Badge.Team: Badges Get A Platform

February 20, 2019 by Jenny List 21 Comments

Electronic conference badges are now an accepted part of the lifeblood of our community, with even the simplest of events now sporting a fully functional computer as an eye-catching PCB on a lanyard. Event schedules and applications are shipped on them, and the more sophisticated ones have app libraries and support development communities of their own.

The trouble is that so often those badges fail to live up to their promise, and one reason behind that stems from the enormity of the task facing a badge team when it comes to firmware for a modern badge. There is some fascinating news from the Netherlands that might reduce some of those firmware woes though, badge.team is a freshly-launched project that provides a ready-made badge firmware with the promise of both stability and long-term support. If you’re making a badge, or even a one-off device using the ESP32, this is a project worth checking out.

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Inefficient NeoPixel Control Solved With Hardware Hackery

February 18, 2019 by Eric Evenchick 40 Comments

Everyone loves NeoPixels. Individually addressable RGB LEDs at a low price. Just attach an Arduino, load the demo code, and enjoy your blinking lights.

But it turns out that demo code isn’t very efficient. [Ben Heck] practically did a spit take when he discovered that the ESP32 sample code for NeoPixels used a uint32 to store each bit of data. This meant 96 bytes of RAM were required for each LED. With 4k of RAM, you can control 42 LEDs. That’s the same amount of RAM that the Apollo Guidance Computer needed to get to the moon!

His adventure is based on the thought that you should be able to generate these signals with hardware SPI. First, he takes a look at Adafruit’s DMA-Driven NeoPixel example. While this is far more efficient than the ESP32 demo code, it still requires 3 SPI bits per bit of NeoPixel data. [Ben] eventually provides us with an efficient solution for SPI contro using a couple of 7400 series chips:

[Ben]’s solution uses some external hardware to reduce software requirements. The 74HC123 dual multi-vibrator is used to generate the two pulse lengths needed for the NeoPixels. The timing for each multi-vibrator is set by an external resistor and capacitor, which are chosen to meet the NeoPixel timing specifications.

The 74HC123s are clocked by the SPI clock signal, and the SPI data is fed into an AND gate with the long pulse. (In NeoPixel terms, a long pulse is a logical 1.) When the SPI data is 1, the long pulse is passed through to the NeoPixels. Otherwise, only the short pulse is passed through.

This solution only requires a 74HC123, an AND gate, and an OR gate. The total cost is well under a dollar. Anyone looking to drive NeoPixels with a resource-constrained microcontroller might want to give this design a try. It also serves as a reminder that some problems are better solved in hardware instead of software.

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Infinity Icosahedron Is Difficult To Contemplate Even Looking Right At It

February 17, 2019 by Lewin Day 13 Comments

Cubes and pyramids are wonderful primitive three-dimensional objects, but everyone knows that the real mystical power is in icosahedrons. Yes, the twenty-sided polyhedron does more than just ruin your saving throws in tabletop RPGs – it can also glow and look shiny in your loungeroom at home.

[janth]’s build relies on semitransparent acrylic mirrors for the infinity effect, lasercut into triangles to form the faces of the icosahedron. The frame is built out of 3D printed rails which slot on to the acrylic mirrors, and also hold the LED strips. [janth] chose high-density strips with 144 LEDs per meter for a more consistent effect, and added frosted acrylic diffusers to all the strips for a clean look with less hotspots from the individual LEDs.

An ESP32 runs the show, and the whole assembly is epoxied together for strength. The final effect is very future disco, and it’s probably against medical advice to stare at it for more than 5 minutes at a time.

The infinity effect is a popular one, and we’ve seen a beautiful cube build by [Heliox] in recent times. Of course, if you do manage to build an actual portal through time and space, and not just a lamp that looks like one, be sure to send us a tip. Video after the break.

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Hackaday Podcast 006: Reversing IPod Screens, Hot Isotopes, We <3 Parts, And Biometric Toiletseats

February 15, 2019 by Mike Szczys 2 Comments

What’s the buzz in the hackersphere this week? Hackaday Editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys recap their favorite hacks and articles from the past seven days. In Episode Six we cover an incredible reverse engineering effort Mike Harrison put in with iPod nano replacement screens. We dip our toes in the radioactive world of deep-space power sources, spend some time adoring parts and partsmakers, and take a very high-brow look at toilet-seat technology. In our quickfire hacks we discuss coherent sound (think of it as akin to laminar flow, but for audio), minimal IDEs for embedded, hand-tools for metalwork, and the little ESP32 bot that could.

Links for all discussed on the show are found below. As always, join in the comments below as we’ll be watching those as we work on next week’s episode!

Take a look at the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

Direct download (60 MB or so.)

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Little FPV Bot Keeps It Simple With An ESP32

February 11, 2019 by Dan Maloney 9 Comments

When it comes to robots, it seems the trend is to make them as complicated as possible – look at anything from Boston Dynamics if you’ve any doubt of that. But there’s plenty to be said for simple robots too, such as this adorable ESP32-driven live-streaming bot.

Now it’s true that [Max.K]’s creation is more remote controlled car than robot, and comparing it to one of the nightmare-fuelling creations of Boston Dynamics is perhaps unfair. But [Max.K]’s new project is itself a simplification and reimagining of his earlier, larger “ZeroBot“. As the name implies, ZeroBot was controlled by a Raspberry Pi Zero, an obvious choice for a mobile platform designed to stream FPV video. The ESP32 bot eschews the Pi platform in favor of, well, an ESP32. To save as much space as possible, [Max.K] did a custom PCB for the microcontroller and its supporting components. The 3D-printed case is nicely designed to hold the board along with two motors, a small VGA camera, and a battery pack. At 160×120 resolution, the video isn’t amazing, but the fact that it can be streamed from the ESP32 at a decent enough framerate to drive the bot using a simple web interface is impressive.

This was a fun project and a very clean, smooth build. We like the lines of this little bot, and wouldn’t mind building one as a quick weekend project ourselves.

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Cheap Power Over Ethernet For The ESP32

February 5, 2019 by Tom Nardi 8 Comments

While most projects we see with the ESP32 make use of its considerable wireless capabilities, the chip can be connected to the wired network easily enough should you have the desire to do so. [Steve] liked the idea of putting his ESP32s on the wired network, but found the need for a secondary power connection burdensome. So he took it upon himself to modify some cheap Power Over Ethernet (PoE) hardware and create a single-cable solution (Google Translate).

[Steve] bought a PoE module intended for security cameras and ran a close eye over the board to figure out what kind of hardware it was using to generate the nominal 12 V output. He identified an MP2494 step-down converter, and with the datasheet in hand found how the output voltage is configured by changing the values of resistors in the circuit. Swapping out the stock 21.5 kΩ resistor for a 57.1 kΩ one changed the output of the converter to the 5 V necessary for his electronics.

But of course that was only half of the problem solved; he still had to connect the Ethernet side of the PoE device to the Waveshare LAN8720 board that’s providing Ethernet for the ESP32. So he removed the RJ45 jack from the LAN8720 completely, and wired that directly to the connector on the PoE board. Helpfully, the PoE board had all the pins labeled on the bottom side so this wasn’t nearly as tricky to figure out as you might expect (if only it was always that easy).

We’ve previously covered the Waveshare LAN8720 board for anyone who’s interested in the ins and outs of getting their ESP32 talking Ethernet. If you’re wondering how you can put PoE to work for you, our very own [Jonathan Bennett] has been showing off his home Raspberry Pi infrastructure which makes extensive use of the new PoE hat.

Back To Video Basics With An ESP32 VGA Display

February 5, 2019 by Dan Maloney 11 Comments

In a world where standards come and go with alarming speed, there’s something comforting about VGA. It’s the least common denominator of video standards, and seeing that chunky DB15 connector on the back of a computer means that no matter what, you’ll be able to get something from it, if you can just find a VGA cable in your junk bin.

But that’s the PC world; what about microcontrollers? Can you coax VGA video from them? Yes, you can, with an ESP32, a handful of resistors, and a little bit of clever programming. At least that’s what [bitluni] has managed to do in his continuing quest to push the ESP32 to output all the signals. For this project, [bitluni] needed to generate three separate signals – red, green, and blue – but with only two DACs on board, he had to try something else. He built external DACs the old way using R/2R voltage divider networks and addressed them with the I2S bus in LCD mode. He needed to make some compromises to fit the three color signals and the horizontal and vertical sync pulses into the 24 available bits, and there were a few false starts, but the video below shows that he was able to produce a 320×240 signal, and eventually goosed that up to a non-native 460×480.

It’s a pretty impressive hack, and we learned a lot about both the ESP32 and the VGA standard by watching the video. He’s previously used the ESP32 to build an AM radio station and to output composite PAL video, and even turned his oscilloscope into a vector display with it. They’re all great learning projects too.

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