalogs directly to the Robonomics parachain via RPC node (every 10 minutes).
• Connectivity reporting: Signs and sends measurement data to Sensors Connectivity Provider nodes via HTTP POST on port 65 (every 30 seconds).

Altruist (ESP32-C6)
  |
  |-- Signed extrinsic --> Robonomics Parachain (Polkadot)
  |                            |
  |                  RoSeMAN indexes --> MongoDB --> sensors.social
  |
  +-- Signed msg HTTP:65 --> Sensors Connectivity Provider
        |-- Real-time: IPFS pubsub --> Robonomics dApp
        +-- Batch: IPFS pin --> datalog hash --> Parachain

An ED25519 keypair is generated on first boot and stored in SPIFFS (/config.json). This identity is used to sign both datalog extrinsics and connectivity messages.

The connectivity server pool is defined in robonomics_servers.h (currently 3 servers). On startup, the device polls all servers and picks one where it is already registered, or the least loaded one.

Hardware reset (GPIO7) clears WiFi credentials and password but preserves the Robonomics identity.

Hardware Variants

Altruist Urban

Outdoor station (ESP32-C6). Provides environmental and air quality measurements. Discovered by Insight devices via mDNS (altruist._tcp).

Altruist Insight

Indoor station (ESP32-C6) with display and QR code support. Can aggregate data from nearby Urban devices over the local network.

Supported Sensors

Sensor	Measurement
SDS011	PM2.5, PM10
BMx280 (BMP/BME 280)	Temperature, humidity, pressure
BME680	Temperature, humidity, pressure, gas resistance
SCD4x (SCD40/SCD41)	CO2, temperature, humidity
RadSens	Radiation (counts per minute)
I2S microphone	Noise level (dBA)
GPS (Neo-6M)	Latitude, longitude
HTTP Altruist sensor	Data from linked Urban devices

Building and Flashing

The project uses PlatformIO. Build environments are defined in platformio.ini.

Build for a specific target:

pio run -e esp32c6_urban_en
pio run -e esp32c6_inside_en

Flash:

pio run -e esp32c6_urban_en --target upload

Available environments: esp32c6_urban_en, esp32c6_urban_ru, esp32c6_inside_en, esp32c6_inside_ru (plus _dev variants with debug output).

Configuration

On first boot (or after reset), the device starts in Access Point mode. Connect to its WiFi network and open the configuration page to set:

• WiFi credentials
• GPS coordinates
• Sensor enable/disable
• API endpoints

After configuration, the device restarts and connects to the specified WiFi network. The web UI remains available on the local network for reconfiguration.

Button Controls

Insight

• UP short press - previous screen
• DOWN short press - next screen
• UP / DOWN short press on Graphs screen - switch graph (at edges switches screen). Long press changes screen
• SET long press - sleep
• SET + DOWN long press (4s) - reset WiFi configuration
• SET + DOWN pressed while powering on - reset all configuration

Urban

• SET long press (4s) -- reset WiFi configuration
• SET pressed while powering on -- reset all configuration

Contributing

All development changes should be submitted as pull requests against the beta branch. The master branch reflects the current release firmware.

To add a Connectivity Robonomics Server, fork this repository and edit robonomics_servers.h. Add your server:

{"<server_address>", REGION_XX}

Available regions: REGION_GLOBAL, REGION_EU, REGION_AS, REGION_AF, REGION_AU, REGION_NA, REGION_SA.