Round LCDs Put To Work In Rack Mount Gauge Cluster

May 13, 2022 by Tom Nardi 25 Comments

Like many of you, we’re intrigued by the possibilities offered by the availability of affordable round LCD panels. But beyond the smartwatches they were designed for, it’s not always easy to come up with an appropriate application for such non-traditional displays. Digital “steam gauges” are one of the first ideas that come to mind, so it’s perhaps no surprise that’s the direction [Tom Dowad] took his project. But rather than just one or two gauges, he decided to go all out and put eight of them in a 1U rack mountable unit.

What do you need eight faux-analog gauges for? Beats us, but that’s not our department. Now [Tom] has a whole row of indicators that can be used to show whatever it is he likes to keep an eye on. The fact that the device is actually controlled via MIDI may provide us a clue that there’s a musical component at play (no pun intended), but then, it wouldn’t be the first time we’d seen MIDI used simply as a convenient and well supported way of synchronizing gadgets. Continue reading “Round LCDs Put To Work In Rack Mount Gauge Cluster” →

Section from the ESP8266 datasheet, showing maximum input voltage as 3.6V, but not mentioning ESD diodes to VCC and only talking about a snap-back circuit set to 6V.

Is ESP8266 5 V Tolerant? This Curve Tracer Says Yes!

May 12, 2022 by Arya Voronova 44 Comments

Some people state that ESP8266 is tolerant of 5 V logic levels on its GPIOs, while others vehemently disagree, pointing at the datasheet-stated 3.6 V maximum. Datasheets aren’t source code for compiling the chip, however, and aren’t universally correct and complete either. [Avian] decided to dig deeper into the claims, conduct an experiment with an actual ESP8266 chip, then share the results for all of us.

For the experiment, he used a curve tracer – a device capable of producing a wide range of voltages and measuring the current being consumed, then plotting the voltage-to-current relationship. This helps characterize all sorts of variables, from diode breakdown voltages to transistor characteristics. The curve tracer he uses is a capable and professional-looking DIY build of his, and arguably, deserves a separate write-up!

The reasoning behind [Avian]’s experiment is simple – if the pin, set to an input, starts consuming a higher amount of current at a certain voltage threshold, then there’s gotta be some chip-internal structure, intended or unintended, that would be damaged at this voltage. Curve tracer in hand, he set up an ESP-01 module to set a GPIO to input, and started increasing the voltage.

The tests have shown that, while there’s a reverse biased ESD diode from GPIO pins to ground, there don’t seem to be diodes from the GPIO pin to the VCC rail – and those are the primary concern for 5 V tolerance. There does seem to be something functionally akin to a 6 V Zener diode internally, which should clamp the voltage before it gets too way high for the chip to handle. None of that should be a problem for 5 V compatibility, and it seems fair to interpret this as a confirmation of 5 V tolerance until someone shows otherwise.

[Avian] didn’t want to destroy an ESP8266, so the experiment was conducted with a 1 K series resistor between the curve tracer and the input – which might have biased the results a bit. On the other hand, adding series resistors in front of your inputs is an overall underappreciated practice, 5 V or otherwise. He also points out that, while the pins don’t seem to be adversely impacted by the higher input voltage, the bootloader might set some of them to 3.3 V outputs on boot-up, shorting your 5 V source to your 3.3 V rail — worth keeping in mind!

[Avian]’s research journeys are fun to follow, and we recommend you check his blog out; last time, we covered his research of an innocent-looking 3.5 mm jack hiding a devious audio compensation circuit. Since we first covered the ESP8266 in 2014, we’ve been researching all the things it’s really capable of, and we brought up the topic of GPIO 5 V compatibility way back in 2016 – it’s reassuring to finally put this question to rest!

We thank [Adrian] for sharing this with us!

Bare-Metal STM32: Using The I2C Bus In Master-Transceiver Mode

May 11, 2022 by Maya Posch 34 Comments

As one of the most popular buses today for on- and inter-board communication within systems, there’s a good chance you’ll end up using it with an embedded system. I2C offers a variety of speeds while requiring only two wires (clock and data), which makes it significantly easier to handle than alternatives, such as SPI. Within the STM32 family of MCUs, you will find at least one I2C peripheral on each device.

As a shared, half-duplex medium, I2C uses a rather straightforward call-and-response design, where one device controls the clock, and other devices simply wait and listen until their fixed address is sent on the I2C bus. While configuring an STM32 I2C peripheral entails a few steps, it is quite painless to use afterwards, as we will see in this article. Continue reading “Bare-Metal STM32: Using The I2C Bus In Master-Transceiver Mode” →

A modern Tamagotchi PCB design and built-up prototype

Classic Tamagotchi Is Reincarnated In Modern Hardware

May 8, 2022 by Robin Kearey 25 Comments

If you thought that Tamagotchis were a late ’90s fad that has faded from most people’s memory by now, you’d be wrong: the franchise is still alive and well today, with new models being released regularly. But even the original model from 1996, known as Tamagotchi P1, is being kept alive by a small group of enthusiasts. When ROM dumps of the original hardware began floating around the internet a couple of years ago, even those without the real thing could run these virtual pets in an emulator.

But the whole idea of the Tamagotchi hardware was that it was portable enough to carry around anywhere. If you’re among those who missed that part of the Tamagotchi experience, you’ll be pleased to know that [JC] designed OpenTama: a portable hardware platform that runs an emulated version of the original Tamagotchi P1 software. It’s about as close as it gets to those first-generation virtual pets, but with several additions that make your life easier.

The software platform is [JC]’s TamaLib which we featured last year; in effect it’s an open-source emulator that allows the Tamagotchi ROM to run on a variety of modern hardware platforms. It also contains several additional options like the ability to save and restore your progress or to select customized ROMs. The OpenTama hardware, meanwhile, is a proper 21st-century reimplementation of the original: a small, egg-sized PCB sporting an STM32 microcontroller driving an LCD or OLED display, powered by a 100 mAh battery that can be recharged through a USB-C port.

OpenTama is not limited to the TamaLib software, either: as an open-source general-purpose platform, it can also be used as a learning tool for embedded programming, so if you’ve always wanted to program your own virtual pet, or are simply looking to build a fancy egg timer, OpenTama’s GitHub page is the way to go. We’ve seen quite a few neat Tamagotchi-like projects recently: this 3D-printed one comes with a nice retro LCD screen, while this one’s giant size ensures you don’t forget to feed it.

Continue reading “Classic Tamagotchi Is Reincarnated In Modern Hardware” →

Creating An Image Format For Embedded Hardware

May 8, 2022 by Tom Nardi 60 Comments

Whether its one of those ubiquitous little OLED displays or a proper LCD panel, once you’ve got something a bit more capable than the classic 16×2 character LCD wired up to your microcontroller, there’s an excellent chance you’ll want to start displaying some proper images. Generally speaking that means you’ll be working with bitmap files, but as you might expect when pushing a decades-old file format into an application it was never intended for, things can get a little messy. Which is why [gfcwfzkm] has created the Portable Image File (PIF) format.

This low-overhead image format is designed specifically for microcontrollers, and can be decoded on devices with at least 60 bytes of free RAM. Images stored with PIF not only require fewer computational resources to process, but equally important, take up less space on flash. The format supports both color and monochrome images, and the GitHub repo even includes a graphical Python 3.10 tool that lets you convert your images to either .pif files or a .h header file for embedding directly into your C code.

[gfcwfzkm] has provided some source code to show you how to get the PIF library up and running, but as of the time of this writing, there isn’t any example code for using PIF within the Arduino environment. That’s no big deal for the old hands in the audience, but we’re interested in seeing how the community can make use of this file format once it’s available in a bit more beginner-friendly package. It’s one of the final unchecked items on the todo list though, so it shouldn’t be long now.

Of course nothing is wrong with using bitmaps to display images in your microcontroller projects, and there’s a certain advantage to fiddling around with the well-known image format. But if a new file type is all it takes to speed up access times and cram a few more images onto the chip, we’re definitely ready to upgrade.

Bee Motion Combines ESP32 With PIR Sensor And USB-C

May 7, 2022 by Tom Nardi 3 Comments

There’s no shortage of ESP32 development boards out there, with many of them offering some “killer app” feature which may or may not align with whatever it is you’re trying to do. But if you’ve got a project that could benefit from the pairing of a powerful WiFi-enabled microcontroller and a passive infrared (PIR) motion sensor, the Bee Motion created by [Paul Price] is certainly worth a close look.

This breadboard compatible package combines an ESP32-S2 module with a top-mounted PIR sensor, making it a turn key solution for all sorts of motion sensing projects. In addition to the expected onboard voltage regulation, there’s also a LiPo charge controller and status LEDs for mobile or battery-backed operation.

While there’s far too many variables involved for [Paul] to give a specific runtime for the Bee Motion, he’s run some numbers and found that a 1500 mAH cell could potentially keep the board running for over a year if you’re taking advantage of the MCU’s deep sleep capabilities. When it’s time to recharge, whenever that may be, the board’s USB-C connector means you won’t be searching around for the proper cable.

Schematics and CAD files are available in the Bee Motion GitHub repo, and [Paul] is also selling assembled boards on Tindie. All you need now is to get inspired by some of the slick PIR projects we’ve covered in the past.

Continue reading “Bee Motion Combines ESP32 With PIR Sensor And USB-C” →

APPLE2IDIOT Expansion Card Lets Your Apple II (Sort Of) Access The Internet

May 7, 2022 by Donald Papp 26 Comments

[Nathanial Hendler]’s Apple2Idiot expansion card for the Apple II family of computers is a nifty mix of modern and vintage, and provides a clever means of allowing the host computer to (indirectly) access the internet over WiFi while keeping things simple from the host computer’s perspective.

The PCB has plenty of space on which to silkscreen reference data. Click to enlarge.

It does this by embedding an ESP32 module and a dual-port RAM chip onto an expansion card. The Apple2Idiot, when installed into a host machine, presents as a memory location which the host machine can access. The ESP32 then takes care of all the WiFi communications and tasks requiring internet access, and the host computer directs these tasks (and reads their output) via PEEK and POKE commands.

This means that there are two pieces of software for any given task: one running on the ESP32 doing the actual work, and one running on the Apple II that communicates with the ESP32 on the card by reading and writing to memory. It’s a simple system, and one that [Nathanial] thinks works quite well for specific tasks.

Example programs include things like scanning and selecting a WiFi network, fetching weather data, and sending a message to Slack. Making new applications does mean having to write software on two ends, but the simplicity of the system also means flexibility, because anything the ESP32 does can have its complexity abstracted away by the time its data is presented to the host machine. Not that the Apple II is incapable of dealing with the modern internet more directly; we’ve seen a basic Apple II web server written in BASIC.