I’ve finished my planned home automation device’s prototype around 2-3 weeks ago…but it looked like I will almost sure will run out of flash space - and will loose ota update capability. While I was evaluating my options someone on #arduino have talked about an issue he is having with an esp…and it turned out that thing has more potential for me than I earlier thinked…I’ve already had an esp01 module in my ‘possibly usefull stuffs’ storage.
It helps a lot to organize my taughts - to simpliy just collect all my findings, ideas and such… One of my friends have showed me the idea of “busy boards”…and I’ve kept thinking on it ever since ;) Having the haut project in progress opens up the possibilities to integrate the busy board into the it….which will enable me to add real meaning behind the various switches and such…and possibly enrich the busy board from a static collection of switches doors and etc into a playfield where solving puzzles may switchon a light or anything….
I’ve a little girl…who has some rubber teats which helps she sleeping thru the whole night. But…the best of these devices must be charged prior to usage - lately i’ve spend about 30-60 seconds charging them; but I’ve got an idea to create a “charging station” - from a sheet of paper by using some cad magic. The plan was to create a maimed pyramid - to get some stability; because the top hole should has about ~25mm diameter.
Original plan: create schemantic I’ve met with one of my friend who does have degree in Electrical Engineering ;) And i’ve wanted to ask him to check my circuits…he asked for schemantics - and because the only “real” existing schemantic was already built… I’ve looked for a schemantic drawing tool before - but I’ve failed to find the right one for me. I was very fortunate that I’ve subscribe to ForceTronics on youtube earlier (he makes very good videos in home automation topics…gives a very good presentation about what he is talking about), and I’ve got a notification that he have just published a video about EasyEDA - i’ve considered easyeda before; but around that time it looked a bit too complicated.
I’ve forgot to write about this…so I try to write my memories before I forgot this ;) Day 0 I’ve placed all devices and cables where they should be…check that it works and unpluged it for the night. Day 1 In the morining I’ve showed it to my wife: that it’s now working ;) I’ve showed my wife the most important thing of the new kitchen lightning system… there is only one plug where it gets all the electricity…in case something is not right (catches fire…or gives wierd noises) she should be able to neutralize it without having to track down the cables - and I’ve encouraged she to do so If she thinks its needed.
I was able to disable the nrf autoack feature; it is strange why I have to enable autoack prior to disabling it….but it looks like these modules like it this way ;) I’ve noticed a weak soldering in the sensor device - i’ve tried to fix it (without soldering) ; it went well enough to finish the current measurement for sizing the fuse; but its another minor showstopper ;) Next day or so I’ve added a diode and a 200mA polyfuse to the led driver board; to create some protecton for these circuits.
Lately i’ve finished the ota related software components…its still ugly; but at least it now uploads & swaps the new firmware with a success rate of around ~90%…sometimes the mega messes something up; and avrdude timeouts…but its fine for me for now at least. There were a very strange problem…sometimes the otad behaved strangely or just seemingly lost contact with the mega….it took for me a while to realize that i might be facing some memory issues; fixing all valgrind errors and warnings uncovered that i’ve forgot to initialize a buffer offset variable…I should definetly turn on -Werror and its friends…
I’ve already evaluated what i would really need to protect my comms from 3rd parties; but i still miss the stream alike controllers on both ends to maintain the channels between the devices. remote writing (arduino – arduino) With the local self writing capability ready for use, i started adding some sequence based retrasmission capable stuff (i wasnt sure where i will end up with it eventually)… After creating the prototype for a single one directional channel I was surprised that the encryption part will just fit into the playfield by adding it behind the seq handler later on.
Earlier i’ve found the optiboot project, which looked like a great candidate to reshape into the key instrument to enable remote firmware upgrades for the pro minis. The idea is to have the flash split logicaally in two: first section running the current firmware second section is reserved for the new firmware The bootloader is the only “trusted” part of the flash from within flash write commands are accepted.
Moving the existing breadboard application to a soldered one was easier than before…the hardest was to find a suitable timeframe when I can start working on it. drilling holes I’ve ordered a small box earlier(and was hanging around without any purpose); because I don’t really had strict size contrains or ergonomical requirements for it - I decided to use it. I decided to use 3 dc jacks to connect: