general-chat

[rapid geode]

AI is so dumb

[kindred isle]

Hehe, yeah.
But I wouldn't put that on AI. Lots of people get them mixed up.
"Computer chips are made of silicon."
"Whaaa? The same thing they use for [REDACTED]???"

[nimble aurora]

Lol

[kindred isle]

On a far less likely topic to invoke the mods, I have found a very dangerous site for me. It sells shiny things.
Ok, they're game tokens, but $6 could get me a stack of 30 metal cubes.

in pink

[rapid geode]

O_o

ha

that colour is called 3d lavender.

(in anodising terms)

[raw jasper]

Silicone cookware would have been a far more wholesome object to come up with :P

[rapid geode]

Thats cause your intelligence isnt artificial...

:x

haha

[raw jasper]

To be fair, and at risk of crossing the line set by our mods, I would expect an LLM would be more likely to return a text on silicone's cookware-related applications than the... medical-grade anatomically-correct ones

Also, I just realized that, ironically enough, I typo'd silicone as silicon in my initial message. Please do not try anything adventurous with any silicon-based object 😆

[kindred isle]

Sometimes I wonder how people got into the positions they're in. We're having a bit of a spat at work with the good people in Nasdaq's web team who think it's totally normal and valid to send out emails with links that include raw unescaped spaces in them.

[dusty citrus]

you know, I wanted to do a diy keyboard with a screen down the keys, but I never quite figured out an inexpensive way to have the keys with no parallax from the display. then I discovered that there are tv stones, but pricing varies and so its their quality, then there's the synthetic option called image conduits, which are really expensive and on top of that the only manufacturer that I've found schott, is not co-operative

that's why people end up doing business with china, cause homegrown business do not want to do business with you
and it's all about licensing and menial forms

[rapid geode]

schott is cooperative if you have millions of dollars in work for them

😛

but yeah, in the last 10 years especially chinese "front ends" to factories are super responsive to single parts, samples, small orders.

the us/japanese companies are changing to respond though. you used to get the "fu" price, or just no response. now i have companies like thk, lenze, etc more than happy to talk options.

[dusty citrus]

ah also that, but I don't wanna talk! justt get my design and throw me a live quote, like jlc does

diverting a little bit argument, someone had luck with nat trasversal/avoidance on wireguard?
my isp router apparently does not let configure NATs, tailscale works fine, but I cannot use it at work, as it keeps an interface up even when not used. On the wireguard's docs it mentions keeping a value into "Persistent Keepalive" to enable it, but it does nothing, it does not work

[fair summit]

@idle lion re the NINA-FW HTTP/HTTPS failures you are seeing: does it only fail for you on HTTPS? I was not sure based on the issue. If you more or less duplicate the failing test on, say, an ESP32, S2, or S3, does it work fine? I noticed you said it failed on the python server, but not nginx.

[dusty citrus]

hm nvm netbird is just like tailscale, but with the ability to bring down the network interface

[raw jasper]

(Just FYI, running arbitrary software on work computers is a good way to get fired or, even worse, get in trouble for getting the company in legal trouble by violating non-commercial use licensing clauses)

[dusty citrus]

I know, but gots loots of free time, and it just annoys me doing nothing or pretending to work
although there are better workarounds for said blocks/annoyances, they're also annoying

like on vms/safeboxes antiviruses/control systems cannot really touch anything

[raw jasper]

Looks like tailscale's free plan is "for personal use only". I do not know how litigious tailscale are, but chances are your company may find out about your extracurricular activities by way of their legal department receiving a cease and desist notice, perhaps with a request to pay "owed" license fees or get sued

This kind of thing happens more often than you think

[dusty citrus]

in reality though they can see what you do,
cause I had the bad idea to tell the management to pretty much use an rmm, or a corpo word for a rat system to deal with pcs
we're a msp, it ended up being implemented in our pcs, but I have no access into it
next time I'll keep my mouth shut

[kindred isle]

Malware Bytes noticed a lot of connections from my place of work once, and sent an email to probably our legal team saying to knock it off.

[raw jasper]

If they only sent a C&D, that makes them one of the more lenient companies, all things considered

[kindred isle]

They may have also considered who we are. We're not government, but still the kind of name that they'd see and think "let's give them a little slack."

[raw jasper]

Working in healthcare or education?

[kindred isle]

That would be telling

[raw jasper]

That's fair ^^

[broken plover]

It doesn’t fit?

[rapid geode]

shiny

[lapis anchor]

? What happens if you move the pins from F into G or H instead? (And the pins in A to B or C)

(you don't want them to fit on one side of the board, you need the gap in the middle to separate the pins)

[idle lion]

It fails for me with HTTP sending requests across a local network to python -m http.server So it is not only HTTPS/SSL it fails without also for me. But indeed both NGINX and Apache2 hosting the pages allow it to succeed

When it does fail with http.server most the time on the server side it thinks it was a successful 200 response as well.

[broken plover]

ohh

[terse lava]

I will add that in addition to straddling the gap ("Mind the gap!"), don't forget you can add wires under the board. Some people will complain about how the boards are sometimes so wide it only leaves one columns on each side, but you can wire underneath (you might need to pull the board off to get access then put it back down when you are done) and also you can bring out wires further down the breadboard where you have more open area.

[plain tusk]

🤩 are you putting a clearcoat or something on it to keep the finish?

[plain tusk]

is there more to this conversation somewhere? search is failing me, but I do a fair amount of HTTP wrangling

is that "set"!? 😍

[idle lion]

It's a game with the same mechanics as Set. We ended up changing the name, and the shapes that are used on the cards so as not to run afoul of copyright or trademark. The finished project is documented here: https://learn.adafruit.com/match3-game-on-metro-rp2350

[idle lion]

There is further discussion about it on the issue here: https://github.com/adafruit/nina-fw/issues/71

[ancient rivet]

this guide might help too:
https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-sparkle-motion-mini/wled-config

[rapid geode]

titanium doesnt need a finish. it will stay shiny forever.

[edgy shale]

What do you do when you don't have the parts to make what you want and ypu can find what you need anywhere and you just have this overwhelming feeling of dread and you just don't know what to do

[fair summit]

can -> can't? You start investigating design alternatives

plan b, c,

[ancient rivet]

design for the parts that are available

[kindred isle]

Really, Tasker? Really?

It works though. I can now turn my Wiz lights on and off by...
Scanning an old Charlie Ticket.

[raw jasper]

It's handy, and prevents the ticket from becoming e-waste! What more to ask!

[kindred isle]

I only wish that I could do it with the phone locked, but that's probably a security thing I don't want to mess with.

Also sending to 192.168.1.255 for broadcast doesn't seem to work. Fortunately I only have two bulbs, and figured out how to pass local variables around Tasker. So minimal code duplication.

Just, woe upon me if the IP ever changes.

[lapis anchor]

Set a DHCP reservation in your router so the IP doesn't change or you could set the IP statically on the device that's outside of your DHCP scope, too. Both are valid 🙂

[raw jasper]

IIRC you can also get lightbulbs that directly communicate with a remote control. Perhaps that option could be worth looking into to alleviate some of the jenga-ness of it all?

[kindred isle]

Oh honestly if I do anything further with this it'll be to setup automated light control with more advanced triggers than either Google or Wiz offers. The scanning NFC tags was just to be silly.

And yeah, I could probably set the DHCP reservations. Depends on how far I want to actually go with this.

[lapis anchor]

Can also just disable DHCP lease expiration so your IPs never change on any devices. Usually fine for home users 🙂

[mellow island]

Hello everyone! I'm new here and to all of this in general. I've mostly been brute-forcing my way through my project with ChatGPT and Gemini. 😅 Here is what I made and why I made it: https://www.instructables.com/Proximity-Switch/ Any feedback you could give about how to improve the project, improve the tutorial, use less hallucinating AI, maybe build an interface for the json code, be one of the cool kids, etc would be so much appreciated. Let me know if this is not the correct thread!

I have made a version with a time of flight sensor but haven't updated the tutorial with the json code yet. I have added mouse clicks and scrolling to the code but not to the tutorial because there are quite enough things that can go wrong already without adding more variables. My target audience is families, therapists, and educators who don't have the means to purchase several hundred dollars worth of equipment but need a way for their person/people to access technology.

[sturdy dawn]

Monitor giving me an error on a code.py on matrix portal running a crypto ticker. It says "under minimum refresh rate" for the function display.refresh()

Where auto-refresh was disabled

[honest yarrow]

Hii guys im new here

Why this group so empty there are 40.000 people

[tardy badger]

Lots of people join to get help with projects and then don’t check back after they finish in many cases

[fading isle]

Hey!

[mellow island]

Hello fellow newbies! What is everyone working on?

[fading isle]

Wanna start on a new project. Thinking of building a kart

[sturdy dawn]

I succeeded in porting the library over

Backed up this project in like 3 places lol took me several days to get it

Surprised it compiled and then even more surprised it actually worked

[warm shuttle]

Not sure the right channel for this?

A few years ago, there was a [post](#adafruit-blog-feed message) where Limor was showing off the STEMMA Friend as a UART Friend ... including mention of using PIO to enable automatic baud rate detection. Is this PIO UART with auto-baud detection available somewhere? If not, anyone know the details? (e.g., used two PIO + 4 State machines to do foo, bar, baz, and nippy)

[fair summit]

I will inquire about this. I can't find the code.

[sturdy dawn]

Last thing I want to get to work is that Tetris clock. I can get it to boot up and connect to Wi-Fi but as soon as it gets and it sort of draw function. It crashes and reboots. But it still seem my IP and time on the serial

Wow that was word salad

Talk to text 🤣. I still see my IP address and my current time on the serial output, the draw function comes next and that's when it crashes

[mellow island]

Ooo that sounds cool!

[mellow island]

Iconic! Love that scene.

[cerulean condor]

Is there a name to describe a circuit that is placed on top of a completely different circuit? Like a modchip or similar

[lapis anchor]

Daughterboard is a common term used for that.

[sudden raven]

Hello! I am having an issue with my Airlift Wifi Featherwing Co-Processor where it throws "TimeoutError: ESP32 not responding" in serial console right after sucessfully connecting to any network. Would a firmware re-flash of the Airlift help with this or should I be looking elsewhere for problems? I am using the example code from adafruit for the Airlift, and is connected to a Feather M4 Express. I can't seem to find similar examples of this issue with the airlift where it can initially connect to a network and then crash immediately after. Any suggestions appreciated.

[umbral phoenix]

@sudden raven Arduino or CircuitPython? Is the behavior repeatable... connects to an AP fine, but then nothing, or does the behavior vary over attempts? It may help to show a photo of the hardware (with enough detail to see soldering and connections), and the code. What version of Airlift (NINA) firmware is on the FeatherWing?

my first guess for "ESP32 not responding" is (typically) a wiring issue

[cold pebble]

I'm trying to port a custom bytecode interpreter and it's slowly driving me insane

why is c++ so hard 😢

[sudden raven]

It is running CircuitPython, the behavior does sometimes vary over attempts (failing earlier) but most of the time it is able to get past inital connection, but can never complete the example code. I am not sure what version the Airlift Featherwing is running

[umbral phoenix]

I assume the stacking headers on the doubler board are soldered similarly? The solder joints are a bit heavy and not fully flowed in all cases, there could be a flaky connection on one of the SPI or related pins.

esp.firmware_version will give the NINA version

(assuming esp = adafruit_esp32spi.ESP_SPIcontrol(spi, ...)

it's worth a try to reflash the NINA firmware especially if it's an older version (like an original v1.2.2), though I suspect that's not the main issue

[sudden raven]

1.7.4

Interestingly enough it got farther than before this time, getting past the stage of pinging google on the test code

And a different stop error, "TimeoutError: Timed out waiting for SPI char"

[umbral phoenix]

that one may be a bit broader as far as causes go, it's been a while since I use Airlift

you may want to try to reflow the 6 pins used for ESP32SPI ...a tad more heat and/or dwell time to get a nice connection

[sudden raven]

Ok, ill pay special attention to those during reflow and report back, thanks!

[sudden raven]

IT WORKS! Thanks so much!

[hollow flint]

For the opposite reason of why Zig is easy. That is, C++ has decades of language features bolted onto each other, whereas Zig intentionally leaves features out of the language when they aren't sufficiently helpful.

[cold pebble]

I was thinking more along the lines of manual memory management is painful

I get why of course

but it's still miserable

[sturdy dawn]

I combined the two libraries and they work in unison without conflict. You just need 2 separate variables for the panel res. I forked it

Geometrical functions are handled by protomatter and then the actual display is driven by DMA

The buttons also still work and I removed the automatic gif increment change so it's just with buttons now

I was going to delete the extra variables but then I was looking at it just now and thinking wait. I need those 🤣

I get issues with "combine" gifs though. It doesn't interpret the layers right and it moves stuff around. You need to use "replace"

[kindred isle]

Ah ha, I knew I bought one of Adafruit's bi directional level shifters at some point. Now I can try connecting to my little LED controller over serial without potentially blowing up the USB to TTL cable since that does 3.3v signalling, but my board runs at 5v.

Well, I can try once I figure out a good way to source 3.3v since neither end supplies that.

Probably just stick a random Trinket M0 on the breadboard and steal its regulator output.

[hasty wedge]

The highest programming voltage record I've ever seen on an OTP microcontroller just got broken

Cmsemicon SC8P series PIC MCU requires a 20V VPP to program

Also, each MCU costs 1.5 cents

[hasty wedge]

also, Cmsemicon's IDE is kinda trash

There's no English and Chinese is gibberish when the system locale is set to anything that's not China

I am experimenting with SC8P052, which is a PIC14 OTP microcontroller

One cool thing about this MCU is that PWM generators get their own timer. Instead of having to use one of the system timer

[iron quarry]

heyyaa does anyone have a esp 32 c3 aliexpress link that doesn't have the antenna issue, thanks

[hasty wedge]

programming the 1.5 cents MCU

[hasty wedge]

Don't do AliExpress if you're looking for a very specific feature

Images are often not true to what they actually ship to you

[iron quarry]

yeah that's exactly why I'm asking lol, but ty someone else sent me a link 🙂

[raw jasper]

At least the programmer looks fire

Also, wow, USB-B cable in a recent device

[raw jasper]

What do you mean, the 3D renders aren't true to life? 😉

[hasty wedge]

I was fighting with the programmer for the past hour or so

Then I figured out that if I remove the adapter board and let the programmer connect directly to the MCU it will "flash" just fine

"flash" in quotation because it's not flash inside, it's one time programmable e-fuses and I am literally blowing them with 20V programming voltage

[strong sierra]

Hey guys, I went into this discord server blindly, what's this server about?

[raw jasper]

burn!

How much code space does it have?

[hasty wedge]

A bunch of geeks making cool stuff

[hasty wedge]

Depends

The 1.5 cents one have 1k*14bits

Blinky working

[strong sierra]

What code language are you using?

[hasty wedge]

It can be programmed in C or assembly

[raw jasper]

Though I guess with only 1kword code space, only raw asm would make sense

Also, seriously, 14 bit word size?

[hasty wedge]

Although it supports C89, the manufacturer suggests to use C only as a means of manipulating control registers

[hasty wedge]

Yeah

14 bit

[raw jasper]

Is it a full custom architecture, or is it based on a PIC or something?

[hasty wedge]

PIC14

[raw jasper]

It's always PIC, isn't it? :P

[hasty wedge]

Yeah, always PIC

Kudo to Microchip for developing such a powerful and die-size efficient architecture

[hasty wedge]

New asian microcontroller

Except Padauk

The original EEVBlog 3 cents microcontroller

But that's also PIC-inspired

[strong sierra]

Is C++ a good first language? Or should I switch to something else?

[hasty wedge]

Disclaimer: I am Chinese

[hasty wedge]

For MCU just do Arduino

Its a perfectly fine first language

Or just grab a PIC14 dev board with real Microchip PIC chip and learn assembly

[strong sierra]

I heard assembly is hard

[hasty wedge]

Depends on the platform

x86 is extremely hard

[raw jasper]

If you do not know any programming at all, it would be best to start with a higher level language :)

[hasty wedge]

PIC14 is very easy

[raw jasper]

x86 should be sacrificed to a volcano to atone for humanity's sins

[strong sierra]

I'm planning to start on learning ESP32 then learn Arduino afterwards

[hasty wedge]

You can program ESP32 with Arduino!

[raw jasper]

x86 mood: Your computer wakes up thinking it is an 8086 from 1978

[strong sierra]

Ah so anything the Arduino can do esp 32 can aswell? But with WiFi and Bluetooth?

[hasty wedge]

Arduino is a framework

You can use Arduino to program a lot of different vendors

[hasty wedge]

16 bits moment

[strong sierra]

Idk what those mean, I'm still a barebone beginner 😭

[raw jasper]

Segmented code moment @_@

[raw jasper]

What would you like to achieve?

[strong sierra]

I want to program stuff and make them work in terms of electronics (I'm still in SHS, so I don't know many terms but I'm learning)

[raw jasper]

I guess you would like to do some basic projects, you know, blink an LED, react to a switch being pressed, etc? Or do you have a more concrete goal in mind?

[hasty wedge]

blink LEDs

If you just want to do LED blinking and such

And you have absolutely no experience. You should start with CircuitPython

Grab an ESP32S3 Feather or an RP2040 Feather

A breadboard and a bunch of LED and buttons

[strong sierra]

Yeah, like those stuff, I don't have a kit yet (though I'm considering of buying one) rn I'm trying to make very simple codes in C++ (like a unit converter for example)

[hasty wedge]

That's all you'll need

Adafruit is the home of CircuitPython and Feather boards

It's an extremely beginner friendly programming language

You don't even need an IDE

[raw jasper]

I second this advice

[strong sierra]

What are those?

[hasty wedge]

CircuitPython is Adafruit's programming language

Feather boards are beginner friendly dev boards made by Adafruit that's designed to run CircuitPython while also have decent Arduino support

[hollow flint]

https://learn.adafruit.com/welcome-to-circuitpython/what-is-circuitpython and https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-feather

[raw jasper]

Yeah, circuitpython is a simple programming language to interact with MCUs

[strong sierra]

Are those ESP32 MCUs?

[hasty wedge]

There are ESP32 feathers

[hollow flint]

On the second link, some models contain a MCU from the ESP32 family. Not all.

[strong sierra]

What are feathers? I'm sorry for asking so much, I'm just very new at these stuff

[hasty wedge]

read those links

jkjk

Added a note to myself to add a 104 capacitor between VCC and GND when flashing

[tardy oyster]

Normally are the adafruit parts on amazon legit?

Or are they cheap chinese fakes? ;p

[hasty wedge]

They are not fake unless they have adafruit logo

[hasty wedge]

Also, I just tested the low power capability of this micro

Very impressive

Sleep mode around 700nA at 3V

And unable to measure at all with a multimeter

I have a curious question. How do you measure extremely low current without a specialized device?

[solar kindle]

Adafruit has a microcontroller board family called "Feather". They all have (essentially) the same pinout, but with different features. This one, for example, has an ESP32 controller on board. And you can program it in Circuit Python or Arduino.
https://www.adafruit.com/product/5900

[raw jasper]

I guess you could use a sense resistor?

[hollow flint]

The best places to get Adafruit products locally in your region are listed here: https://www.adafruit.com/distributors

[tardy oyster]

OH WOW

Didn't know we had elecronics distributers in France

That's new

[hasty wedge]

sense resistor?

a resistor that I measure the voltage between it's two legs?

How can I measure the voltage difference if the resistor is small and the current is low?

I am asking this because while the MCU only draws 700nA while sleeping, it still needs to drive LEDs and such when it's awake and those needs current. Which is why a large resistor is a no no.

[whole jacinth]

this is why measuring small currents tends to need specialized devices. they usually have an amplifier to help measure small voltages on their sense resistors (and different value resistors for different ranges)

[hasty wedge]

Got it

[whole jacinth]

if you’re on a tight budget, you could manually switch sense resistors, but there’s some risk of bad behavior or damage if you’re not careful enough

DMM in voltage mode and a sense resistor will do better than an analog meter for small currents, though 700nA will be tricky

[hasty wedge]

Yeah, I barely tested that 700nA with a digital meter

[whole jacinth]

https://www.adafruit.com/product/5048 this works fairly well, and is relatively inexpensive for what it does

[hasty wedge]

Thank you! I will take a look

My other way of measuring MCU's sleep current is to just put it on a 3V coin cell battery

if the batter still contains enough power after a week for it to operate normally I will say it's a win

In fact I am doing that right now with my new Cmsemicon chip

[hollow flint]

Though distributors in other EU countries might have better stock of specific products.

[raw jasper]

Yeah, that's the problem, but it was the only thing I could think of to do it without specialized tools -- Keep in mind I'm not an engineer though

I've heard good enough stuff about the power profiler kit ii mentioned above, so much so that I have been considering getting one

[hasty wedge]

btw this thing is getting rare in China nowadays

[raw jasper]

I've seen them at local markets. Perhaps I should get one as decoration before they completely disappear :)

[hasty wedge]

Everybody is using DMMs from KeySight, Fluke, etc

[hasty wedge]

Go for it

[raw jasper]

When I see "fluke", I can't help but think of the liver fluke haha

They make great stuff, but the name is a bit cursed :P

[hasty wedge]

I used a KeySight DMM at my friends place and I freaking love it

For me myself I just use that analogue meter

[raw jasper]

huh, really?

I had a no-name DMM, but I lost it in a move

[hasty wedge]

It's pretty capable

And doesn't require battery when measuring V and A

[raw jasper]

Yeah, that is one of their good points

[hasty wedge]

It does require two batteries 1.5V and 9V for resistance

[raw jasper]

I guess you can also easily visualize variations in current draw because of the physical needle movement

[hasty wedge]

Oh yeah, that's super useful

[raw jasper]

I remember reading some blog reporting that Shenzhen electronics repair stores use needle ammeters to infer how far in the boot process a phone reaches by the "dance" of the needle

No idea whether that is true or not though!

[hasty wedge]

Yeah

It's very true

[raw jasper]

Oh that is very cool then :D

[hasty wedge]

Although more and more repair shops digitised those things

[raw jasper]

How?

[hasty wedge]

Just looking at the display on the power supply

[raw jasper]

Ah. That would make sense, but I feel it's less intuitive

[hasty wedge]

They also started to use thermal cameras to find unusual hotspots

[raw jasper]

I guess you can't beat short = hot

;)

[hasty wedge]

[raw jasper]

It seems thermal cameras have gotten quite down in price lately

The aliexpress going price appears to be ~EUR80 for a basic one?

[hasty wedge]

Because a lot of Chinese manufacturers are making them

[raw jasper]

I guess in China it is a lot more common to have your stuff repaired?

Where I live, there is only a single repair shop that does microsoldering/board-level repair

And I did not even know it existed until a coworker mentioned it

[hasty wedge]

Yeah, ideology difference

[tardy oyster]

You probably won't believe it but I got a cheap one for 40EUR ;p

But it's resolution was absolutely horrible

[rotund canopy]

I’ve seen those modules with horrible res, is there anything nearing 640x480 for frugal hobbyist prices

[raw jasper]

hahahahaha, nope!

[weary fiber]

Update on “get the latest marlin and run my ender 3 into the ground”

Ignore LCD damage, a brake pad got dropped >>

[idle solstice]

Hi all! Been like 10 years since I last soldered. Are these joints looking okay?

[cold pebble]

I just got a toy bytecode interpreter running on a pico (reading code files from an SD card)

Now to optimize it and add some fun builtin functions...

[kindred isle]

I hate bash scripting.
I also hate trying to learn any of it because the top results from google kind of tend to omit some of the finer details.
Like how to actually format a conditional for an if statement.

But now I can toggle my smart lights by clicking a file on my computer.

[terse lava]

They look "OK". What I am noticing, especially on the top side where the resistors sit, it that it looks like you are mainly heating up the pads and not the pads AND component lead at the same time. You need to push your iron into the junction of the wire and pad so both are getting direct heat. Otherwise you get solder flowing down through the plated thru holes but if you look closely at the resistor lead, the soilder is not nicely "wetting" onto some of those leads. It sort of forms a hard to see ring around the lead which means it isn't wetting onto the lead properly.

[idle solstice]

That's really helpful, thank you!

[woeful moss]

the mitch altman comic is good on how to solder https://mightyohm.com/files/soldercomic/FullSolderComic_EN.pdf

also something i learnt recently is that 63/37 solder is better than 60/40 due to the ratio being closer to an eutectic alloy, so the solder doesn't have a "mushy" state between liquid and solid

[hasty wedge]

@raw jasper

Music playback on the 1.5 cents microcontroller

Let me see my resource usage

Program size 148 words out of 1k words

RAM usage 21 bytes out of 64 bytes

[cold pebble]

... I just spent hours trying to optimize my code and it turns out I just had a random delay call in one of my functions 😭

[hasty wedge]

Also... I read the price wrong

1.5 cents is the one with flash memory

The OTP microcontroller I am using costs 0.9 cents each

[raw jasper]

ooh nice! How are you storing the audio data?

[hasty wedge]

music card

burned into the actual OTP chip

Behaviour matches the ICE

[raw jasper]

Music card = uncompressed 8khz sample rate PCM, or do you have something "fancier" going on?

(Also, which song are you playing?)

[hasty wedge]

6khz

just a random Chinese TikTok song

[raw jasper]

Now complete the cycle and upload it to tiktok!

:D

[hasty wedge]

Yilu Shenghua

[hasty wedge]

from left to right: MCU, music card, H bridge

That H bridge is a motor driver chip

[raw jasper]

What for?

[hasty wedge]

Driving the speaker

Now I think about it, it's really like Tiger Electronics HitClips

But modular

[raw jasper]

I found out about that toy as an adult via the internet. I am still unsure about the point, considering no-name portable CD players had gotten inexpensive enough by that time

[hasty wedge]

yeah

Probably just a novelty toy

[hasty wedge]

btw that music card also contains metadata and track data

On compatible players you can select which track to play

On this one it just reads all the track data and play them in a loop

[raw jasper]

Seriously though, I think it should be possible to make Web Videos (youtube, tiktok, etc) out of this kind of thing -- Showcase random micros & their devtools, plus an abridged summary of the effort to getting the music card program ported on them. People who do not understand any of this will still get to listen to a bitcrushed tiktok song in the end ;P

I can already see the clickbait title for this one: "I burned this song permanently using ⚡ 20 Volts⚡"

[hasty wedge]

That's a cool idea

[raw jasper]

I mean, you could try.. You do have experience being a stream host after all

I could certainly see myself watching that kind of thing

And nobody covers the Asian/Chinese micro ecosystem

[hasty wedge]

Probably due to the fear to Microchip

You know, 8 out of 10 Chinese cheapo micros are PIC

Then 1 ARM and 1 8051

Well maybe 3 ARMs nowadays

[raw jasper]

No 6502? 😔

[hasty wedge]

No 6502

There are Taiwanese 6502s

Nyquest NY8LP series

But no Chinese 6502 as I am aware

[raw jasper]

I would still like to play with the SunPlus chips that were in the Wii clones of old that had an almost-NOAC/famiclone video IP onboard

[hasty wedge]

nowadays SunPlus just make things like automobile infotainment and DVD players

There's another company called GeneralPlus that's still producing voice chips with interesting CPU core

It's also the company that's in charge of Disney's starwars lightsaber and robot toys

[hasty wedge]

designed a board in KiCAD to host the playback IC

Now let's see if JLCPCB is willing to manufacture for me... It's so tiny

[hollow flint]

Any knock-offs of https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/what-is-pio/ yet?

[hasty wedge]

Hey pretty cheap

5.5 bucks for 100 pcs and free 1 day shipping

[hasty wedge]

I think WCH have something similar to PIO

[hollow flint]

More like inspired by rather than a direct copycat, but I know https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgG9z5RAmRw is a similar thing.

[hasty wedge]

They call it PIOC

https://www.wch-ic.com/products/CH32X035.html

Hmmmmmm

They are using suspicious words like "RISC" and "words"

This is probably just a PIC core embedded in the RISC-V MCU

PIC, always PIC

[hollow flint]

That reminds me of the RISC-V core that's embedded inside of an ARM Cortex-M33 MCU for a similar purpose: https://docs.nordicsemi.com/bundle/ps_nrf54L15/page/vpr.html

[hasty wedge]

Also ESP32-S3

RISC-V core in XTensa

I just don't understand our obsession with PIC cores

I know it's small and compact and super easy to learn

well I guess that's the reason

Let's hope Microchip won't see those parts

They are probably still selling PIC10F200 for 1 dollar each...

[raw jasper]

Which micon will you be using for the Official TikTok Song Music Card PCB[TM]?

[raw jasper]

I guess it's kind of like how the IBM's PC ossified itself as the industry standard for personal computing..

[hasty wedge]

But Microchip never licensed their PIC cores

[hasty wedge]

That's just the MCU as a modular breakout

[raw jasper]

To be fair, intel would not have licensed their design to AMD either were it not for the US gov's second source requirements at the time

[raw jasper]

Yeah, I was wondering which MCU it was

[hasty wedge]

the 0.9 cents mcu

[raw jasper]

OK! To be fair, you have ported this code to at least 50 MCUs by now

half of them might be PICs, but still :P

[hasty wedge]

Let me count

AVR:
Microchip ATMEGA328P (the OG, hence the MEGA name)
8051:
Nuvoton MS51FB9AE
ARM:
ST STM32F103
ST STM32F030
HDSC HC32F460
HDSC HC32L160
PUYA PY32F030
PUYA PY32F003
Raspberry Pi RP2040
PIC:
Cmsemicon SC8P052

It's the first time on PIC!

It basically became my standarised development evaluation program

if I can code a MEGAHits player in less than an hour, then the platform has a great SDK

[solar kindle]

That video mentions using PIO to generate HD video. I wonder if anyone's actually done that with an RP2040.

[raw jasper]

I can think of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhhLoVBpg48 , but that was not a rp2040, and it was not in HD

[hollow flint]

Not Full HD, only HD, but https://github.com/Wren6991/PicoDVI

[hollow flint]

Specifically https://github.com/Wren6991/PicoDVI/tree/master/software#bad-apple

[chrome oasis]

https://circuitpython-absolute-mouse.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

[dusty citrus]

This is pretty ot
But something like a really small lock that can hold closed zips?
even something that's like electromagnetic that can be activated through nfc
(I doubt that it would be enough to power up the magnet, but maybe if small enough... I doubt)

I have the bothersome problem of people putting hands in my portfolio
can't tell if its some work partners as there are no cameras or someone at home
but I'm sick of it, this won't solve the root cause, but at least makes their life harder

or maybe I should opt for one of those ink traps

[chrome oasis]

I mean you could just use a lock

If there’s not two zips you could loop one section of the lock through something else, or make a hole for that

[dusty citrus]

too big, the tiniest one do like open with your hands

[chrome oasis]

I mean as more of a deterrent, from the message it looks like they’re just looking inside, poking around, not stealing anything

If there’s a barrier which requires effort to overcome it might be enough to deter them

Unless it already does require effort in which case yeah it wouldn’t change much

[solar kindle]

Sounds like this board actually makes use of the PIO functionality to generate video. https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-feather-rp2040-dvi/overview

[primal harbor]

Yo anyone had issues with no clean flux causing rust? It appears to be off gassing also

I'm wondering the best way to clean this?

It's literally forming on all my equipment?

[chrome oasis]

I’ve been doing this but with a normal Pico (RP2040) running the PicoDVI library, it works pretty well

The Pico 2 acts as the CPU, and the Pico emulates a ST7789 SPI display so it can just receive normal display commands (like displayio stuff) - but rather than sending it to an embedded TFT display it sends it all to the HDMI port

[lapis anchor]

yeah unfortunately a lot of no-clean flux is still corrosive as silly as it sounds. (brand name stuff is generally better)

high % IPA is usually my go to for flux cleaning. you can technically get flux cleaning chemicals, but IPA + and old tooth brush (or those conductive plastic brushes you can get) work wonders.

[primal harbor]

@lapis anchor It legit got all over my tools

Even stuff that wasn't near my soldering tools

That's what is kinda concerning to me

[lapis anchor]

and you're sure it's the flux? what brand, out of curiosity?

[primal harbor]

https://www.amazon.com/Liquid-Soldering-Dropper-Electrical-Aluminium/dp/B0D9KN8SD5

I used it like one time

I am lowkey kinda rattled

It literally caused rust on components across my table

[lapis anchor]

huh, that seems... odd. was this an overnight occurence? sure you don't have high humidity in your room? (basements are notorious for high humidity for example)

[primal harbor]

I have a dehumidifier

The VOC content is also relatively high

[lapis anchor]

you use any other cleaning stuff when you were done? I've never had that issue but to be fair I've always stuck with MG Chemcials personally

I mean it's possible the flux cleaned whatever oil/etc was on your tools protecting them 🤷‍♂️

[primal harbor]

Nope I used nothing else

But I don't think the tools had oils on them?

I'll send a few more pictures

[lapis anchor]

I mean even finger oils can help protect against rust.. it's basically oxygen + water == rust.

[primal harbor]

Like look at the wire strippers

This is like over 1 month

Maybe 1 to 3 months

[lapis anchor]

hmm, I'd be more inclined to think it's a moisture issue then personally. I'd kind of expect it to be more noticible more quickly if it was related to the flux. (just speculation, not actually sure)

[primal harbor]

Maybe. The big thing is the VOC count was reading high

The flux should've evaporated by now

[lapis anchor]

can always do a controlled test - put a few drops of flux in a small plastic box and put a tool in there for a few days and see what happens?

[primal harbor]

That's interesting

[lapis anchor]

how long ago did you use the flux? lol? and is the room fairly well ventilated? could be other chemicals causing the VOC too

[primal harbor]

Like what other chemicals?

[lapis anchor]

insert long list here

🤷‍♂️ lol what other stuff do you have in the lab? anything offgassing in a bottle?

(maybe the flux?)

[primal harbor]

Around May 25th?

According to my logs

[lapis anchor]

yeah your ventilation sounds extremely poor, or you have a bad sensor/something else going on

[primal harbor]

The flux is open lid

Like with the needle pointing out

[lapis anchor]

[primal harbor]

You think that might be it?

[lapis anchor]

still though, your VOC shouldn't be THAT high with a small bottle of flux sitting there

[primal harbor]

That VOC is a raw value

It goes through Sensiron's algorithm

It's like a moderate VOC

I was reading 650ppm of CO2 the first time I measured now reading like 900ppm

[lapis anchor]

yeah I'm going with ventilation/something else. but easy way to verify... vent the room out (fans/whatever) - put the flux in container of sorts (not sure what is susceptible to flux, might be fine with a ziploc bag? glass jar/container would work too)

I mean it feels like poor ventilation from what you're telling me

[primal harbor]

It is a basement

[lapis anchor]

even if it was offgassing from a needle... if you had SOME ventilation, that shouldn't be an issue

[primal harbor]

With all closed windows

I might toss the flux because i got new better flux anyways

[lapis anchor]

worth checking if you have a local chemical recycling/disposal place, probably better than tossing it in the garbage 🙂

Waste Management takes old chemcials for free here

[primal harbor]

I took your advice and put it in a zip lock and just threw it into a drawer

You're probably right tho

The elevated VOCs was probably from the flux

That's exactly the type of thing it detects

I just didn't expect it to be able to detect it like that

This is exactly why I made this project to understand chemical exposures lol

[raw jasper]

FYI, if your CO2 sensor is not regularly exposed to air containing a baseline CO2 concentration (consult sensor datasheet for what said baseline level would be), its calibration is eventually gonna drift off

Also, non-ventilated basement... Hopefully you have checked that you are not accumulating radon....

[somber spindle]

radon mitigation systems (at least, in my area) don't vent basement air, they vent from under the concrete slab, so it wouldn't help with gases produced in the basement itself

[raw jasper]

The consideration was that regular ventilation would reduce the potential concentration of radon in the room.. It would most probably not be a substitute for proper radon mitigation!

[somber spindle]

could be, depending on the prevalence of radon in the area. I learned (the hard way) that testing radon with open windows gives different results from closed windows, and couldn't get the home seller to pay for a mitigation system at that point

[raw jasper]

I am not an expert on the matter, and, if radon is a thing in one's area, they should be consulting an expert, not reading what a rando on the internet (like me :P) has to say!

[somber spindle]

Always good advice

[raw jasper]

Hopefully you have managed to install a mitigation system have a mitigation system installed now..

[somber spindle]

No, I consulted an expert who did the installation 🙂

[raw jasper]

agreed, grammatical nuance is important ^^

Sorry, I was typing between things and was not careful with my phrasing

[rotund canopy]

is there any fpga ecosystem like what you get with esp32

[hollow flint]

It looks like Adafruit no longer stocks any FPGA containing products: https://www.adafruit.com/category/69

[somber spindle]

I was just teasing, and emphasizing your point!

[dusty citrus]

what happened?

[bitter badge]

Anyone know what the shaft inside threading is for this?
https://www.adafruit.com/product/3802

[hasty wedge]

ICSP

🤦‍♂️

[past mica]

Sup chat

[solar kindle]

I think it's m2.5

[bitter badge]

Thanks! I'm going to see if I can take it to Lowe's today and check it on their size tester. I'll start with that!

[burnt tendon]

Well, thread carefully.

[bitter badge]

Their tester only went down to M4. They had M3 screws, but those were too big. I found an M2.5 screw in an old IC heatsink I have that almost fit, but the threading isn't right. Visually I can't see much difference, but at that size it's hard to tell by eye. (Also, it's hard to see inside the tiny hole to begin with.) My guess right now is that it is probably M2.5 fine thread. Measuring the hole with my calipers as accurately as possible (which may not be very accurate due to tapering to allow screws to enter and engage more easily), it appears to be too large for 2 gauge imperial screws, and I checked it against a 4-40 screw at Lowe's, the screw size was too large.

I'm hesitant to just guess and buy M2.5 fine thread screws online (given that I'm on a tight budget right now), but it seems like the only option, unless someone from Adafruit or with more experience with the motor actually knows what it takes.

[hasty wedge]

Well

I blew a MCU

accidently put 53V into a 5V MCU (the 0.9 cents MCU)

magic smoke was out

[woeful moss]

i once did that with a 328p, fed it 20V thinking it was 5V, but it worked for a while until it started behaing erratically and slowly stopped working. only noticed it when i went to pick it up and it was boiling hot lol

[thin sable]

the magic smoke is part of the learning experince i've burned out a few sensors wiring them backwards or with too much voltage

[hollow flint]

I wonder how many potential magic smoke situations have been avoided due to the widespread use of https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-adafruit-stemma-qt/what-is-stemma-qt

[raw jasper]

...and then there is I who managed to kill a 328p by merely touching it (while being ever so sliiiiiightly statically charged :P)

[rigid whale]

Finally got my hands on a QTpy and some BFF's. The dilemmas of stacking them are real. Sorting out which ones get which headers and such is taking some time to figure out.

I just want to stemma qt everything.

[hasty wedge]

Only if everyone followed StemmaQT

I designed the music card that's being used on my bit crushed music player so that if it's connected backwards, it won't die

(but that 53V incident still killed it)

[hollow flint]

Not everyone, but there are many boards from other companies that are mostly compatible (details on compatibility: https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-adafruit-stemma-qt/stemma-qt-comparison#cross-compatibility-3199278).
Such as https://shop.pimoroni.com/en-us/collections/qwst-and-spce?special=Pimoroni Originals and https://www.sparkfun.com/development-boards/microcontrollers.html?sf_global_qwiic_connector=8262&sf_original_product=1 / https://www.sparkfun.com/sensors.html?sf_global_qwiic_connector=8262

[thin sable]

forgot about pimoroni was gonna buy some stuff from them but forgor 3 days later

[hollow flint]

If you have a local Micro Center, they have a limited selection of Pimoroni products available for in-store pickup. They're great for last-minute purchases like that.

[thin sable]

oh i aint got any microcenter near me, i would have to spend like 2 days driving to the states or take a flight

actually i dont think theres anywhere in my city that does pi stuff, we have a memoryexpress and your average component shop for resistors and whatnot but nothing for SBCs, we do have robotics in the northern part of the city tho

[hasty wedge]

what is your guys opinion on chips without any markings on them

[woeful moss]

bad

[hasty wedge]

to me it sucks

especially when I have multiple of them from different vendors performing different duties soldered onto identical DIP-8 adapter boards

[raw jasper]

Indicates potentially less-than-officially obtained chips

Better than wire-bonded ASIC + epoxy blob though

[hasty wedge]

most of my MCU and speech synthesizer chips have no marking on them from the manufacturer

So designers don't have to sand them afterwards

[raw jasper]

I thought they laser-etched them off though

[hasty wedge]

nah, when i asked them why there's no marking on the top they said "it costs double to laser mark the chip twice"

to their credit they still put lot number on the back of the package

[raw jasper]

TIL random PIC clone manufacturers have better customer support than 99% of companies

[hasty wedge]

It does!

It's so easy to connect with an FAE and they will be very happy to answer your questions live

come on Microchip!

Yesterday I reported an issue with Cmsemicon's IDE, they gave me an updated build with the issue fixed in less than an hour

[raw jasper]

All we need to do is convince microchip to get on WeChat :P

[hasty wedge]

Oh yeah

Texas Instruments is on WeChat though

And they do a lot of cool stuff in China

like sponsoring competitions

[raw jasper]

Is CMsemicon's website literally mcu.com.cn?

[hasty wedge]

yeah

I think Texas Instruments is one of the coolest chip maker

They make cool things and do cool stuff

They even own a fab in China

[thin sable]

i like ti, i find their docs easy to read for the most part and they did the funni of making 1 computer (ti-99) then no more after it didnt do so hot

[raw jasper]

Oh wow their website also comes in English

[hollow flint]

If it's primarily for looks, wouldn't a flat heatsink with a thermal pad serve that purpose just as well?

[hasty wedge]

engineers sand them off to prevent reverse engineering

and chip makers don't laser marks to cut cost

[hasty wedge]

They also do 8051 and ARM

So not marking chips is a win win

[hollow flint]

Oh, when you said "designers", I thought you were referring to the people that design enclosures of products.

[hasty wedge]

well, unless the engineer don't have the habit of orgnizing their chips

(me)

[raw jasper]

Marie Kondo noises this chip does not spark joy

[thin sable]

if i had small bins of ICs and chips they would probably get mixed quick organization isnt my thing so at most they're getting organized by what they do

[hasty wedge]

Also, off topic, picked this action figure up today

[thin sable]

theres someone in my city selling miku crane game figures and once a month i'm tempted to buy one since the seller lives like 2 blocks away

[hasty wedge]

If you're an engineer in China developing consumer electronics

An IC bin will be your biggest enemy

[hollow flint]

Speaking of preventing reverse engineering, are there any products on the market that self-destruct when any tampering is detected, for that purpose specifically? The only products I'm aware of that do this are HSMs and the Nintendo Switch 2.

[hasty wedge]

You can do it from the software

[raw jasper]

Now augment it with your music card (flashed with vocaloid songs) and build cyborg miku-nendroid!

[woeful moss]

point of sale card machines

if that counts as a product

[raw jasper]

POS systems.

Also, I swear I've seen people tear down the switch 2 and then have it boot up normally.. Nintendo reserves the right to brick your console if you mess with the software or install a modchip or whatever, but they had that right at least since the DS

[hasty wedge]

Not possible for OTP chips though, because to modify their ROM data you need high voltage circuit, which are not present on the chip themselves due to cost cutting

[raw jasper]

Case in point: Wii sports box reading "unauthorized technical modifications [...] may render this game unplayable"

[thin sable]

i cant think of any specific software in recent memory, there was that cool hockey puck looking mini pc tho that if you tried to physically tamper with it, it would wipe the entire thing https://youtu.be/sZKtHvbAk98

[hollow flint]

Couldn't they keep a microcontroller in sleep mode for the lifespan of the product, with a coin cell battery for backup power? All they would need is to burn a bootloader that has an equivalent of UART Boot (as described in chapter 5.8 of the RP2350 datasheet) into the OTP memory, then connect an external flash chip during the initial boot at the factory.

[raw jasper]

The coin cell would probably be more expensive than the micro

[hasty wedge]

Exactly

You're thinking like a (Chinese) engineer now

[dusty citrus]

that you can buy, I dunno.
you can somewhat do it with linux gadgets and using the ram as storage

I can't complain with those speeds.

[thorn raft]

Do we think this is fixable or just order a new one?

[thin sable]

looks fixable, idk if just a iron and some flux would work but if you happen to have some wire wick you could probably clean the pins/pads up with that then solder the header back on to the pads

[thick wind]

If it sparks at all you probably don’t want to keep it either…

[rotund canopy]

what makes quantum imu accurate when normal dead reckoning isn't

[zealous oyster]

hey, can I use a few Adafruit RP2040 CAN Bus Feather with MCP2515 CAN Controller to build a can network? the price is very attractive, but I have trouble to assess how it compares to arduino mkr can shield. It seems like Adafruit's version has more features, but it's also based on different chip. My question is, can I use that can feather for the same applications as arduino mkr can shield?

they have the same can controller, so it should be good, right?

for starters I want to build a simple project with two devices communicate through can bus, and then I want to slowly extend it with sensors and more devices into a small network.

[umbral phoenix]

The MKR CAN Shield is based on the MCP2515 CAN controller and the TJA1049 CAN transceiver

https://docs.arduino.cc/hardware/mkr-can-shield/
That's the same chip used for CAN by Adafruit for RP2040 and other microcontrollers that don't have built-in CAN. So the CAN functionality should be the same. MKR [Zero] is a 48MHz SAMD21/M0+ with 256KB Flash, 32KB RAM. The RP2040 is a [dual-core] 133MHz M0+ with varying amounts of SPI flash depending on the board, and 264 KB RAM.

Another option is to use a microcontroller that has CAN built in (like the ESP32-S3, they call it TWAI), then just add transceivers to each node.

The advantage of a Adafruit RP2040 CAN Bus Feather or Feather M4 CAN Express is that they have the controller and transceiver on-board, so it's all in one. But if you want smaller size or flexibility, something like an ESP32-S3 + CAN transceiver may be good. CAN Bus FeatherWing or CAN Bus Pi[co]Cowbell are also possibilities to add controller+transceiver to any non-CAN Feather or Pico (perhaps like an RP2350, the newer beefed up version of the RP2040).

tl;dr: yes, you can add CAN Bus to almost any microcontroller, and they should be interoperable

https://fosstodon.org/@anecdata/110431040758090540 😉

[zealous oyster]

Thank you! I'm deep in docs now 🙂 It looks like adafruit's CAN feather is the way for me, and I like the price, haha. I will check the other options you've recommended, but at a first glance it looks like that feather will be the most universal, and I can move from there with adding stuff and mixing in more complex solutions. I like that I can easily throw some sensor on top of it with the stemmaQT connector. Thank you!

[zealous oyster]

oh, you have a can bus for qtpy, awesome, even better!

[umbral phoenix]

Adafruit does, I'm just a rando 😉

[hollow flint]

I'm just a rando
Not just any rando, a circuitpythonista rando.

[zealous oyster]

well, you are a great-helper-rando 🙂

[solar kindle]

Video from someone who built an eight-neuron analog artificial neural net to control an RC car. It (eventually) managed to navigate around the room fairly well. He appears to be using two LEDs as an optocoupler for the synapses. Interesting choice.

I wonder how difficult it'd be to reduce this to, say a field-programmable neuron array. I don't really think you'd need optical synapses, so that might make it more practical. A chip with a few thousand neurons would definitely be interesting to play with.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nL_UZBd93sw

[zealous oyster]

I want to build it now, lol. I have other stuff to build first, but this is next on the list!

[solar kindle]

I did find this paper from Georgia Tech, where it looks like it's almost entirely analog.
https://hasler.ece.gatech.edu/Published_papers/Neuron_papers/HMM_dendrite/FPNA_2006.pdf

[solar kindle]

sure

[uncut needle]

I am Juan from NYC, software engineer at Momar, Inc🙂
I’m looking to connect with business owners here to discuss a potential idea and explore opportunities for collaboration
I have good experience in integration with Travel APis, Flight API, POS, Social Media, Healthcare, Weather & Geolocation APIs.

[late fulcrum]

What are HSMs?

[hollow flint]

https://csrc.nist.gov/glossary/term/hardware_security_module_hsm

[late fulcrum]

Ah, I was guessing some sort of home medical system or cable TV decoder!

[raw jasper]

@late fulcrum : FYI, apparently unihertz is planning to release a new qwerty phone:

https://www.unihertz.com/products/titan-2

[late fulcrum]

Oho! Colour me intrigued!

[raw jasper]

Same here -- I am not going to preorder it, but if it gets released and has good reviews, I will seriously consider getting one

Also, for some reason I did not remember you used UK English 😅

[late fulcrum]

As I'm unemployed at the moment, I won't be preordering much of anything, but yeah, I'll keep my eyes out to see how it goes.

I picked up a habit of UK English from a lot of the books I read as a kid

[raw jasper]

Wishing you all the best wrt dealing with the job market

[dusty citrus]

gotta send it to my boss, he somehow still uses blackberry stuff

too bad it's a mediatek... but that's makes me wonder, how come all "unortodox" phones do mount mediatek stuff?

[late fulcrum]

Probably chip, driver, and documentation availability and (of course) price

[dusty citrus]

Back in the days of XDA, mediateks were quite disregarded as they did not provide any tooling/docs
But likely that's not the case when you're a corpo with money

[rotund canopy]

Why don’t anti aircraft systems fire volleys where the missiles coordinate flight paths with each other so the aircraft is in a missile path regardless of direction, after a lock happens

[rigid whale]

What dictates which carrier you get when placing an order? Sometimes I get multiple choices while other times I am stuck with one choice.

[hard estuary]

I think sometimes it's batteries and they can only go UPS ground

[rigid whale]

ok makes total sense now

current order has a battery and last one didn't

thank you! 🙂

[somber spindle]

Is Unihertz going to provide proper software updates? I've been wanting one for a while, but heard that they're really bad about it

[raw jasper]

I have absolutely no idea, as I have never used any of their phones. In theory, if they are planning to sell to the EU in an official capacity, they must now provide updates for (IIRC?) 5 years, so.. who knows?

[somber spindle]

fair

[raw jasper]

I just dislike touch keyboards enough to frequently look up if somebody is making a phone with a physical keyboard

https://energy-efficient-products.ec.europa.eu/product-list/smartphones-and-tablets_en

availability of operating system upgrades for longer periods (at least 5 years from the date of the end of placement on the market of the last unit of a product model)

Ecodesign requirements will apply to smartphones, feature phones, cordless phones and slate tablets placed on the EU market from 20 June 2025 onwards.

[somber spindle]

https://www.reddit.com/r/unihertz/comments/1lk1e1o/titan_2_being_upgraded_to_at_least_to_android_17/

[raw jasper]

"we are not able to provide with the monthly updates on the regular basis"

At least they are honest about it

On the other hand, it's not as if most other android OEMs are any better in that regard

[somber spindle]

yeah... I wish the mobile phone landscape were better

[dusty citrus]

I don't quite get the whole updates thing, as long it works I don't care
...but security! I don't know what they're actually updating in the first place

[hollow flint]

All Android apps require a certain version of Android or newer. The exact cutoff version is chosen by developers, but will often mean an old smartphone is unusable with many softwares.

[rotund canopy]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUdro-6u2Zg had no idea this existed very cool, was doing a rangefinder with a diode and webcam

[zealous oyster]

help! What's a main functional difference between Adafruit RP2040 CAN Bus Feather with MCP2515 CAN Controller having CAN bus circuitry via SPI and physical CAN bus on Feather M4 CAN Express with ATSAME51? The first one has a MCP2515 CAN transceiver, the second one has a CAN bus on the chipset. Is there some advantage chosing one feather over the other? The pi based has more SPI flash and (I think) stronger processor and a stemma qt connector. The ATSAME51 based has more RAM and weaker processor.

I read the docs, but I still have a trouble to assess which would be better for my purpose of building a simple network with bunch of devices and sensors communicating through CAN. I want to start with two devices, and then extend CAN - my end goal is to recreate an industrial network at home.

I now understand why people get Arduino even though it's more expensive with limited functionality, bahahahah, they just have one thing doing certain stuff, and you don't get into weeds that maybe one day I will need that obscure function 😄

[umbral phoenix]

You may find in practice that having more flash and RAM is more important than differences in the processor (120 MHz M4 vs. 133 MHz (dual-core, if you can really take advantage of it) M0+).

It all depends on how complex the application is. Both processors are fine for CAN plus a few sensors. The nice thing is, you don't have to commit... you CAN mix and match per node 😉

[zealous oyster]

yeah, I thought about that, nobody ever complained about more RAM, haha. That's true about mixing and matching, and I may end up doing it just for a sake of experimentation if I will encounter some limitations of one or the other in practice. So basically, in terms of CAN itself, there's not much difference between having transceiver like in case of the M0+ based, and having CAN on the chipset like in case of M4 based?

[umbral phoenix]

The transceiver is an independent part of the picture, as long as you have one doesn't matter if it's "integrated" on the board, or separate. Any of these CAN options will talk to each other.

[zealous oyster]

oh, ok, I understand they will talk to each other, just wondered if there's some advantage having one on the chipset or one as tranceiver?

[umbral phoenix]

I did some very unscientific testing a while back, and I did observe more reliable far baudrates with built-in CAN than with SPI CAN, but YMMV. Personally, I like Espressif + transceiver for a high-flash/RAM option with native CAN (+wifi!). You really may want to get a couple of configs to start and see what works best for you.

[zealous oyster]

yeah, I guess this is the way, just experiment and see. Thank you so much for your patience and explanations 🙂

[umbral phoenix]

Oh, your question is more about native vs SPI, rather than transceiver... In theory, should be no difference but maybe there's some rate difference... whether it's true for you or makes any difference for you is... 🤷

[zealous oyster]

Fortunately, they are in prices which don't prohibit experimentation 🙂 Idk, sometimes I get stuck on 'I need to choose the perfect thing'. I guess I will grab one of each, and move from there. Thank you.

[umbral phoenix]

when I saw some reliability differences at high speed (1 MHz), I was really pushing a lot of data fast... not a typical CAN scenario (my long emoji strings on CAN Bus lol)

[zealous oyster]

I agree, it may be that even if there's a difference, it won't limit me. 😄

[umbral phoenix]

500 kHz is pretty fast for 8-byte packets

[zealous oyster]

ok, thank you so much.

[zealous oyster]

ok, I ordered both, now the worst part - waiting 😄

[supple fossil]

I've been referred here by the dude who made Bottango in hopes of figuring out what might be going on with my setup as I can't get the servos to move although I set the animatronic project up as it was suggested, the servos won't move. They do work, as I've tested them individually via an arduino uno with the coding from a learning kit, just not set up with the esp32, servo driver, 12 servos (regardless that i also tested with only one or two at points), DC 5v power cord w/attachment, and m/m & m/f jumpers.

[lapis anchor]

I'd probably recommend heading to #help-with-projects and post a picture of your wiring including the specs of the power supply you're using. For 12 servos, I'd highly recommend a separate power supply from the one powering the board, but you should at least be able to get something to happen with a servo.

[supple fossil]

A separate power supply outside of the one I bought exclusively for the servo driver? The only other power is through the data/power cord connected to the esp32. I'll try to do a specs pic (never made one on the computer, but printed pics of the items and made notes as to which jumper wires attach where for my own comprehending).

[lapis anchor]

I'm not familiar with Bottango, so not exactly sure what you're looking at personally - but assuming your dedicated supply for the server driver has enough power to run the servos, you should be fine with that. Servos are noisy is why I generally recommend using a separate power supply for the MCU vs the servo drivers, alleviates potential issues with brownouts/bad signal readings/etc.

for specs pic I was just thinking of the power supply itself, usually the label works fine or if you have a link from where you purchased it - that would work too 🙂

but that whole saying "a picture is worth a thousand words" applies here, might be something like you're missing grounds between the connections, might be the wrong GPIO pin being used 🤷‍♂️

[supple fossil]

I posted what I could given I'm not at home and typing on my cell... now I guess I wait...

[hollow flint]

@tight tulip, I decided to bring this discussion to #general-chat, because it's slightly tangential to your original question. I see you have the Estonia flag in your Discord profile. So, have you ever shopped at websites such as DigiKey (https://www.digikey.ee/en) and/or Mouser (https://www.mouser.ee/)? Although I've only used the former domestically (both have their warehouses located in the USA), DigiKey has free delivery on most orders over €50, and claims that most orders arrive to Estonia in two to four days. Although I cannot find similar wording on Mouser's website, adding enough items to the cart produced a similar estimate for both delivery time and cost.

[tight tulip]

I see, I have never used them in Estonia (never knew that I could use them here), I have used Mouser before in the UK when I designed the motor control and power system for the hydrogen vehicle using supercapacitors. I am unsure about the shipping speed, but cheers, I will try to find components. Thank you so much!

[raw jasper]

FYI, from within the EU, I have also used https://www.reichelt.com for some components I could not find on mouser or digikey. They seem to offer shipping to Estonia too, so I figured I might as well forward you a link in case it helps you.

Also, do tell more about your hydrogen vehicle, it sounds super interesting

[zealous oyster]

Does Adafruit make an equivalent of Arduino Portenta? I think no, because I can't find anything similar on the website, but maybe I missed something?

I found equivalents of uno, mkr, nano, and giga so far 😄

[hollow flint]

Don't forget the Pro Micro equivalent: https://www.adafruit.com/product/5302

[hollow flint]

Are the memes that DigiKey is posting any good? https://www.youtube.com/@digikey/posts

[terse lava]

Some are ok. But then as I scrolled down I see they start repeating the same joke just with different pictures. Lame!

[kindred isle]

I should make a variation of this... Need to find a template...

Ok, no more memes from me. I just had to do this though.

[sturdy dawn]

Interesting bugs with the Matrix portal. When using the GIF player, if you don't have enough power hooked up to your panel, the board will crash and then has to be factory reset

It ran a couple of them fine but when I did the Matrix neo spin it just crashed

That's testing with a 1 amp charge port in my car

Those USB ports on my Tower that still run when the computer is off... Those give enough

Same thing happens if you try to load new gifs while it's running. You need to flash it back to circuit python, set up your gift folder, then flash it back to the GIF player

[raw jasper]

Everything can emit light... (at least) once

[hollow flint]

That claim is very common on r/sh*ttyaskelectronics. They even have a term for it: light-emitting resistor (LER)

[raw jasper]

You mean, like this? 😆

[hasty wedge]

Very off topic

But here are my two mihoyo plushes

Also, Cmsemicon WRITER8 Lite is extremely picky about the programming wiring

a 30cm cable from the programmer to the OTP will give you a 99% success rate (not high)

And a mere 15cm longer cable will bring that success rate to 0%

A breadboard that holds the SOP socket will also 0% the success rate

Which is kinda crazy

[raw jasper]

30cm ~= 1ns signal delay if we assume the propagation speed of the e-field to ~= c

I guess it is sensitive to that?

[hasty wedge]

I think it might be due to the capacitance and inductance of the cable

When the signal frequency is high enough, any weird things could happen

[raw jasper]

I guess working with FPGAs and not having done PCB design etc makes me attribute all communication-related wonkyness to timing failures 😝

What kinda frequencies are we talking about?

[hasty wedge]

I have no idea

Everything is proprietary

[hollow flint]

If you had an oscilloscope, that could determine it.

[hasty wedge]

I do

I have a 4 channel setup

It got a very weird programming wiring

6 wire programming

VCC GND DAT DAT2 CLK VPP

VPP can go up to 20V

Which means I can monitor 3 wires

DAT DAT2 and CLK

[kindred isle]

What a harrowing experience. Firefox updated, and apparently really didn't like my drivers. It was crashing, but not just crashing. It would go into a loop where it would repeatedly crash, and of course the crash reporter window takes focus, so there's nothing you can do.
Fortunately I'm on Linux, and got to a terminal session to fully remove it temporarily.
Then used another computer to figure out how to update my Nvidia drivers. Now everything works again.

[hasty wedge]

This programming circuit will not work

Due to the use of breadboard and long cables

[kindred isle]

That's quite the sensitive writer you've got there in that case if it can't tolerate a breadboard and what looks like 6 inches or so of wire.

My question would be, what else is on the programming pins, if anything? I know with ATTiny ISP programming you need to be careful that there's nothing on those pins that could try and respond during programming.

[raw jasper]

Looks like a bare IC directly connected to the vendor's custom gizmo

[hasty wedge]

Nothing

Just the chip itself

[sturdy dawn]

Perfect 5x7 font

Oh and i optimized the morphing clock for matrix portal m4 by changing double buffer to true. Eliminates ghosting

[kindred isle]

You know, I haven't actually used Python for any of Adafruit's boards. I did use it at work to dig through some thousand or so files to find bitlocker keys (don't worry, I'm supposed to have them) and file them off in a database.
It was...
Surprisingly easy.

[raw jasper]

Why would you be digitally storing bitlocker recovery keys in plain text? 👀

[kindred isle]

Because that's how Microsoft does it.

[raw jasper]

I thought the standard procedure was to print them off and store them somewhere safe, not keep a digital record

[kindred isle]

You get three options. Save to your Microsoft account (not really an option here), save to a file, and print.
Because this is for work the best option is actually to save them as files to one of our network shares (that only the techs have access to). This way the users don't have to keep track of them.

The only problem is that doing a file search for the identifier is surprisingly slow. So I used to do this through powershell and make a csv file of them all. That was also slow, and made the server guys cringe when I described my process.
So now they go in a proper database, and the script also checks for duplicate entries.

[raw jasper]

Thinking about it, I guess for a threat model of avoiding confidential data being read off the disk after laptop theft, this is "good enough"; if a threat actor accesses the network, the drives will be unlocked anyway

[kindred isle]

Pretty much. If they've got access to my database, or the file server, there's a bigger problem.

Of course as both my manager and I agree, I shouldn't need to be doing this anyway, and we should have proper device management that handles it.
Which we will. Eventually. Things are changing around here.

[raw jasper]

I... think if you are using active directory windows should handle this automatically??

I do not work windows admin though

So, this is based off of weak recollection

[kindred isle]

And that may be one of the things we do. Our current environment is...
Complicated. Complicated and messy for reasons I cannot go into.

[raw jasper]

I think I understand ;)

Also, I just accidentally started playing an "AI" music album

I only realized 5 minutes in once it started getting repetitive; I googled the song names, and they turned up no records

[kindred isle]

That's gonna be more and more of a thing. For better or worse.

[raw jasper]

I was not paying attention to the lyrics -- And it did not help that they are in a fourth language (Japanese, English being my second language), so I would have to actively expend effort to parse them

[hasty wedge]

3 channels candle flicker controller

3 independent LED outputs for 3 candle flames

[raw jasper]

Fun fact: One of the main applications of this flicker pattern is graveside memorial candles

[hasty wedge]

[sturdy dawn]

Its weird to me, it hates indentations and uses colons instead of curly brace

The double buffer had a note in the code that said to turn it off because it writes and erases simultaneously, but i was like. 'Lets see what happens" 🤣 and no more ghosting

[raw jasper]

I would say that it is opinionated about indentation more than anything else

(in that, it is actually syntactically significant)

However, if you follow good indentation practices -- which you should have been following anyway -- (not mixing tab/space-based indentations, indenting for every code block, and so on), you should be fine

There are legitimate grievances one can hold about python, but TBH many of them arise by trying to make something out of it that it is not

[sturdy dawn]

I just started with a very specific gaming tutorial like 15 years ago and it was c based

C# and with a special framework called XNA with all kinds of pre built classes for game programming

They advertise it on the Xbox marketplace on Xbox 360 and I was like huh. Why don't I try getting into that

I've also done a basic tutorial with Pico-8 which is similar but I didn't go far with making a game

[raw jasper]

C# is a pretty decent language to start with IMO

Especially if you are targeting the windows ecosystem

[raw jasper]

huh.. duckduckgo actually has an anti-bot captcha that works without JS on.

[plush echo]

anyone ever seen ipod video click wheels from v5 or v6 of the ipod used in arduinos?

[zealous oyster]

Hey, is there a way to connect a mini can network made of Adafruit RP2040 CAN Bus Feather with MCP2515 CAN Controller, and Adafruit Feather M4 CAN Express with ATSAME51, and maybe some arduino to this Industrial Grade 2-Ch CAN to Ethernet Server, 2-Ch CAN + RS485 + Ethernet Port, Supports Can to ETH and RS485, CAN Repeater? https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D2P9RH4K

Will I be able to connect one of the board to it's can channels? They both have that same interface for can, but I assume I'd have to add a can transceiver to the circuit and connect transceiver to that thing?

transmitter would be sufficient, I guess to connect everything to this interface

[umbral phoenix]

I went to the waveshare doc page for that device and was a bit baffled. What is it you're wanting to do? With a wifi- or ethernet-enabled microcontroller with CAN, you could make the leap to the IP network directly from CP code. Would need one of: native Pico W (wifi) or equivalent, or native ESP32-* (wifi), or Ethernet (WIZnet Pico hat or WIZnet Pico devkit, Ethernet FeatherWing, etc.)

(I'm actually constructing a tripler board atm with a Pico 2 W (or Pimoroni Pico Plus 2 W), CAN PiCowbell, and Ethernet hat)

[zealous oyster]

so my main goal is to build an OT network at home, to further integrate it with IT network, and I know it will be hard and not perfect without an actual industrial gear (I was told straight no by someone deeply in OT, but I'm stubborn), but I want it to be as close as a real thing on the lowest budget possible. This device drew my attention because seemingly it's a perfect interface, but on the other hand, I wonder of I should just get some ethernet feather wings instead. I want to add modbus to the equation at some point as well. I'm very new to OT, I started learning/reading like a week ago because I need to learn it asap. I don't really need to program plcs or anything, I'm more hitting it from the networking angle, and there's a bunch of interfaces involved which normally don't talk to each other 😄

at some point I will probably benefit from learning basic plc programming and such, but it's not a priority right now. I focus to learn more about typical OT protocols, such can and modbus and how to make it all fly on ethernet/ip stack and further communicate with a typical tcp/ip network. I shouldn't have a problem with the last part really, because all I need is a switch and router. I know it's a lot at once, so I try to segment my steps a bit and try to figure out how to make it all work.

[zealous oyster]

oh, ok, so I can just stack the ethernet feather on top of my other boards and bridge it all in code. I like it. thank you. It's probably a better solution than buying that box because I will be able to repurpose all the things later. thank you so much for all your help. I know it all is so chaotic for now 😄

[umbral phoenix]

your explorations sound quite interesting. you'll figure it all out with experimentation. it is nice to have some fun gizmos in "inventory", never know when you might need something 🙂

[jagged osprey]

Was wondering if anyone knows of a cheapish flexible arm for microscopes that has a 4.3in display for soldering. I don't have a lot of money and I am wanting to try and learn how to soldier and try to fix hardware, more so as a hobby but maybe make a little bit of money here and there

[hasty wedge]

Designed this evb in KiCAD for the 0.9 cents MCU (and it's bigger brothers)

Feedback appriciated!

Also, that fuse will be the most expensive part on this PCB

Made in USA fuse from LittelFuse

[hasty wedge]

Also, I learned today that LittelFuse got quite a cool Chinese name

It got a cool name called Li Te(力特) ||where is the Fuse part?||

[hasty wedge]

Also, the way power was designed was that instead of placing a chip on the ZIF socket

You connect the in circuit emulator to it

And the ICE will supply the power

[raw jasper]

Well, if you put a lot of power in, something special may happen ;>

[hasty wedge]

Thinking about it, it's still feels screwed up

the most expensive part on this board is a fuse

and one fuse costs the same as 10 MCUs

and there's 1k*14 fuses in each MCU(?)

[raw jasper]

I guess this is the fuse these MCUs are paired with in production 😝

[hasty wedge]

[thick wind]

Are there any fuses not made in the US?

[hasty wedge]

I just prefer LittelFuse. They are reliable

they got massive presence in Huaqiangbei

ads everywhere, every fuse seller sell them

[thick wind]

Man shenzhen sounds like so much fun

Having stuff shipped just isn’t the same…

[hasty wedge]

yeah

welcome to shenzhen

it's very fun here

[raw jasper]

Next time you go to Shenzhen, please photograph a fuse ad for us ^^

[hasty wedge]

I just looked them up

they have an office here in Shenzhen

[hasty wedge]

will do

[thick wind]

All of my non-vacation reasons to go to China put me either near Shanghai or further north 🥲

I’d probably melt in shenzhen

[raw jasper]

I saw an ad for a "personal TEC fan" that one is supposed to attach to their body. It was one of those moments where I feel certain we are cooked :/

[somber spindle]

literally

maybe still rare, it's at medium-rare that it becomes a real problem

[raw jasper]

Sous-vide!

[thick wind]

Thankfully our oceans haven’t reached that temperature yet…

[raw jasper]

Actually, the temperature for Sous-vide appears to be 55-60 dec C, and some landmasses have reached at least 50 deg C, so....

[thick wind]

I mean in Arizona you can use a parked car to fry eggs and bake cookies.

[raw jasper]

quits job, opens wet bulb thermometer emporium

[thick wind]

So I hear anyways.

[raw jasper]

Actually, do we know why the perceivable effects appear to have gotten exponentially worse the past few years?

Is it a case of climate systems breakdown having reached the point where their deleterious effect can be perceived by the western world, or have the factors at play gotten worse?

[somber spindle]

I've been discussing this with some friends, and there were a couple of things we observed in our locale:

• avg daytime temps haven't shifted much
• nightly lows have crept up noticeably, supported both by anecdotal stories and avg low data
• avg dew point has risen at both day and night, by nearly 10 deg F over the last 30 years
• perceived temperature is dramatically worse because it doesn't cool off at night, and humidity doesn't let up

and there are well supported theories that the increase in humidity is tied to the air's greater carrying capacity for moisture, related to increased global temps

so uh... we perceive that things are getting worse

[raw jasper]

(For the record, my country's met agency publishes monthly mean temperature deviation reports, and we have definitely crossed the 1.5degC mark, at least for the area of Europe they cover)

(Plus everything you have mentioned above)

[tardy badger]

Looked at the 10 year mean compared to the 30 year mean and annually, we’ve risen by 1°C in that range

[raw jasper]

https://tenor.com/view/elmo-hell-burn-in-hell-see-you-in-hell-fire-gif-5012876

[kindred isle]

It's ok though because crypto currencies and AI data centers are booming!

[night crescent]

⚙️ ask an engineer live from brooklyn: deep dives, demos, and your questions answered on-air → https://youtu.be/8NE0LKyTf5Q

[supple fossil]

So while I wait to see if anyone can help with my project, I'm wondering if any can recommend which would be better, buying a pca9685 through the Adafruit or Highletgo (since that's where I got my esp32, plus there's a servo sheild option that purportedly works with esp32s) Amazon areas. My soldering skills are roughly in the novice area...

[fair summit]

we have a lot more documentation, and you can ask for official product support

[rigid whale]

YouTube streams are still up. Not sure if that is intended.

[fair summit]

thanks, I've reported that internally.

[hasty wedge]

EVB for a different SC8P series

[raw jasper]

Planning to sell them, or making them for practice?

[hasty wedge]

practice

[raw jasper]

Out of curiosity, is the silkscreen character on the right of the board your original creation

?

[hasty wedge]

Unlicensed image of a character from Genshin

I consider that as a charm of Chinese amateur PCBs

Unlicensed anime characters on board

[raw jasper]

Ah, so the various PCBs with anime/anime-inspired characters on the silkscreen that can be found on aliexpress et al are an actual offshoot of Chinese amateur PCB culture, not an attempt to market to the otaku fandom?! TIL!

[hasty wedge]

yeah

It's a culture

To the point that JLCPCB started to offer colored silkscreen for the exact purpose

[raw jasper]

That's cool!

[sudden stone]

Can anyone help point me to the most recent updates on Adabox? I joined with Adabox021 but haven’t gotten anything since. Seems like future boxes were postponed due to parts availability and then the US tariff situation made things even more complicated. Is there more recent updates than the April 2025 update posted on the Adabox page? I’ve done some searching but can’t seem to find anything. Just wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing out on anything. Thanks!

[umbral phoenix]

@zealous oyster thought you might be interested in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubesat_Space_Protocol | https://github.com/libcsp/libcsp ...network all the things (like CAN) 🙂 it needs linux, freeRTOS, or Zephyr though, not sure if it could be pared down for our typical microcontrollers

[zealous oyster]

ohhh, thank you! I'm still waiting for my borads to come. I will read it totally. I feel like that project slowly becomes 'what weird thing I can do' insted of being a reflection of an actual industrial network, but I will learn tones anyways 😄 I already read tons on it.

and it's alive, awesome. many such projects die quickly, unfortunately

yeah, it looks like I won't be able to run it on the adafruit boards, but I may be able to do some test runs with other devices I possess, on linux, ha! Thank you so much for this, this can be a fun side thing.

[supple fossil]

If I do get the "name brand", what kind of capacitor would work/be needed/recommended to buy and solder on?

[sturdy dawn]

I'm still fascinated by neopixels but The idea hasn't struck me yet. Once I think of a good one, it'll just be programming until I get it

I like the ring game project they posted

I got a circuitplayground with one of my orders

Can't help but be reminded of the infinity gauntlet with that board

Or like the five Captain planet rings

[fair summit]

I did not see the thread about a capacitor. Have you looked at our various PCA9685 guides:
https://learn.adafruit.com/16-channel-pwm-servo-driver
https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-16-channel-pwm-slash-servo-shield
https://learn.adafruit.com/using-servos-with-circuitpython
etc.

[zealous oyster]

there's no clear answer because it depends on the project, how many servos you use, how much current they draw and how stable you power source is.

[supple fossil]

I'm not sure I understood most of what I saw. Certainly didn't have plans on learning a new coding language (circuitpython)... I'm also not sure about the servo sheild... Most of the time, I see it hand in hand with arduino boards and only one review of one user having sucess connecting the sheild to an esp32.

[zealous oyster]

you have to analyze your circuit and calculate the capacitor you need and if you need it, that's prolly why they didn't put any capacitor on the board because it depends

those boards with capacitor on them may or may not work for your case

[supple fossil]

I looked up pca9685 & capacitor, and it lead me to an archived adafruit forum thread which someone asked about using a 16V 2000UF Capacitor due to how many servos they were using. Found a 16V 2200UF Capacitor listing on Amazon. Basically, there are 8 micro 9-something servos, a 35kg servo and three 150kg servos (12 total servos) to run an animatronic head/neck.

Also found that I probably don't have enough amps to run them all (I have a 5v 2A power cord... iffy if it was 2 or 3 amps) and that it may be better to find a 5v 10A power source.

[hasty wedge]

Got my 0.9 cents MCU dev board working

!!! WARNING: FLASHING LIGHTS !!!

Vibration activated blinking LED

4 buttons, 1 vibration switch, 3 LEDs, 1 h-bridge, and 6 bit data input

[hollow flint]

Do people still use the term "cent" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cent_(currency)) in China? According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fen_(currency)), the term "fen" is used.

[hasty wedge]

It's in US dollar

It costs 7 fen each

[raw jasper]

Please take the flashing lights warning seriously everyone, they really do mean it

Also, wow, talk about quick turnaround -- when did you order the PCBs?

[hasty wedge]

JLCPCB

3 dollars for 5 boards with free shipping and 2 days turnaround

[raw jasper]

Heh, for that cost, I would try spinning up my own PCB too :P

(In my case, the shipping would probably be more expensive than the boards themselves)

[hasty wedge]

That's the cost for PCB samples

If you order in bulk thats gonna be way cheaper

[raw jasper]

Did you also have them do PCBA, or did you solder everything yourself?

[hasty wedge]

I solder everything by myself

JLC is not the cheapest because they don't offer 94HB boards

94HB boards sometimes go for 14 USD / m²

But you only get 1 side of circuit because it's made with paper and glue

[ornate thistle]

hey.. im making a project using an iphone tapic engine.
is possible to drive this motor using an mosfet?
i know the "DRV2605L" but no luck to find localy. and is not pratical to import things where i live.

[hasty wedge]

Make sure you do plenty of protection

Because the inductor in the haptic engine can easily kill your mosfet if you're not careful

[ornate thistle]

even on 3v?

[hasty wedge]

Yes

[raw jasper]

Detailed introduction is as follows:

94HB: Plain cardboard, not fireproof (lowest grade material, die punching, no power board)
:D

[hollow flint]

Have you checked on the bottom of the Adafruit product webpage for a list of distributors that carry the item?

[ornate thistle]

not pratical where i live... 40-60 days shipping and the price is 200%... if this cost 12USD i will pay 24...
and 20USD is very expesive on my currecy

[hasty wedge]

Have you tried AliExpress?

[raw jasper]

(If you end up going for aliexpress, please do post the item link here before sending any vendor your money so that someone can check it and hopefully help you avoid the more obvious scams)

[ornate thistle]

yes, 200% of the price and VERY LONG SHIPPING.. the tax are paid in the moment that i purchase the item..(aliexpress and others have an agrement with the goverment) but some times even with the automatic tax system the crap organization can put more tax. is not pratical.

[hasty wedge]

😔

[hollow flint]

I'm curious, which country?

[ornate thistle]

Brazil

90%+ tax on any imported products..
like the US right now but wayyyyyyyyy worse.
An steam deck is like 700USD
iphone 16 pro max 1800USD
and the list goes on and on.. sucks....

[ornate thistle]

something like that?

with the tapic engine

[hasty wedge]

yeah

flyback diode

[ornate thistle]

humm the resitor value...

the "final" idea is to use an Attiny85, i have the module with USB..
i believe it will run on 3v

[chrome roost]

I keep wondering if they will ever do another one. I signed up a while ago (over a year now I think) but they have not done one in quite a while. I am starting to think this product is just not viable for them. Big bummer.

[sudden stone]

I’m having the same thought process. Totally makes sense with the tariffs and electronics price increases recently. Unfortunate if Adafruit can’t continue the program and not lose money on it but understandable. Fingers crossed we’ll see one happen down the road but I’m not holding my breath

[ornate thistle]

duable to use L9110S?

[hasty wedge]

That works too

On this board there's also an H-bridge

I am using TC118S

[ornate thistle]

here is the CRAZY idea...
i wana make an apple like trackpad for my laptop..
So... i have presure sensors FSR402.. the tapic engine + driver + microcontroler (attiny85)

I will remove the trackpad single button.. and make the trackpad stationary..(locked)

So.. if i press HARD on the trackpad,, the microcontroller will send a signal to the trackpad button and make the tapic feedback

[hasty wedge]

That's a fantastic idea!

[sturdy dawn]

I think I'm familiar enough with code now to try and add the RGB matrix library to FCEUltra

A fork I mean

240 Hertz is more than viewable for the game Boy one. So the performance hit shouldn't be too bad for NES and still get around 200 HZ

All assuming you use four pin addressing panels. Once you go up to the five pin they eat up performance

But 2mm pitch looks nice

Which is why I kind of want to try to build the Pico project with the 64x32 panels and see if I still have those ghosting issues

[jovial zinc]

How can I learn Arduino coding
I just brought a Arduino!

[shadow siren]

First, get the Arduino IDE

[hollow flint]

https://learn.adafruit.com/groups/learn-arduino

[shadow siren]

The Arduino IDE will have a ton of samples you can look at and play around with. My personal first one is the blink program.

[zealous oyster]

My boards came! I'm so excited to start my Great CAN Project 😄

[zealous oyster]

If you didn't get the official starter kit, and you don't have a book, you may want to start with this playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLT6rF_I5kknPf2qlVFlvH47qHvqvzkknd

[sturdy dawn]

Actually doing the math here and it would double the pixels meaning it Hertz would cut in half. So it might barely be viewable

[idle lion]

@quartz falcon if you have question or comment you can say it. No need to ask if anyone is here (it just clutters up the channel). I'm going to delete these messages. Please see #code-of-conduct and #welcome for info about the channel on what is on topic.

[quartz falcon]

ngl i didn't found anything related too it in those channel well my bad i'll go for my problem directly .

i just got my hands on adafruit feather 2040 with usb host a and i started coding it for a controller and a mouse remap but i'm having issues with the polling rate it's not even getting to 200Hz which is too low to function properly if there's anyone out with the board i would be graceful to work together with him

[idle lion]

Are you using CircuitPython or Arduino to code it? your best bet is asking in either #help-with-circuitpython or #help-with-arduino, depending on which you are using. And include the code that you're using.

Your new message is fine, asking questions is fine, and discussing projects and electronics or programming is fine. Just no need to ask if people are around, or ask if it's okay to ask questions before doing so and similar.

[idle iron]

https://www.adafruit.com/product/6362

could you make TDS meter with this? im not sure if they work the same way, i think TDS measure electro conductivity of the liquid

[wanton pier]

I built something cool, what is the best way to share it?

Servo 3 position Valve with optical sensor to detect wheel slots Uses Adafruits opitical sensor TCRT1000, TowerPro MG92B servo and prop maker RP2040 https://www.adafruit.com/product/5768

[hard estuary]

There is a #show-and-tell channel

[wanton pier]

Where should I host the video to share?

[zealous oyster]

hey, operating voltage is a circuit voltage, the same as i/o v, not the power to power the board, right?

[raw jasper]

As far as I know, discord allows video upload up to a certain size

[wanton pier]

Usually operating voltage is the supply voltage to the board (whats needed to operate). That is then stepped down with a power regulator on most boards usually 5vdc or 3.3vdc for most hobby micros. That said context is important, so if you have specifics I would share them.

I clarified sorry^

[zealous oyster]

Thanks! The a wording on specs sheet threw me off a bit. I already dug dipper and confirmed that indeed, it was a circuit voltage 🙂

I was trying to determine if I need logic shifter or not, but happily I don't 😄

[hasty wedge]

Rev.B fixed a few issues, added a power input

[raw jasper]

Why no USB power?

(Bonus points if it is a USB-B port for historical accuracy and comically gigantic port)

[hasty wedge]

It's for connecting coin cell batteries

Because that's usually where those chips end up

[raw jasper]

Oh.. So, I guess the coin cell slot is on the bottom?

[hasty wedge]

No, external

[raw jasper]

ic!

[vale gale]

hello everyone, I am new here and I saw that you have a lot of different chats with different topics. I was wondering where I should ask my quesiton regarding the UART interfaces for a QT Py SAMD21?

[hard estuary]

Hi! It depends - what programming language are you using? There are channels for CircuitPython and Arduino

[vale gale]

i am using c++, so it would be the channel called help with arduino, correct?

[hard estuary]

Yup, start there

[vale gale]

thanks 👍

[winter sinew]

Hi everybody. New here and looking to talk and gain knowldege about sound implementation in physical product design. Great to be here!

[supple fossil]

Guess who's confused again. So I was going through my servos and noticed that my 150kg servos say "10-12.6v" on them. Yet all the tutorials I've seen mentioned a DC out power source of 5v when connecting to a pca9685 board. Can someone help make sense in that?

Also, I looked up info for the other two sizes of servos (mg90S and 35kg) and they share a similar range to each other (6v and 4.5v-6.8v respectively). How does that equate with the 5v DC out and stuff?

Constantly confused...

[fair summit]

On our PCA9685 boards, in general, the 5V screw terminal supply goes directly to the servos. There is a separate connection for the 3.3-5v used to run the PCA9685. The PCA9685 does not control the +5v line in any way: it goes straight to the servos. The PCA9685 only sends separate logic signals to the each servo. The grounds are tied together so there is a reference level for the servo control signals.

This is a nice thing about servos: they have their own power control circuitry. This is unlike motor-drivers like H bridges, which have to handle the high current going to the motors.

But it appears to me that the control voltage for a 12v servo is still 3.3v-5v. See this datasheet, particularly the "Command Signal" voltage: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0570/1766/3541/files/SV12-S_Technical_Specification.pdf?v=1741767936

it wasn't easy for me to find this: there are a number of 12v servo pages, and they don't specify the control voltage. But I guess it's assumed to be 3.3-5v

so for your 150kg servos, you could run a separate 12v supply to those, and not use the 3pin connector wires (they may use a different plug/socket anyway

[supple fossil]

They all have the three (female) pin & wire set up. Basically, I'll have to get two of the pca9685 boards and yet another power supply?

[fair summit]

no, you could use the same board, and not connect the _5V for the higher-voltage servos. Cut the power wire on the 3-pin and connect it to 12v separately. Or run 2 separate jumpers from the 12v servo to the pins on the PCA9685 board, and run a separate wire to a 12v terminal block of some kind.

you DO need a separate power supply

it might be easier to get two PCA9685 boards, but you want to be very careful not to get them mixed up, so you don't accidently supply 12v to your 5v servos

Can you read schematics?

[supple fossil]

If it's simple enough, yeah.

[fair summit]

So look at the schematic here: https://learn.adafruit.com/16-channel-pwm-servo-driver/downloads. You can click on the schematic to get a larger view. Then choose a size on the right hand side. Notice the distinction between "+5V" and "VCC". All the terminals labeled "+5V" are tied together. This is exactly what I looked at to make the statement above.

Are you an actual professor, with professional colleagues or students you could get help from?

[supple fossil]

No, just a fan of Professor Samuel "Sammy" Oak from the Pokémon series (especially when he was voiced by Stewart Zagnit).

[fair summit]

ah, I did not realize about the name

[valid dagger]

Not sure if this was already posted.

They used an adafruit board for a device in the new 'Naked Gun' movie 😬

[fair summit]

See the comment about V+ here, for instance: https://learn.adafruit.com/16-channel-pwm-servo-driver?view=all#power-pins-2980404

[supple fossil]

If I'm using separate power cords for two separate pca9685 boards (because I only saw about daisy chaining and only one power source), how will both boards be connected to the esp32?

[fair summit]

The I2C lines would be connected in parallel. You'd set the I2C addresses to be different on the two boards. The grounds would all be connected together, and the VCC lines would be connected together.

The V+ lines would be connected to different sources, but their grounds would be tied together

[supple fossil]

So that I understand... would that require splicing/soldering jumper wires (even if there are 3 GND spots on the esp32) especially for the VCC, SCL & SDA? And how would the GND of both power sources' be combined/tied together?

[fair summit]

These connectors are pretty nice. You can get similar ones at a hardware store. https://www.adafruit.com/search?q=snap-action

screw terminals or something like that are good if you don't want to solder, and for high-current applications, they may be better than soldering

The above are easier to use than wire nuts or something like this: https://www.adafruit.com/product/677

run nice heavy ground wires. They have to handle as much current as the +5v and +12v lines

but the terminal blocks are good too

you don't need heavy lines for the the I2C lines : they are just signals

[supple fossil]

Let's say, for my sanity's sake as well as my comprehension skills, I go with something like the 3-to-9 wiring block connector and regular jumper wires for VCC, SDA, & SDL, and the a 5-to-1 connector (since i don't see a 2-to-1 connector on the list... or a 4-to-8 or 12), wouldn't the +/- of the individual adapters of the power sources be just connected to the same +/- ports on the pca9685 boards

[fair summit]

connect all the grounds to, say, this: https://www.adafruit.com/product/874, which just connects everything together. You can connect the +5V from one power supply to one PCA board, and the +12V from the other to the other PCA board. Is that what you're asking

a 5-to-1 is just a 6, with one connector on the other side for physical convenience

so, say, a wire doesn't have to be bent in a U to reverse direction

https://www.homedepot.com/b/WAGO/N-5yc1vZtyk another example, but you have to buy a lot at once

there are also push-in ones on that page, if you don't need to take it apart easily

https://www.acehardware.com/search?query=wire push-in connectors
I see these are sometimes called "lever wire connectors" https://www.acehardware.com/search?query=lever wire connectors
<>

they are all designed to take a certain range of wire gauges

which may vary

[supple fossil]

I was referring to something like this... the +/- of the power source, to the +/- of the board...

Which would be something like this...

for the GND wires that is... or were you suggesting something like this?

[sturdy dawn]

The droid is at it again

For some reason the serial is programmed to actually print the wifi credentials so ill just change that to asterisks

This is arduino btw

[hasty wedge]

When will Fruit Jam become available?

I checked it yesterday and it was out of stock

40 USD is an extremely good price

Considering Agon Light costs 50 and X16 costs 300+

[hollow flint]

Every out-of-stock product on Adafruit's website contains this text:

Please enter your details below and we will send you an email when this item is back in stock! You will only be emailed about this product!

[hasty wedge]

I don't really check my email

[hollow flint]

Also check this article for some alternative options (each has some missing features): https://learn.adafruit.com/using-dvi-video-in-circuitpython/adaafruit-hardware

[hasty wedge]

I have Agon and X16

Both have strength and misses

[fair summit]

I was suggesting the second, tie all the grounds together. That should be the least noisy.

[hasty wedge]

Agon is cheap and you can get it directly from DigiKey. It's also fully open source. But the graphics and sound sucks.
X16 got fantastic sound and graphics and also extremely good expandability. But it's closed source and also very expensive.

[hollow flint]

The Fruit Jam is 32-bit rather than 8-bit, so are these even a fair comparison?

[hasty wedge]

Agon is also 32 bits

It's really just an ESP32 RGB222 VGA dev board with a Z80 sidekick

(biased: I am X16 community's moderator)

If it switches to ESP32-P4 it's gonna blow everyone out of the water

[supple fossil]

Okay... so about the 3-to-9? Would that cover the VCC, SCL, and SDA connections between the esp32 and two pca9685s?

[fair summit]

The 3-to-9 is just 3 1-to-3's in a single package, so yes, looks OK. then you still need the 5-way for ground.

THese are pretty useful and you might consider buying an assortment

[zealous oyster]

hey, I need 18650 battery holders, one of these shields with usb ports to use with a project, but everything I find on amazon looks so cheap and so hmm, unsafe, that I don't trust them. I'm sure they all come from the same factory. Is there a legit brand which makes them in high quality?

[supple fossil]

I've added a 5-to-1 on my amazon list in case I'm able to eventually add a DFPlayer Mini to my animatronic

as well as the 3-to-9

[ornate thistle]

need some fine-tuning... but as an POC... not bad

[hasty wedge]

[sturdy dawn]

I do like those circuit boards though

One of the first Vapes I built before they actually got affordable

It looks shady AF but that's how I liked it 🤣 people were like omg that's gonna explode 🤣

And if you inserted the batteries in series instead of parallel, then you're right, it would have exploded

This one looks worse but was actually built better

Only kind of board in these is a single mosfet Just to take the current out of the switch

Back when full box mods for vaping were like $300 and you could build it for like 50

Oh and it also has a voltmeter but all that does is just display the current voltage of the batteries

[raw jasper]

Nice work! ^.^