Clientre 5

English | 日本語

A pocket SSH terminal OS for the M5Stack Tab5 (ESP32-P4). Clientre 5 turns the Tab5 into a standalone terminal with a physical-keyboard-first UI, Japanese input, a Tailscale client, and a small set of file and media tools.

Features

• SSH terminal: VT100 / xterm-256color emulator with scrollback and double-width CJK characters. Password, public-key and keyboard-interactive auth; host keys are pinned on first connect.
• Japanese input: romaji to kana, SKK dictionary kana-kanji conversion (SKK-JISYO.M built in, SKK-JISYO.L loadable from the TF card). Chinese pinyin is available when the UI is in Chinese. Switch sources with Ctrl+Space or the A/あ key.
• Tailscale: joins your tailnet with the bundled MicroLink client, so you can SSH to tailnet hosts by name. Headscale is supported.
• Keyboard-first: the Tab5 keyboard or any USB keyboard drives the whole UI (Tab / arrows / Enter / Esc); a soft keyboard is there when you have neither.
• Files and media: TF card and USB-stick file manager, JPEG/PNG/BMP/GIF viewer with EXIF, UTF-8/UTF-16 text viewer, MP3/FLAC/WAV player with background playback, and a camera that saves JPEGs to the card.
• Web Files: browse, upload and download the TF card from a browser over WiFi.
• USB disk mode: expose the TF card to a PC over USB-C.
• OTA updates: check, download and install new firmware from the device.
• Appearance: Orange EL (default), Retro CRT, Pixel, Dark, Light, Nord, Solarized Dark, Gruvbox and Classic themes, each fully customisable, including the terminal's 16-colour palette.
• Security: SSH passwords and keys are encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM; the server list can be kept on the TF card, encrypted with a key that never leaves the device. Encrypted backups.
• Languages: English, 日本語, 简体中文, 繁體中文.

Screenshots are host renders of the firmware UI (see ui_preview).

Hardware

Device	M5Stack Tab5 (board v3 tested)
SoC	ESP32-P4, ESP32-C6 for WiFi over SDIO
Memory	16 MB flash, 32 MB PSRAM
Display	1280 × 720 MIPI-DSI touchscreen
Optional	Tab5 keyboard, USB keyboard, TF card

Status

Verified on a physical Tab5: display, touch, keyboards, WiFi, SSH (including over Tailscale), Japanese input and USB disk mode. Audio playback and OTA installation have not been fully verified yet. Bug reports are welcome.

Known limitation: large or many uploads through Web Files can be unreliable because of the ESP32-P4 ↔ C6 SDIO link. USB disk mode is the dependable way to move big files.

Build and flash

Requires ESP-IDF v5.5 with the esp32p4 target.

git clone https://github.com/Mozgi512/Clientre5.git
cd Clientre5/firmware
idf.py set-target esp32p4
idf.py build
(cd updater && idf.py set-target esp32p4 && idf.py build)
sh tools/merge_flash.sh        # -> release/full/clientre5_full_flash.bin
python -m esptool --chip esp32p4 -p PORT --baud 1500000 write_flash \
  --flash_mode dio --flash_size 16MB --flash_freq 80m \
  0x0 release/full/clientre5_full_flash.bin

When a release is published, you can skip the build and flash clientre5_full_flash.bin from the Releases page at 0x0.

The partition layout (app at 0x20000, updater at 0xF80000) is compatible with bmorcelli/Launcher. When started from Launcher, update through Launcher rather than the in-app OTA.

See firmware/README.md for the source layout, per-partition flashing, font and dictionary generation, and implementation notes.

Documentation

• Quick start (English)
• クイックスタート（日本語）
• Firmware internals

Repository layout

├── firmware/            ESP-IDF project
│   ├── main/            application (UI, terminal, SSH, IME, media, network, OTA)
│   ├── updater/         factory-partition updater used by OTA
│   ├── components/      vendored libssh, MicroLink, wireguard-lwip
│   └── tools/           font / icon / dictionary generators, release script, UI preview
└── docs/                user guides and UI renders

License

Clientre 5's own code (firmware/main, firmware/updater, firmware/tools) is released under the MIT License. Bundled third-party components keep their own licenses:

Component	License
libssh (via ewpa/LibSSH-ESP32)	LGPL-2.1
MicroLink	MIT
wireguard-lwip	BSD-3-Clause
LVGL	MIT
ESP-IDF and Espressif components	Apache-2.0
SKK-JISYO.M (dictionary data)	GPL-2.0-or-later
x12y12pxMaruMinya by hicc (generated bitmap subset; the TTF is not included)	free, commercial use, modification and embedding permitted
Noto Sans CJK, DejaVu Sans Mono (generated font data)	OFL-1.1 / Bitstream Vera

Firmware binaries therefore include LGPL and GPL-licensed parts; the complete source is in this repository.