ESP Easy development status

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psy0rz
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Re: ESP Easy development status

#121 Post by psy0rz » 18 Sep 2017, 20:39

LisaM wrote: 16 Sep 2017, 17:46
psy0rz wrote: 14 Sep 2017, 22:46 LisaM is your code on github somewhere? I also think micropython is the way to go in the future. It solves a lot of issues and its very platform independent.
Not yet, i'm still busy with the main core outline and collecting and assembling all standard components.
Basic principle is to do as little programming as possible:
...snipsnip
Sounds very good! Offcourse, like you said, it will be a redesign from the ground up, and we will have to port/reimplement each and every module.
I also have a lot of experience with python, so i'm willing to help in the future once things start taking shaping. (and espeasy is stable and doesnt need lots of love and attention anymore )

In the mean while we'll keep maintaining espeasy offcourse.
Please support ESPEasy development via Patreon or buy us a coffee.

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Re: ESP Easy development status

#122 Post by LisaM » 19 Sep 2017, 00:51

frank wrote: 18 Sep 2017, 19:21 that are some great boards but expensive compared to esp 8266 boards
I also have it working on a ubuntu i5/16GB server, so a $6 raspberry pi zero should be possible to...
With a 1GHz cpu, 512MB memory and 40-pin GPIO the pi zero might be an interesting platform.
When booting from sd card, converting a part of the memory to an ramdrive and copy everything in there it might just shatter every SOC speed record when using a 1GHZ cpu. In-memory computing is hot these days... ;)
Last edited by LisaM on 19 Sep 2017, 01:07, edited 1 time in total.

Shardan
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Re: ESP Easy development status

#123 Post by Shardan » 19 Sep 2017, 01:07

For about 95% of my sensors a pi zero is pure overkill.

As long as it still runs on an esp, fine.
If not.....
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Shardan

LisaM
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Re: ESP Easy development status

#124 Post by LisaM » 19 Sep 2017, 01:11

Shardan wrote: 19 Sep 2017, 01:07 For about 95% of my sensors a pi zero is pure overkill.

As long as it still runs on an esp, fine.
If not.....
There is no such thing as overkill... 8-)
Several of my sensors need to be AI Nodes forming a decentral neural network. :ugeek:

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Re: ESP Easy development status

#125 Post by Shardan » 19 Sep 2017, 15:14

Clearly everybody needs a 32GPIO monster to switch a ceiling light or read a temperature sensor.

YOU may need that. But what about those who don't? Don't throw all those users into the garbage who needs less and don't use a fat energy wasting ubuntu server at home.

And by the way if i ever need that i have a better way with much more possibilities then using espeasy. As i'm using fhem i coulld make a slave installation on another RPi for example connected to the main fhem RPi with all possibilities fhem offers.

Just this is overkill for swithicg a light or reading some sensors.
Regards
Shardan

BertB
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Re: ESP Easy development status

#126 Post by BertB » 19 Sep 2017, 15:44

+1 for the first part.

LisaM
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Re: ESP Easy development status

#127 Post by LisaM » 19 Sep 2017, 19:31

Shardan wrote: 19 Sep 2017, 15:14 Clearly everybody needs a 32GPIO monster to switch a ceiling light or read a temperature sensor.

YOU may need that. But what about those who don't? Don't throw all those users into the garbage who needs less and don't use a fat energy wasting ubuntu server at home.

And by the way if i ever need that i have a better way with much more possibilities then using espeasy. As i'm using fhem i coulld make a slave installation on another RPi for example connected to the main fhem RPi with all possibilities fhem offers.

Just this is overkill for swithicg a light or reading some sensors.
Don't worry, scaling down is a lot easier then scaling up...
And... nobody is forcing you to use it. :mrgreen:

Ps. i have domoticz and i stopped believing in star configurations like fhem or domoticz. A node based configuration with inter-node communication enables gradual degradation where a single node failure has very limited impact (in constrast to single point of failure like domoticz). It also means that the nodes need to have more functionality then a simple on or off. Reason why i'm phasing out z-wave, since it doesn't provide enough node based logic.
For example: node can only switch on the ceiling light IF it's dark AND somebody is detected in the room...

BertB
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Re: ESP Easy development status

#128 Post by BertB » 19 Sep 2017, 19:50

LisaM wrote: 19 Sep 2017, 19:31
And... nobody is forcing you to use it. :mrgreen:
[/quote]

Now this is not necessarily true, is it?
I mean, it is often so that development on older technologies grinds to a halt, when a new development gains in popularity.
I do not need the muscle power to swich a light or to tell me the temperature in the garden.
So yeah, this tendency worries me a bit. I have spend a lot of time and money creating stuff with ESPEasy and to be honest, I hate the thought that it will all be lost.

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Re: ESP Easy development status

#129 Post by LisaM » 20 Sep 2017, 00:57

BertB wrote: 19 Sep 2017, 19:50 Now this is not necessarily true, is it?
I mean, it is often so that development on older technologies grinds to a halt, when a new development gains in popularity.
I do not need the muscle power to swich a light or to tell me the temperature in the garden.
So yeah, this tendency worries me a bit. I have spend a lot of time and money creating stuff with ESPEasy and to be honest, I hate the thought that it will all be lost.
Don't worry, the Py version will run on the same hardware (well maybe not the 512KB version, since that's not supported by uPy).
The Py version will be portable, enabling a lot more platforms. You can make it as simple or complex as you want, the reason for the Py version is flexibility... ;)
I'm developing it on a fast ubuntu server since the dev cycle is soooooo much faster then on a soc. I can develop, test and develop in just seconds on ubuntu, the server does a complete make build and run in just below 10 seconds, compared to hours on a soc (building firmware, loading it on a nodemcu, test it, find little debug info, etc). On ubuntu the image size of micropython with frozen modules is currently just 433KB, plenty of room left!
The dev hardware cycle is: ubuntu -> pyboard -> nodemcu -> Esp01 (with 1MB+)
I also have a few sonoff module's i don't want to lose, it's in my own interest to keep supporting smaller soc's... 8-)

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Re: ESP Easy development status

#130 Post by BertB » 22 Sep 2017, 17:41

LisaM wrote: 20 Sep 2017, 00:57
I also have a few sonoff module's i don't want to lose, it's in my own interest to keep supporting smaller soc's... 8-)
That's always the best warranty ... :-)

Okay, I am kind of convinced. But, what does it do with the speed of the ESP?
In the end, uPython is an interpreter language no? Like good old basic?

Martinus

Re: ESP Easy development status

#131 Post by Martinus » 23 Sep 2017, 14:35

Just wondering if the ESP8266 will have sufficient RAM to run both the microPython engine and a large project like ESPEasy?
I've just installed microPython and without any 'sketch' there's only 26k left (?)

psy0rz
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Re: ESP Easy development status

#132 Post by psy0rz » 23 Sep 2017, 14:56

lisam, is it possible to use 3rd party libraries like adafruit or IR in micropython? i know its possible with normal python to link against c-stuff, i was wondering how that works with micropython? can you just upload the .py file plus a object-file?

regarding size: i also dont like overkill for hardware, but on the other hand: stuff gets cheaper and more resources all the time. i think the esp32 is almost as cheap as the esp8266 already. we also have to develop with the future in mind: the next 2 or 3 years there will probably lots of new powerfull and cheap hardware to choose from. there's a big chance that most of them will support micropython.

regarding speed: python is indeed orders of magnitude slower than regular c. but in practice this is no problem: low level stuff like networking is still handle by very efficient C code in python. if we need high speed for some device: normally is possible with python to still use C for those parts.

also i think its possible to let espyeasy download a plugin from internet realtime. this way the user can only "install" the needed plugins via the same webinterfaces. and even update plugins via the webinterface.

edwin
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LisaM
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Re: ESP Easy development status

#133 Post by LisaM » 23 Sep 2017, 15:14

Martinus wrote: 23 Sep 2017, 14:35 Just wondering if the ESP8266 will have sufficient RAM to run both the microPython engine and a large project like ESPEasy?
I've just installed microPython and without any 'sketch' there's only 26k left (?)
What you probably see is just the stack, uPyEasy modules are not stored in there but are 'Frozen' modules. Frozen means that the modules become part of the micropython firmware (that what i'm currently also doing with all the other standard micropython modules like picoweb to). It still gives you the ability to add additional modules/python programs, but eat up the stack (which is not what you want to do on a large scale in limited environments like the ESP8266).

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Re: ESP Easy development status

#134 Post by LisaM » 23 Sep 2017, 17:19

uPyEasy is overwhelming this thread, shall we continue here: viewtopic.php?f=14&t=3577&p=19287#p19287

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Re: ESP Easy development status

#135 Post by grovkillen » 01 Nov 2017, 21:08

Ok, I just want to mention that I'd prefer if we (with "we" I mean the developers) focused a bit on closing the issues found in the milestones of v2.0.0. I'd like us to squash "all" the bugs and release it to the crowd. 8-)

https://github.com/letscontrolit/ESPEasy/milestone/1

Do I hear a "YES we can!"?
ESP Easy Flasher [flash tool and wifi setup at flash time]
ESP Easy Webdumper [easy screendumping of your units]
ESP Easy Netscan [find units]
Official shop: https://firstbyte.shop/
Sponsor ESP Easy, we need you :idea: :idea: :idea:

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Re: ESP Easy development status

#136 Post by Shardan » 01 Nov 2017, 21:37

+1
Regards
Shardan

JR01
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Re: ESP Easy development status

#137 Post by JR01 » 01 Nov 2017, 21:47

Instead of micropython, has anyone looked at golang’s gobot, seems they are pushing multi-platform, even has stuff for esp8266.

https://gobot.io/documentation/platforms/esp8266/
-----------
IOTPLAY. Tinkerer, my projects are @ http://GitHub.com/IoTPlay, and blog https://iotplay.org. Using RPi, Node-Red, ESP8266 to prove Industry 4.0 concepts.

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vader
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Re: ESP Easy development status

#138 Post by vader » 05 Nov 2017, 11:02

I do not understand all that doing. Before fixing all the known issues, the devs start working on implementing new CPUs like ESP32 and whatever we normal user don't need (yet)! We want a firmware that works without all that bugs! That doing remembers me at Micro$oft, that makes all of us to beta testers with unfinished and crappy products. :evil: So keep the focus on a bug-free firmware first!!!

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Re: ESP Easy development status

#139 Post by TD-er » 05 Nov 2017, 11:40

vader wrote: 05 Nov 2017, 11:02 I do not understand all that doing. Before fixing all the known issues, the devs start working on implementing new CPUs like ESP32 and whatever we normal user don't need (yet)! We want a firmware that works without all that bugs! That doing remembers me at Micro$oft, that makes all of us to beta testers with unfinished and crappy products. :evil: So keep the focus on a bug-free firmware first!!!
The development of ESP32 is being done on the "mega" branch. So it is for the new stuff after this release.
At this moment there is a 2.0 branch which contains all that is going to be in the new upcoming release.

My personal preference would be to develop the ESP32 support into a separate branch and then merge into mega, but that is just one of the many flavors in software development and branching strategies.

Typical development is one master branch (which is called 'mega' here at the moment) for which new features are developed.
The feature-freezes are then split into a separate branch which only have bugfixes.

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Re: ESP Easy development status

#140 Post by grovkillen » 05 Nov 2017, 11:52

Spot on TD, we need a strategy for the branches and releases.
ESP Easy Flasher [flash tool and wifi setup at flash time]
ESP Easy Webdumper [easy screendumping of your units]
ESP Easy Netscan [find units]
Official shop: https://firstbyte.shop/
Sponsor ESP Easy, we need you :idea: :idea: :idea:

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Re: ESP Easy development status

#141 Post by Shardan » 05 Nov 2017, 12:17

+1
Regards
Shardan

papperone
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Re: ESP Easy development status

#142 Post by papperone » 05 Nov 2017, 15:01

TD-er wrote: 05 Nov 2017, 11:40
vader wrote: 05 Nov 2017, 11:02 I do not understand all that doing. Before fixing all the known issues, the devs start working on implementing new CPUs like ESP32 and whatever we normal user don't need (yet)! We want a firmware that works without all that bugs! That doing remembers me at Micro$oft, that makes all of us to beta testers with unfinished and crappy products. :evil: So keep the focus on a bug-free firmware first!!!
The development of ESP32 is being done on the "mega" branch. So it is for the new stuff after this release.
At this moment there is a 2.0 branch which contains all that is going to be in the new upcoming release.

My personal preference would be to develop the ESP32 support into a separate branch and then merge into mega, but that is just one of the many flavors in software development and branching strategies.

Typical development is one master branch (which is called 'mega' here at the moment) for which new features are developed.
The feature-freezes are then split into a separate branch which only have bugfixes.
The more I study ESP32 architecture the more I think that a simple "porting" won't be using full chip capabilites...
Specially now that Espressiff provided RTOS functionality with possibility to run code on both cores in parallel, but this will require major modification to ESPEasy I guess :(
My TINDIE Store where you can find all ESP8266 boards I manufacture --> https://www.tindie.com/stores/GiovanniCas/
My Wiki Project page with self-made PCB/devices --> https://www.letscontrolit.com/wiki/inde ... :Papperone

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Re: ESP Easy development status

#143 Post by LisaM » 06 Nov 2017, 00:27

papperone wrote: 05 Nov 2017, 15:01 The more I study ESP32 architecture the more I think that a simple "porting" won't be using full chip capabilites...
Specially now that Espressiff provided RTOS functionality with possibility to run code on both cores in parallel, but this will require major modification to ESPEasy I guess :(
Yep, the Espressiff ESP32 libs are completely different from the Espressiff ESP8266 libs. I looked at it and gave up the hope of ever uniting both ESP platforms. Even for micropython they are taking some time to develop micropython on a ESP32 with a complete team. They now have a multi threaded micropython and capable of using 4MB of psRAM (yes 4MB of free ram instead of 80KB...)

And even if you succeed, it's not async so not benefiting from the dual core. uPyEasy is async from the beginning, meaning the webserver can handle one request on one core and the other core can handle the IO. Arm soc's like the STM32 series are now also available in dual-core (cortex-r4). The $10 OrangePi is another competitor with loads of cores and IO available.

If i need this kind of power? For most apps not, but for some controls in my house (CO2, heating) it's even essential. I need a LOT more local node power to do AI, inter-node communication, wifi mesh networking, etc. None of that can be done with the current limited capabilities of ESPEasy.

For an ESP-01 all of this might not matter, but even the mighty ESP-01 doesn't live forever...

Martinus

Re: ESP Easy development status

#144 Post by Martinus » 06 Nov 2017, 20:16

vader wrote: 05 Nov 2017, 11:02 I do not understand all that doing. Before fixing all the known issues, the devs start working on implementing new CPUs like ESP32 and whatever we normal user don't need (yet)! We want a firmware that works without all that bugs! That doing remembers me at Micro$oft, that makes all of us to beta testers with unfinished and crappy products. :evil: So keep the focus on a bug-free firmware first!!!
Hardly any code development has been done, nor is it planned for ESPEasy on ESP32 (unless some developer volunteers?)
Current changes to the mega dev branch are limited to some precompiler directives to select the ESP32 specific libraries and function calls. Mainly because they were named ESP8266xxx and now ESP32xxx or ESPxxx....

All all the actual hard work on ESP32 Arduino core is done by other developers (me-no-dev as lead developer).
Their aim is to get typical Arduino sketches to run on ESP32.

And ESPEasy actually runs on ESP32 as we speak.

Because of me-no-dev and his team...

(to avoid possible confusion, me-no-dev and co-developers are not members of the ESP Easy team, so we can't influence their work. In case one doubts the usefulness of their work on ESP32, better ask them directly)

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