This post belongs to the series of posts about the Meshtastic Build Off 2026. The previous posts are:https://myembeddedstuff.com/meshtastic-build-off-2026-retromeshdevicehttps://myembeddedstuff.com/meshtastic-build-off-2026-pcb-assemblyOnce I had the PCB assembled, the next step was to verify that everything was actually working as expected.At this stage, I did not want to jump straight into the Meshtastic integration. Even though that was the ultimate goal of the project, it seemed more intelligent to validate the hardware in isolation first. When you are booting a board for the first time, separating hardware and firmware issues usually saves a lot of headaches.I am going to split this post into two sections. First, why I consider it necessary to create a simple firmware to validate the board and how to do it. Second, an analysis…