First Use

Overview

A freshly flashed Aegis-Beacon boots straight into BEACON mode with safe defaults: 433.500 MHz, +17 dBm, 13 WPM, message SOS, no GPS. This page walks through the first power-on and the first real transmission.

Before First Power-On

1. Insert a charged 18650 cell, or power via USB-C through the TP4056 module.
2. Do not connect an antenna to the radio yet for the very first boot check (keeps any accidental TX off-air during testing is not possible - the firmware will still transmit). Prefer testing with a dummy load or a 17.3 cm wire in an isolated spot.
3. Open a serial monitor at 115200 baud, 8N1 to watch the boot log.

Expected Boot Sequence

[       5][INFO ] Boot #1  reset_reason=1  heap=290244 B  cpu=240MHz
[      22][BAT  ] Boot battery: 87%  4100mV  charging=NO
[      40][OK   ] OLED ready - SSD1309 128x64
[      42][AUDIO] LEDC GPIO25 (DAC1) ch0 @ 40000 Hz 8-bit
[      45][GPS  ] GPS disabled (or waiting for fix)
[  12410][MODE ] Starting: BEACON

On the OLED you should see the inverted AEGIS-BEACON v5.5 header, the battery icon, and the BEACON layout with a large frequency.

First Transmission

1. Set the device in an open area away from people.
2. It transmits the configured message on each frequency, then deep-sleeps for the configured interval (default 10 s).
3. Watch the TX progress bar and the scrolling payload on the OLED.
4. On the serial console you should see TX: "SOS" (3 chars) @ 13WPM then TX done and Deep sleep 10 s....

Hearing It Yourself

To confirm the RF path without a second radio, tune any AM-capable receiver or SDR to 433.500 MHz and listen for the CW carrier keying. You do not need special equipment - an RTL-SDR dongle with SDR# shows the carrier blips visually. See SDR Listening Guide.

First-Time Checklist

Related Pages

• Quick Start
• Build Configurations
• Boot Process
• Upload and Monitor