ESP Easy development strategy

[moelski]

Hi Martinus,

first of all .. I worked with the latest releases a long time now (while developing plugins) and for me it´s really stable.
Didn´t find any serious bugs (only my own ).

But since this release reaches a "critical" point let me write done my thoughts / solutions about this:

reached the compile size limitations for the classic ESP modules with 512kb flash chips

1) Dont´t care about these old modules
These old 512kb modules are fairly old and you can get even the ESP-01 with 1MB of flash size for only a few bugs.
And there is another point ... These old 512kb modules often only have 2 GPIOs. To be honest ... They are really limited in usage (just my 2 cents ).
2) Add a new attribute to the plugins
Why not adding a new attribute / compiler flag to the plugins. For instance PLUG_512K, PLUG_1M, PLUG_4M, PLUG_16M. You can mark the plugins to be compiled for a dedicated version. At the end you have 2 or 3 binary files for flashing. The memory limit modules simply have less functionality. But the new modules can take the full advantage of all new plugins available.
3) Make the whole Plugin section more configurable
I know you can simple remove ino files from the folder and you get a reduced version of ESPEasy. But to be honest this is maybe not the best solution.
Why not addind a configurtion.h file where you can enable / disable plugins before compiling. I think anyone who will use ESPEasy has a special use case and don´t really need all the implementet modules at a time. So making ESPEasy more flexible before compilation could produce binaries which fit even an the small ESPs and the they fit the needs of the other users as well because compiled for their needs.

Option 3 is for sure only for thoses who can compile ESPEasy ... But hey that is not such a big deal - isn´t it?
And even if a user has no idea how to compile ESPEasy and how to enable / disable plugins ... They can fallback to option 2 and use one of the precompiled binaries.

What do you think?

[papperone]

my 2cents:

- why not to make R137 last stable for 512Kb modules?
- then from R138 and above only >=1Mb modules will be supported
- I'm not sure it's beneficials to deploy such many features for a 2 GPIOs module (as previously mentioned)
- even keeping with the R137 all those modules shoudl be able to work still in a mixed evnironment

[Martinus]

moved some posts to keep the other thread clean and on-topic...

[costo]

moelski wrote:

3) Make the whole Plugin section more configurable

For sure I like this option.
Because I have a lot of SonOff modules in my home, these modules have 1Mbyte flash chip. I like using SonOff with OTA option, this limits the maximum file_size to 512kB.
Using a configuration file could probably make it possible to include plugins from the playground and maybe even exclude not needed controller plugins.
This way the file size can (always) be kept below 512kB.

[Martinus]

3) Make the whole Plugin section more configurable
I know you can simple remove ino files from the folder and you get a reduced version of ESPEasy. But to be honest this is maybe not the best solution.

We had fairly complex configuration options with an older project and to be honest, i'm very glad that i did not inherit this within ESP Easy.
It can be a PITA to support and maintain.

The way it works right now, it's dead simple and everyone who can start Windows Explorer can create a custom configuration.

I just copy and rename the parent project folder to keep all sorts of custom builds. Exporting the binary in Arduino IDE will include the bin files within the respective project folder. Using OTA i can switch quite fast between binaries. I never have to edit any file. How more easy can it be?

[Martinus]

Because I have a lot of SonOff modules in my home, these modules have 1Mbyte flash chip. I like using SonOff with OTA option, this limits the maximum file_size to 512kB.

It's actually limited to something near 468 kB.
Remember that the flash also contains SPIFFS, EEPROM emulation and some sectors uses by the SDK.

(And the current uploader from the Arduino ESP core does not seem to care if it fits. When i upload a 500k bin, it will just overwrite the SPIFSS area, causing a factory reset. Very inconvenient)

I've been working on a special ESP uploader bin to use in between ESP firmware uploads on the 1MB modules. It looks like i will be able to use OTA images up to 692kB

ESPUploader.png (11.65 KiB) Viewed 5585 times

[moelski]

Hi Martinus,

so did you have any plan about the development strategy?

Just another "2 cents" about the 512k modules ... As some other wrote in the past these modules have a lot of disadvantages:
* Flash is limited
* most modules only have very small amount of IO Pins
* you can have a much better modul for a few bucks

But I want to bring the ESP32 back to your attention ... I know there is no port to ESP32 yet. But keep in mind that the working on the Arduino ESP32 modul has startet. When that package works to compile ESPEasy on ESP32 I think many will switch to the new chip. The ESP32 did not cost really more than the ESP8266.
So the old 8266 modules with low flash size, minimal IO pins will no longer necessary.

But anyway ... It´s on you devs to decide which route the ESPEasy project will go

btw. If we had a list with topics for the wiki I would help on some parts.