Let's Control It

Have been shopping around the last few months and after almost 10 years of DIY hardware, decided to abandon those in favor of several 'commercial' boxes.

Planned product line-up: Ofcourse the firmware will still be DIY!
I like the fact that all ESP devices have built-in button(s), Neopixel LED or more advanced LCD display and are build around the ESP32.

I will be using the M5Stack Gray for the more advanced tasks as they are more future proof (ESP32 with 16MB Flash). They will run ESPEasy.
Simple tasks will be handled by M5Stick or M5 Atom models. Also running ESPEasy.

The LSC product line will run some custom firmware, likely based on a smaller R120 version of ESPEasy

It leads to this ESP graveyard (all ESP8266 based and outdated LCD 1602 displays):

Spring cleanup.

martinus - normal user

Who would have thought

-D

@martinus:
Honest question: Why not replace the ESP8266 controllers by ESP32's?
Or is the rest of your IoT hardware too far degraded to be reused for a second time? (Recycling is good, IMHO)

Please share your custom version of code when ready.

Thank you for efforts to create ESPEasy

Ath wrote: ↑21 Mar 2020, 16:54 @martinus:
Honest question: Why not replace the ESP8266 controllers by ESP32's?
Or is the rest of your IoT hardware too far degraded to be reused for a second time? (Recycling is good, IMHO)

The new devices are a lot smaller and better looking. And i prefer the LCD display on most of the devices to show boot process and status.
I also added a "safemode" boot when pressing the built-in button for 5 seconds during boot. It will display the safemode state on LCD and will auto disable all tasks and rules.

happytm wrote: ↑22 Mar 2020, 04:44 Please share your custom version of code when ready.

Thank you for efforts to create ESPEasy

Just had a look at R150 and compiled with core 263. Still under 400k. Maybe adding an ESPNOW plugin will be sufficient instead of creating custom code. And maybe one customization to avoid Wifi kicking in and block ESPNOW...

But the refresh is not finished yet. This device is still in operation: It uses a custom Nodo ATmega328 version and the ESP-01 is only used to bridge to Wifi for special rule handling.

I'm also planning to end the Nodo era (makes me feel i bit but in the end it will be more future proof )
Besides that, the old marmitek device is giving issues sometimes and i would like to get rid of all the IR cables going through walls etc.

It will be something like this to relay IR from two different rooms to the central location where all HDMI equipment is housed. Maybe it could also use ESPNOW which would make it independent from normal Wifi.

ESPnow is a lot faster in sending the first message, so also a very good idea to use on battery powered nodes.
But it has some limitations.
- Max nr. of paired nodes (10 or 20, depending on encryption)
- Radio is shared with WiFi, so the access point determines the channel
- Max message length of < 255 bytes (could be useful for p2p)

IR gateway prototype setup is now in operation and the old Nodo unit has been shutdown. I did not own three M5 Atom lite units yet, so currently using an Atom-Lite and Atom-Matrix as sending units and an M5StickC as receiving unit.

The Atom units are powered by the TV's USB port so they will automatically boot when the TV in either room is turned on.

Looks like UDP broadcast of IR messages if fast enough for realtime relay. All my devices are supported by either Samsung, Sony or NEC protocol.

Thought that the refresh job was finished. Almost forgot that this device is also ESP based (Originally it was a Nodo project):
Still running strong on R120 for about 5 years!! Maybe just leave it as it is... Or put an M5 Atom in it...

Love the design!

martinus wrote: ↑29 Mar 2020, 10:16 Still running strong on R120 for about 5 years!! Maybe just leave it as it is... Or put an M5 Atom in it...

Could not resist to replace the ESP8266 with an ESP32. Just because we can...
The Adafruit Neo library seems to have issues on ESP32. Workaround by moving to Fastled library. Also checking out a custom library that uses a hardware (RMT) device from the ESP32 chip.

So with the exception of the battery sensors and smart plugs, the entire home is now ESP32 based using a single bin firmware for all nodes. The battery sensors do not need maintenance, because they are only capable of doing one thing. I can only think of a security SDK-fix that might require an update of those nodes.