"Cheap Pebble Initiative"

[drowsy perch]

What if someone with virtually no embedded systems knowledge tries to bite off WAY more than he can chew (but is too stubborn to choose an easier project to start with)?

This is intended to be a really long-term project that I'd work on alongside the Embedded Systems programme I'm currently taking in university. The end goal is to (hopefully) be able to make a circular watch that runs PebbleOS, and to have the device be as cheap (and as easy) to assemble as possible.

To that end, the project currently revolves around using the 1.28" TFT LCD display with the GC9A01 IC - arguably the most common round display module out there. Being able to use the entire module directly in the assembly of the watch is something that I prefer, simply because if I ever break the display (will happen eventually), I can just buy another module and quickly replace the broken module.

Because the project is in its VERY early stage, specifications for the rest of the watch are yet to exist. Hell, I'm going to have to somehow get Time Round firmware to run on an MCU with 128kB of RAM because buying anything with more RAM than that would instantly break the bank. It would make for a hell of an optimisation challenge though.

I really do hope I'm delusional enough to keep this project going.

i will now throw all formatting out of the window and type in all lowercase

[safe fulcrum]

nice! hope it will work well./

[drowsy perch]

currently im focused on simply understanding how the hell microcontrollers even communicate with displays

[drowsy perch]

thanks nkv kwdfewfewf

[drowsy perch]

#random message i'd say it's going well

the smallest data mode the display supports natively is 12-bit data, 4 bits per color

running at the time round's 180x180 resolution, that makes the framebuffer 18018012/8 = 48.6kB in size

and given that the STM32F446RE i currently own has 128kB of ram

holy shit am i going to have to hella strip pebbleos down

of course by the time i actually get pebbleos to play well with the gc9a01, i'll probably switch to something with more ram

[safe fulcrum]

I did wonder if it would be possible to cut down that breakout and solder in connector

making many "system" apps non-system and optional would be good way to downsize

like music

[drowsy perch]

certainly lol

anything to familiarise myself more with the os

i do also have the option to simulate the display in qemu and work on it that way but i feel like that might be too much

and isn't exactly what i should be learning atm

over on the hardware side of things

what i reckon i can do

is to have the main board for the watch be the same size as the display's

take out the pins on the display module and connect the module directly to the board

[safe fulcrum]

it really increases fast on price beyond 128kb? no 256kb or something?

[drowsy perch]

i dont even think development boards with more than 128kb of ram are actually readily available lol

ok this is gonna sound rather silly

but the stm32f446 nucleo board i bought already made a bigger dent on my wallet than i'd like it to tbh

around $26

and this is back when i still made money from roblox games lmao

i abandoned the platform and currently do not have a source of income

my parents are supportive of my pursuing this project but what's the fun in asking them for money

[safe fulcrum]

well hopefully 128k is plenty 😄

[drowsy perch]

i'll try to make it work lol

anyways

the part of the module that sticks out go into this black block below the body

a la the example that @drowsy storm kindly provided

[safe fulcrum]

honestly that would work fine, if trimming is impossible

or too expensive to risk damage

[drowsy perch]

here's what the watch would probably look like looking straight down

surprisingly not as ugly as i initially thought it would be

[drowsy perch]

i wonder how i'd incorporate something like a heart rate sensor if i plan to have the entire bottom of this thick pebble be just battery

this is the sort of thing im doing instead of actually studying in real analysis class

"eh i can self-study this later" statement dreamed up by the utterly Deranged

now that i have a firm grasp on how the display functions and how the mcu controls it

i think my next move is to stop until friday

i’ve got two damn japanese tests to deal with and im perilously bad at doing integration

need to get that shit sorted out first before i can continue with this

i think once the weekends come i should begin modifying the source code to work with f446 peripherals

then write the display driver

and then begin attempting to run the os on the nucleo board

if i can get to the running on actual hardware step before i reach year 2 of uni that’d be pretty Neat methinks

the fun part about saying that this is something im working alongside my uni programme is that

we havent even gotten to touch a single line of embedded code

not until at least the second half of year 2 i believe?

(arduino code is so abstracted it barely counts as embedded idc what you say)

[drowsy perch]

@pallid bridge @velvet flare how does this look?

[tough estuary]

this sounds like a great university EE project! i hope it goes well!

[drowsy perch]

tbh i dont even know if i should be using the specific display module that i currently have

its biggest drawback is a lack of an electrically controllable backlight

while i havent tested the display brightness commands on the IC, i wouldn’t be too surprised if the backlight is straight up tied to vcc

[velvet flare]

fire

[drowsy perch]

me when i dont check an emoji’s name

[drowsy perch]

at the end of the day my goal for now should just be to get things Working

only then can i start to really figure out how to Shove the thing into Something that Resembles a Watch

[drowsy perch]

oh wait i forgot i have a 6 hour gap between my two classes tomorrow

hell yeah i got time to work on this

[drowsy perch]

testing reveals that the module's backlight is, in fact, tied to power

fuckkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk

in fact, sending a display brightness command to the display turns red pixels green??

whar?????

what the hell

if i just send the command and no data red pixels turn blue now?

i think there comes a point where i've just got to accept the fact that i paid way too much money for a module that is lacking features

i can just pretend that the backlight pin exists and that i can control it though ig

should have just worked with these boards from the start

i wonder if i can take the panel out of the module...

probably a bad idea

[drowsy perch]

this board just straight up has no datasheet anywhere wtf

ok there it is

[drowsy perch]

no this looks like ass

yeah i think im going to settle on using a bare display and figure the rest out later

[drowsy perch]

this is going to sound really convoluted and kind of stupid

but my current plan is that

once i port pebbleos over to the f446 nucleo board

and have a functioning display driver for the os

im going to switch over to the nrf52840

right now im in the sort of “fuck around and find out” phase

so im just gonna do whatever to really familiarise myself with the os, and embedded development as a whole

and then i’ll move on to the “actually get shit done” phase

[pallid bridge]

no, it sounds reasonable

[drowsy perch]

no progress update today

but i am going to have a shit ton of time tomorrow

[knotty spear]

follow

this sounds awesome

[drowsy perch]

today i will probably have a look at how gpios are handled on the os

gpios and peripherals

[keen tulip]

looks close to Ripley's watch.
https://www.reddit.com/r/cassettefuturism/comments/1ifiyrh/does_this_count_seiko_giugiaro_ripleys_watch_in/

[drowsy perch]

hold that thought

i am now in possession of a 3d printer

this will greatly help in the later stages of the project

(and general QoL improvement)

[drowsy perch]

we’re gonna be going into this “slow news period” as i focus more on understanding software (+ doing a whole bunch of other uni stuff)

might not have as much physical stuff to show off as i did the past week

[drowsy perch]

earlier in the year, i came across this open-source nrf52840 watch

admittedly this is a large part of why my current project is the way it is

[drowsy perch]

one part i find interesting about this project is the fact that it uses a third-party module, specifically the holyiot-18010

though documentation for the module is sparse and the company’s website is…

(there’s nothing in that tab)

really wondering if it’s better for me to use one of these modules, or to work with the bare chip

one’s much easier to work (provided that the module is good) and the other gives me full control

[drowsy perch]

one might make the process of making a new watch faster, the other is gonna give me a lot of experience with bare chips if i pull through

i should probably tone down on the thinking before i get another splitting headache

already suffered from one today; cant for my life figure out if it’s because of the weather, fumes from soldering, or something else

[drowsy perch]

damn okay i think im too woefully underprepared to actually modify the os

[drowsy perch]

hm

should i perhaps start building a really simple freertos firmware

i already got pretty far driving the display myself

wouldnt hurt to extend that to rtoses (and waf as well maybe)

[safe fulcrum]

maybe that would slowly extend understanding on how pebbleos works and evenually can work on that

[drowsy perch]

yeah

kind of like a stepping stone

heh

[safe fulcrum]

stepping stone into pebbleos lol

[drowsy perch]

!!

i have a 4-day break this week

oh boy i cant wait to get started with this instead of studying for my term exams

[drowsy perch]

let’s see if i can at least build an executable for the stm32 without using stm32cubeide

before the break ends

[drowsy perch]

would be nice if i can build a freertos program as well but

just understanding linker scripts and startup codes is already a huge task

and then after this break i wont be touching the project for all of next week to prepare for mock exams

[drowsy perch]

i got the light to blink without an ide

yay

hm

sure the flash was successful, but what's going on here?

wow this is so cool

but it is getting late

i shall continue tomorrow

[drowsy perch]

this isn't

i am so fucking confused

what did i do wrong

[drowsy perch]

it turns out i was overwriting the MODER register, causing the SWD pins to be reset to mode 0

bruh

now to figure out how the hell you’re supposed to do commandline debugging on mac

[drowsy perch]

well that was

news

the good news for me though is that

that new screen might be really close in specs to the gc9a01

that display density looks insane though

[drowsy perch]

!!

so it is denser

260 compared to 240

interesting...

if i were to use the entirety of the gc9a01's display i'd be using up half (or even more) of the STM32F446's 128kB of SRAM

there are two things i can do about it

1. cross that bridge when i get there

2. switch over to something with more ram, and then come back to the f446re as an extra challenge

(big fucking thanks to @vagrant terrace for the nxp coupons and making option 2 viable; they're coming on the 8th)

[vagrant terrace]

get something with command mode

you can (ab)use the internal video ram of the panel to store framebuffers

I've been doing baremetal on the NXP for a bit though (two days) so if you want to figure out how to bring up the board without mcuxpresso you can use this commit

https://github.com/muhammad23012009/uniLoader/commit/80851d646c81a052952160af0e94c9b206156548

[drowsy perch]

how do you even figure this stuff out

a shit ton of trial and error?

[vagrant terrace]

I used the reference manual

all of that code got UART up though, good way to get initial debugging

but yeah I was particularly interested in getting pebbleOS running on this board

I just need a display

[drowsy perch]

oo

i’ve got tomorrow and sunday morning to figure this embedded without an ide thing out

before i have to go back to studying :(((

[vagrant terrace]

it's fiiine

I did that without an IDE because mcuxpresso sucks balls

get SWD on the board first I'd say

[drowsy perch]

im probably only gonna have time for that next month

mocks are next sunday and i plan to spend all week preparing for them

and then another three (oh wow i have three?) weeks preparing for the actual exams

im way too bad at solving improper integral questions rn

[vagrant terrace]

hits way too close to home

that was me 5-6 months ago

except I ended up getting pneumonia by overworking myself :DDD

[drowsy perch]

you are the second person i’ve talked to just this evening who have suffered from a major health complication due to college-induced stress

[vagrant terrace]

well it hasn't gotten better :DD

[drowsy perch]

oh!

the ptr2's screen is slightly bigger

so the dpi might be the same

not sure if this information would help in any way though lol

[drowsy perch]

well this is going well (usart attempt)

[drowsy perch]

well i'll be damned

it's always one tiny thing that fucks everything up

today's tiny thing: HSI's inaccuracy

[drowsy perch]

i can toggle the led on the board through uart now

sick

ok i think imma call it a day for the small uart “sidequest”

[drowsy perch]

ok so i learned quite a bit from that little journey on ide-less developing

if possible i'll try and set up a freertos project tomorrow morning

and then shelve the project for a month so i can try and bag an A in calc I i NEED that scholarship

[drowsy perch]

i mean i say shelve but there’s no way im not gonna touch this at least twice a week

[drowsy perch]

i should actually try to use waf first

while my left hand is occupied by bird

this is not easy

[drowsy perch]

oo

so it's kind of a different ballgame compared to make

[drowsy perch]

and it doesnt seem like i'm gonna get any handholding figuring waf out

search results are either

• not a tutorial
  or
• web application firewall

[drowsy perch]

damn ts tough as hell to wrap my mind around

and it’s that time i put this project aside and get back to studying

[drowsy perch]

i have come to the realisation that

now that i have some kind of understanding of pebbleos’s build system

i absolutely can limit the ram on the qemu build to 128k and work with that

but only if i really have time of course

damn i might be making real progress here holy hell

[vagrant terrace]

pebble classic is also 128kB

and it has pebbleOS 4

[safe fulcrum]

you mean 3.x

unless there was new backport I am not aware of

[wispy moth]

muhammad did, in fact, write the backport

[safe fulcrum]

yeah? wow nice 😄

[wispy moth]

i don't know if it's been run on retail hardware, but it works on a bigboard

[safe fulcrum]

hope it will be an update evenually

[wispy moth]

https://github.com/muhammad23012009/pebble-firmware/tree/tintin_v4.x

[drowsy perch]

guy’s crazy

though i suppose the black-and-white nature of the og makes it a bit easier to backport

correct me if im wrong

[steep crown]

It does color makes everything harder you can always treat your color as black and white for now.

[drowsy perch]

today i learned the connector for the gc9a01 is called an fpc connector

im mostly just saying shit every now and then to prove that im not bored of this project lol

[velvet flare]

lol

[drowsy perch]

im unlikely to be able to actually make any progress until february

i guess i’ll try to do more things after my exams are done

tiny issue

the second semester kind of looks like hell on earth

i’ve got real analysis 2 and 3, data structure analysis, physics 1, and stupid propaganda subject that everyone in public uni has to take

my current plan is to be able to port a stripped-down spalding firmware to the nucleo board before the semester ends

and then switch over to learning basic pcb design throughout the summer

i chose the one embedded systems programme in the uni so i can learn to make a pebble

but now it kind of feels more like im making a pebble so i can get a head start in the programme

it’d be really nice if i didnt have to abandon roblox now i kind of want some source of income

[drowsy perch]

i do have spring break

i might be able to use that time to figure this waf shit out

and then try to configure and build a board that has no capabilities

[drowsy perch]

“oh wow there’s a local brand that makes nrf52840 modules! i wonder how much it c”

actually no it looks like they’re just reselling a waveshare module

oh this is way cheaper what the hell lmao

now this is interesting

it’s another chinese nrf52840 module

a quick search online yields quite a few people who are happy with it

and it does seem rather accessible

hm…

[drowsy perch]

(and the store in this screenshot is located in my city!!! yay!! yay!! yay!!)

oh it’s also on jlcpcb’s assembly parts library

so that’s another option for me

i genuinely cant wait to properly return to working on the firmware side of things

[vagrant terrace]

how about you fuck that and use an HC-05 for everything

[drowsy perch]

i’d rather not have intercourse with a microcontroller

[drowsy perch]

earlier i mentioned this project

which is what im gonna base the hardware side of this project on

[drowsy perch]

i find it interesting how the source wscript specifically has these two lines of code

        raise Exception("install isn't a supported command. Did you mean flash?")```

[drowsy perch]

the waf api docs website is so so confusing to maneouvre

[vagrant terrace]

btw I ended up buying a 1.4" SPI LCD for the mcx

I might try booting pebbleOS on it

I got the LCD today

[drowsy perch]

sick

[velvet flare]

sweet

[drowsy perch]

i still have to comprehend what tf waf is doing before i get real with the os itself

at least i think i have to

3 weeks to study for my finals

and i have no classes for the last two weeks

i should be able to find some time here and there

@velvet flare do you have any resources on learning waf

[velvet flare]

no 😭 🙏

its literally just python tho

just look at existing files and you can probably figure it out 😭

[drowsy perch]

man i still can hardly comprehend what exactly is passed into the build function

the waf book is okay but there are some stuff i’d rather have more detail on

the api docs is just straight up hell

[drowsy perch]

im gonna pull a funny and try to learn more waf on my ipad

and then wait for like 200 years for a c program to compile

[drowsy perch]

i have successfully built something with waf

[drowsy perch]

i can now configure waf to build a debug version of my code

[drowsy perch]

cant wait to try building proper embedded executables when i get home

if the right fucking bus would show up

[drowsy perch]

100 million permission denied errors

[drowsy perch]

that i cannot fucking resolve

right what the fuck is waf doing on my mac

waf on my ipad (alpine userspace emulator) happily runs gcc

but for some fucking reason waf on my mac keeps trying to run the c files directly

and never touches the compiler at all

[drowsy perch]

??

im so confused what the fuck

genuinely pissed off what the fuck

google is of

absolutely no help

chatgpt keeps saying shit about env.CC being empty (it is not)

i DO NOT

GET IT

@velvet flare man i am in a dead end with waf rn

[velvet flare]

me every day of my life

if you dont need to use it

dont

[drowsy perch]

is it really a good idea for me to skip learning waf entirely for this

why the fuck is it now assigning the goddamn arm toolchain to clang......

was it seriously because i had a syntax error in my code omfg

[safe fulcrum]

sounds like you ran into "fun" bug. I remember my old college project, the turtle script one. it worked perfectly, unless loop code was used twice in script. then it runs forever

turned out I didnt assign null to next node of script. so if its dangling and it happens to run into old data in memory that happens to perfectly point back to current node?

took me hours to find, because it was invisible bug

[drowsy perch]

god bless

i have built the thing

as much as i lean on the "hate llms being involved with everything" side i dont think i would have figured any of this shit out if i didnt let chatgpt scrape the internet for waf related stuff

this is like working with garmin connect sdk all over again lmao

[drowsy perch]

something is wrong

the chip immediately crashes

[drowsy perch]

my two week break begins

let’s see how much progress i can make

[drowsy perch]

i have fixed the problem

yay

it turns out i had to pass the -mcpu=.. and -mthumb flags to LDFLAGS as well as CFLAGS, otherwise newlib doesnt get linked

good stuff

i'll probably see how recursion in waf works tomorrow

now to get back to exam prep

[rustic copper]

Following

Very interested in where this goes

[drowsy perch]

the arrival of the nxp boards got me pretty distracted from this project lol

[drowsy perch]

still did some more waf stuff though

i can now fire up gdb from waf

yay

this is fun

[hearty knot]

There is a developing board for smart watch called 黄山派 in Chinese. It has the same sifli chip that the pebble time 2 has, and 6-axis accelerometer, triple-axis Magnetometer, microphone, speaker, light sensor, tf card slot, vibrator connection etc, and a beautiful display. It has all of a stardard smart watch excepet GPS and heart rate reader. There are an sdk based on the chinese rtos rt-thread.

The nice thing about 黄山派 is that it is all open source. The pcb layout is here
https://pro.lceda.cn/editor#id=6f96e33e76244d95b09c643e11e455ba,tab=*70a8629edbc749ae8366e4925de6189b@6f96e33e76244d95b09c643e11e455ba

And the pcb design progam is web based and all free. You can modified the pcb and it can be readily manufactured with the web based file format.
The board cost about 20 dollars. Order online here
https://www.lcsc.com/product-detail/C49056190.html?s_z=n_lckfb

There is more infomation in Chinese
https://oshwhub.com/li-chuang-kai-fa-ban/li-chuang-huang-shan-pai-sf32lb52-kai-fa-ban-v1-2

People has made a case for this board, it is a cheap alternative to pebble if put in a watch case.

People has made a case for this board, it is a cheap alternative to pebble if put in a watch case.
I am planning to port pebbleos to this board, but I have no experience in electronics, if anyone how to do it, please let me know.

[drowsy perch]

intriguing

would be cool if i wasnt specifically aiming to make a circular watch

[hearty knot]

the display is attached with a fpc, you can change to a circular display

[steep crown]

Unfortunately, it can't do the pebble interface. It only has two buttons so you would have to add two more buttons in order for it to work properly with pebble OS

[safe fulcrum]

if its touchscreen I suppose can do left/right sweeps for back and right middle button

[upper hill]

That seems so cool

[hearty knot]

It has a touchsceen

[drowsy perch]

project resumes tomorrow

i have until the 24th to get something running on my stm32 nucleo board

simply because my second semester starts then

[drowsy perch]

project on tiny hold as i process how quickly my first college semester completely fell apart as soon as final exams started

[drowsy perch]

also to explore remote work options since i will be on vacation next week

dont worry i know how to balance work on this with my vacation stuff

[drowsy perch]

@velvet flare if you dont mind can i ask you something about the source code?

[velvet flare]

if I can answer the question sure

[drowsy perch]

specifically about what exactly the platform folder does

[velvet flare]

platform specific resources

oh wait no

thats the one with the bootloaders no?

[drowsy perch]

this one

[velvet flare]

yeah thats uhh

legacy shit I dont touch lmao

[drowsy perch]

okay damn lol

it seems to be some sort of startup code? idk

not entirely sure how it differs from the one in src

[velvet flare]

its the bootloader

[drowsy perch]

hm okay

do i have to start there or can i just ignore it for now

well should i start there

i think the answer is no?

because for now im just flashing the fw directly to the mcu

assuming i get to the point where i have a functioning fw in the first place lol

actually @velvet flare should (or must) i define the capabilities of the board in platform_capabilities.py?

i should start actually writing some goddamn code methinks

[velvet flare]

Yes

[drowsy perch]

alright good to know

tyvm that’s all for now

[drowsy perch]

fear of breaking things overcome

code is being written (but mostly copy and pasted lol)

cant wait to break things

[drowsy perch]

my dumbass took a solid half of a week to figure out that "als" is short for "ambient light sensor"

it's gonna be a long journey until i get this os to run on a new board

[hearty knot]

The name of the compiled firmware is like tintin.bin, I was wondering if it has any meaning other than the name of a cartoon character

[drowsy perch]

i dont think there’s anything more to it than that

[old mural]

pebble technology corporation (2012-2016) named their watches after tintin characters, with the pebble classic being codenamed "tintin"

[velvet flare]

*and thus the firmware was still codenamed tintin

[drowsy perch]

i must have fucked this up pretty bad somehow

every time i try to configure waf i am told CPU_FLAGS is not defined

yeah what the hell?

[drowsy perch]

oh my god i actually have no fucking idea why waf isn't cooperating with me now

oh woah

is the codename for pr2 actually getafix

anyways

i shall now partake in this little session called "how the fuck did i accidentally delete the CPU_FLAGS flag from the main wscript file"

ok now it's actually "??????"

yay

progress

finally

[velvet flare]

yes!

[drowsy perch]

i honestly thought it was some kind of joke all this time

[velvet flare]

getafix is the druid from asterix 😭

[drowsy perch]

i dont know shit about french comics bro 🥀🥀🥀🥀🥀

[vagrant terrace]

oh to be as clueless and cute as a birb

[drowsy perch]

kind of funny to think about how the most progress i’ve made so far on the pebble firmware itself are in the middle of a vacation lmao

[drowsy perch]

im ngl i feel confident that i can make this deadline

[drowsy perch]

ok wow

it seems like i can now configure waf for a new board

shit will of course break spectacularly

if i try to flash anything now lol

i may have a bad bad fever rn but the grind does not stop

[drowsy perch]

hmmm

would it be a bad idea for me to put APP_UNSUPPORTED for everything at this time

[hearty knot]

Maybe you should choose an easier target like this watch
https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Hk10ultra3max-Hk10-Hk-10-Ultra3-Hk10ultra3_1601363383737.html

It has a SF32LB52 MCU, and the sdk of this watch is opensource
https://github.com/amir1387aht/hk_watchs_hack

[drowsy perch]

turns out the grind does have to stop

i am now in the hospital

so that’s great..

[drowsy perch]

good news

i did not have to stay at the hospital

and the fever has gotten less extreme, though no one has any idea still of why exactly my fever got so high

the grind continues, but unfortunately at a more conservative speed

[drowsy perch]

bit of info

i am physically back now

but progress will unfortunately have to remain rather slow

to make space for a local robotics contest im taking part in

[drowsy perch]

really bad news

this semester looks like a BITCH

i might not have time for this project at all

[safe fulcrum]

female dog? sounds like cute dog semester 😉

[drowsy perch]

not even halfway into my first week and i can already tell im going to struggle with fitting the robotics stuff into my schedule

this is going to have to take a backseat

[safe fulcrum]

your future is always first

[tough estuary]

once you become an expert in robotics, i will look forward to your future pebble robot

[drowsy perch]

i dont know what the hell they plan on teaching us for this 3-hour long “General informatics” class but maybe i can get something done

before i drown in infinite maths

[velvet flare]

Take all the classes but don't attend

[drowsy perch]

i really would rather not tempt fate

fucking hell why did they put the one class that you can just not attend in the easier semester

[drowsy perch]

right so

certain developments have happened that puts me in this

situation where i actually have to get this project going

and fast

[drowsy perch]

ok actual updates now

it turns out the os appears to need an external spi flash chip

i am unsure if i can omit that for the purposes of just getting the core os to run on a devboard

[proud lintel]

This first message made me lol

[drowsy perch]

ok yeah i think i might need a NOR flash chip here

cant get myself out of buying more hardware it would seem

[drowsy perch]

or i can try and make this work with the qspi flash chip that's on the frdm mcxn947 lol

assuming i can access the chip directly from the header pins

ok it might not work

damn this is a toughie

[drowsy perch]

project update

im probably going to have to put this aside for a bit

partly because of the whole flash chip thing which im not sure how to deal with

[drowsy perch]

but also partly so i could circle back to this

i kinda need to get the hang of using freertos for some rather high profile projects i basically got dragged into in uni

[drowsy perch]

this ended up being a pretty good idea

[cloud moss]

you can stub all the flash APIs and it'll boot to UART, but you'll be missing system resources so nothing really works

it's fine for proving out you can boot and dbgserial works, but not a whole lot more

[drowsy perch]

that’s interesting

[safe fulcrum]

well its good to start from base and understand that it works from that level

then start layering on

[cloud moss]

You can get NOR flash breakouts for a couple dollars so it's an easy solve

W25Q128 should be fine

[drowsy perch]

oh thank god there are places selling it locally

[drowsy perch]

i do not know when i can return to this project

to be clear i still am very much interested in working on this

however

things in my personal life are moving WAY too quickly and im afraid i might not have any free time left

[drowsy perch]

oh and just to be clear i did not lose a loved one or anything

i am being given a hell of an opportunity (as mentioned in #random message)

but i will have to put this aside for a while

[steep crown]

I hope your internship goes well

[hearty knot]

is the "pro max" refers to hk promax watch? the hk watch is very good in hardware but has terrible application

[drowsy perch]

while i still dont have an estimate on when i can return to this

i have gotten my hands on something

that could speed things up quite a bit once i do return

thank god the project i was assigned to at the company also uses this chip lol

supposedly this kit includes an external 64 Mb flash chip

should speed up this project a fair bit

[steep crown]

nice

[rancid atlas]

I have been porting pebbleOS to banglejs2, it might be relevant here, since banglejs2 is just 99$ afaik.
https://github.com/deep-gaurav/pebbleos-banglejs2

https://github.com/orgs/espruino/discussions/7339#discussioncomment-16479034

[velvet flare]

😍