Your own underground BBS, ready to plug in
Axis Micro BBS Firmware is a complete telnet bulletin board system written from scratch for the ESP32 “Cheap Yellow Display” (ESP32-2432S028R). It comes flashed and tested. You plug it into USB power, choose your WiFi network on the touchscreen, and run the first-boot setup (sysop name and password, BBS name, location). Then anyone on your network, or the internet once you forward a port, can call in.
What it does
- Two themes: the drippy orange AXIS look, or a dark grey and cyan Oblivion/2 style with a lightbar matrix login, pipe colour codes and your own ANSI screens.
- Message bases with quoting, a new message scan, private email, oneliners, rumors, a voting booth, a BBS list, last callers and top ten lists.
- File areas on a microSD card: ZMODEM and XMODEM downloads and uploads, an upload checker, archive listings for ZIP, RAR, ARJ, TAR and GZIP, file search, new files since your last call, and optional upload/download ratios.
- Real DOS door games run on the board itself in a built-in 8086 runtime (Legend of the Red Dragon, BBS Black Jack and more), plus an ANSI art pack viewer with ANSI movies and a password-locked DOS prompt.
- Multinode: two callers per board, and every extra board on your LAN joins as more nodes of one BBS, with teleconference chat, node messages, broadcasts and Oblivion/2 style split-screen chat.
- The screen is the sysop console: a live activity screen with status lights, a touch sysop menu (users, files, messages, logs, setup, theme), and a local login.
- Accounts and access: a new user application, sysop validation, security levels on areas, per-user permissions, time limits, a twit flag and a sysop user editor over telnet.
What’s in the box
- The 2.8″ ESP32 touchscreen board in a clear acrylic case, with Axis Micro BBS Firmware installed and tested
- A touch stylus
- A USB cable
You supply a USB power source and a 2.4 GHz WiFi network. A microSD card is not included. Add your own (any size, formatted FAT32) to turn on the file areas; without one the BBS still runs everything else from internal flash.
New in firmware 0.51
- A Renegade-style Waiting For Caller screen, sized for the touchscreen and in classic 80×25 for telnet and serial sysops
- WFC skins: eight looks included, pick one or follow the theme, and pipe codes for live values in your own ANSI
- Renegade sysop keys from the WFC, and // from anywhere online for sysops
- One unified sysop menu
- Linked boards share a secret cluster key and sign every message, so strangers on your network cannot join
New in firmware 0.5
- A full sysop menu inside the BBS, online and on the touchscreen: users, file areas and files, message bases and posts, every setting, and a menu editor (rename items, change hotkeys, pick which commands appear)
- An Iniquity-style activity screen showing every node in your cluster
- Three looks: drippy orange Axis, Oblivion/2 and green-and-grey Iniquity, each with full ANSI screen sets
- A free PC app that puts a control panel on your phone, with a live wall of every node’s screen
- No-IP dynamic DNS, a new user password option and brute-force protection
Docs, source and the test board
- About it on jmscnc.com: jmscnc.com/axis-bbs
- Website and full docs: revjmoney.github.io/axis-bbs
- Source code (GPL-3.0): github.com/revjmoney/axis-bbs
- Our test board, AXIS UNDERGROUND CNC, is up and running. Request access for private testing: email therealrevjmoney@gmail.com (subject “AXIS private test access”) or ask on Discord.
Made by Rev. J. Money, the maker of RotatoCAM.
