ESP32

612 Articles

Gaming Table Has Lights, Action

January 12, 2025 by 2 Comments

We couldn’t decide if [‘s] Dungeons and Dragons gaming table was a woodworking project with some electronics or an electronics project with some woodworking. Either way, it looks like a lot of fun.

Some of the features are just for atmosphere. For example, the game master can set mood lighting. Presets can have a particular light configuration for, say, the woods or a cave.

But the table can also be a game changer since the game runner can send private messages to one or more players. Imagine a message saying, “You feel strange and suddenly attack your own team without any warning.”

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Tactility; The ESP32 Gets Another OS

January 11, 2025 by 11 Comments

Doing the rounds this week is a new operating system for ESP32 microcontrollers, it’s called Tactility, and it comes from [Ken Van Hoeylandt]. It provides a basic operating system level with the ability to run apps from an SD card, and it has the choice of a headless version or an LVGL-based touch UI.

Supported devices so far are some Lillygo and M5Stack boards, with intriguingly, support in the works for the Cheap Yellow Display board that’s caught some attention recently. The term “ESP32” is now a wide one encompassing Tensilica and RISC-V cores and a range of capabilities, so time will tell how flexible it is for all branches of the family.

We find this OS to be interesting, both in its own right and because it joins at least two others trying to do the same thing. There’s [Sprite_TM]’s PocketSprite mini console, and the operating system used by the series of Netherlands hacker camp badges,  We’ll be trying to get a device running it, in order to give you a look at whether it’s suitable for your projects. If it runs well on the cheaper hardware, it could be a winner!

Bit-Banging The USB-PD Protocol

January 10, 2025 by 13 Comments

For one-off projects, adding a few integrated circuits to a PCB is not too big of a deal. The price of transistors is extremely low thanks to Moore and his laws, so we’re fairly free to throw chips around like peanuts. But for extremely space-constrained projects, huge production runs, or for engineering challenges, every bit of PCB real estate counts. [g3gg0] falls into the latter group, and this project aims to remove the dedicated USB-PD module from a lighting project and instead bit-bang the protocol with the ESP32 already on the board.

The modern USB power delivery (PD) protocol isn’t quite as simple as older USB ports that simply present a 5V source to whatever plugs itself into the port. But with the added complexity we get a lot more capability including different voltages and greater power handling capabilities. The first step with the PD protocol is to communicate with a power source, which requires a 1.2V 600kHz signal. Just generating the signal is challenging enough, but the data encoding for USB requires level changes to encode bits rather than voltage levels directly. With that handled, the program can then move on to encoding packets and sending them out over the bus.

After everything is said and done, [g3gg0] has a piece of software that lets the ESP32 request voltages from a power supply, sniff and log PD communication, and inject commands with vendor defined messages (VDM), all without needing to use something like a CH224K chip which would normally offload the USB-PD tasks. For anyone looking to save PCB space for whatever reason, this could be a valuable starting point. To see some more capabilities of the protocol, check out this USB-PD power supply that can deliver 2 kW.

More Things To Do With Your Cheap Yellow Display

January 7, 2025 by 7 Comments

The Cheap Yellow Display (CYD) is an ESP32 development board that’s been making the rounds for a while now, thanks to its value and versatility. For around $10 USD, you get a nicely integrated package that’s perfect for a wide array of projects and applications. Toss a couple in on your next AliExpress order, and all you need to do is come up with an idea. [Craig Lindley] had two ideas, and maybe they will help get those gears turning in your head. Even if you don’t need a network-connected MP3 player or GPS information display, we bet browsing the source code would be useful.

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Close up of a Hornet Nest circuit board

PoE-Power Protection: The Hornet Nest Alarm Panel

January 4, 2025 by 30 Comments

Have you ever thought of giving new buzz to outdated wired alarm systems or saving money while upgrading your home security? The Hornet Nest Alarm Panel, to which hacker [Patrick van Oosterwijck] contributes, does just that. Designed for domotics enthusiasts, it offers 42 sensor zones and seamless integration with Home Assistant and ESPHome. This open-source gem uses the wESP32 board, which combines an ESP32 with Ethernet and Power over Ethernet (PoE) for robust, reliable connectivity. Check out the Crowd Supply campaign for details.

So what makes this Hornet Nest special? Besides its hackable nature, it repurposes existing wired sensors, reducing waste and cost. Unlike WiFi-dependent solutions, the PoE-powered ESP32 ensures stable performance, even in hard-to-reach locations. The optional USB programming port is genius—it’s there when you need it but doesn’t clutter the board when you don’t. With its isolated circuits, long-cable safety, and smart Ethernet, WiFi, and Bluetooth combination, this system ticks every DIY box.

Hackaday has featured other DIY PoE-powered projects, offering more inspiration for smart automation enthusiasts.

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VPlayer Puts Smart Display In Palm Of Your Hand

December 31, 2024 by 18 Comments

It’s not something we always think about, but the reality is that many of the affordable electronic components we enjoy today are only available to us because they’re surplus parts intended for commercial applications. The only reason you can pick up something like a temperature sensor for literal pennies is because somebody decided to produce millions of them for inclusion in various consumer doodads, and you just happened to luck out.

The vPlayer, from [Kevin Darrah] is a perfect example. Combining a 1.69 inch touch screen intended for smartwatches with the ESP32-S3, the vPlayer is a programmable network-connected display that can show…well, pretty much anything you want, within reason. As demonstrated in the video below, applications range from showing your computer’s system stats to pulling in live images and videos from the Internet.

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38C3: Towards An Open WiFi MAC Stack On ESP32

December 28, 2024 by 15 Comments

At the 38th Chaos Communications Congress, [Frostie314159] and [Jasper Devreker] gave us a nice update on their project to write an open-source WiFi stack for the ESP32. If you’re interested in the ESP32 or WiFi in general, they’ve also got a nice deep dive into how that all works.

On the ESP32, there’s a radio, demodulator, and a media access controller (MAC) that takes care of the lowest-level, timing-critical bits of the WiFi protocol. The firmware that drives the MAC hardware is a licensed blob, and while the API or this blob is well documented — that’s how we all write software that uses WiFi after all — it’s limited in what it lets us do. If the MAC driver firmware were more flexible, we could do a lot more with the WiFi, from AirDrop clones to custom mesh modes.

The talk starts with [Jasper] detailing how he reverse engineered a lot of Espressif’s MAC firmware. It involved Ghidra, a Faraday cage, and a lucky find of the function names in the blob. [Frostie] then got to work writing the MAC driver that he calls Ferris-on-Air. Right now, it’s limited to normal old station mode, but it’s definite proof that this line of work can bear fruit.

This is clearly work in progress — they’ve only been at this for about a year now — but we’ll be keeping our eyes on it. The promise of the ESP32, and its related family of chips, being useful as a more general purpose WiFi hacking tool is huge.