Sometimes you bet on the wrong horse. I put my money down on the ESP3212 as I had seen the images of sample modules and AiThinker seemed to be on the way to mass produce this lovely little thing. As I had a bunch of designs to send off to Dirty PCBs, I quickly whipped up an ESP3212 version of my Esparducam board. The day after the boards went into production (early november IIRC) I read that the ESP3212 was scrapped in favour of the ESP32S. Not a completely bad choice as the 3212 was not pin compatible with Espressifs version of the module. But still.
ESP3212 coaster 🙂
So, if you actually managed to get your hands on a ‘3212 and wish to test it on this board I’d be happy to send one to you for the price of p & p. Goodbye ESP3212, I hardly ever knew you.
People have asked if and when it would be possible to buy AAduinos. The answer to both questions is “sort of soonish” as I am about to start a crowd sourcing campaign with the good people over at Crowd Supply. Here’s their pre launch page. There are a number of cool projects running over there, Lime SDR is a personal favourite of mine.
Update Aug 28th: The BOM for all variants is now on Github. Please see the notes at the end if you want to build a Commadorable 64 yourself.
The ILI9341 based QVGA displays found on eBay for €4 are well suited for making small screenlets telling the current temperature, weather forecasts, traffic situation to work and spreading them over the house. As PCB design is both fun, cheap and rewarding I did a custom PCB for these tiny displays. Actually, I made three, one for each of the 2.2″, 2.4″ and 2.8″ screens. The 2.8″ version has not been produced but the smaller variant have and work well. From 2.4″ and onwards there is (untested) touch support on the screen modules.
The “Hello World” application for this project also named the PCBs. I call them Commadorable 64. Here is why:
LEGO Stormtrooper added for size reference
The cursor blinks but I resisted the urge to create an animated GIF. “Commadorable 64” is a play with “Commodore 64” and “adorable”. It has been scientifically proven that those for whom the Commodore 64 played a significant part of their childhood will look at the 2.2″ version of the C64 start screen and react the same way as cat people looking at kittens. Heads will be tilted slightly sideways, smiles appear and sounds like “naaaaaaaw” will be heard. I have one of these at work and depending on childhood experiences people will either go “what?” or “naaaaaaw”.
ESP side
The PCB is soldered directly to the pins of the ILI9341 module. Some of these screens will probably end up in other applications in the future. The other day I read about openframe.io and adding support for these would be fun.
The PCBs can be ordered from DirtyPCBs.com, 2.2″ with a bonus AAduino and 2.4″ version with touch. The BOM consists of the usual components for my ESP8266 designs. We have 0603 resistors and capacitors, a 3x6x2.5mm momentary push button [eBay] for displaying the IP address, a SOT23-3 P-mosfet to control the backlight, an LM1117 voltage regulator and a SOD-123FL schottky diode for reverse power protection and optional mini USB connectors. The PCB can be powered in three different ways depending on personal preference (well, four including the esprog interface). There are footprints for normal [eBay] and vertical [eBay] mini USB connectors, depending on if the module is to stand on a table or hang from a wall (Eagle parts available on Github). In addition there is a 0.1″ header for power. All power paths are protected by the diode.
2.2″ version without touch
2.4″ version with touch
Further update Aug 28th. I see some 20+ orders on DirtyPCBs for both Commadorable 64 variants which is great fun and I would really love to hear what you will build. I have some recommendations you might find useful. I have received a few broken ESP-12e/f modules on eBay over time and one broken ILI9341 module. Because of that I always try the modules before soldering them using my Esparducam board with the ESP Pinlet add on board. When a module passes testing I flash it with the ESP Open RTOS OTA basic demo meaning I can OTA any device directly after soldering. Also, you will note there is no FTDI connector on these boards, the reason is described here. As UART output is still useful, I have one “development” variant with leads from an FTDI connector soldered to the GND/RXI/TXO esprog pads. Oh, and I also have one Commadorable 64 board with a female header for testing the ILI9341 modules before soldering them. If you have any questions about building the boards, sound off in the comments below.
The ESP8266 has taken the maker community by storm and the hype is well deserved. Before the ESP we had the HopeRF ISM radio RFM12 and its successor RFM69. So is the ESP8266 an RFM69 killer? I would say no. Hell no even 🙂 The RFM69 is still very well suited for certain applications and the ESP8266 will not run for 2+ years on a set of AA batteries. The two can however play nicely together as a low cost ISM/wifi bridge. I did a custom PCB for this in the shape of a somewhat large USB stick, dubbed “Espism”.
Espism, ESP side
Espism, RFM side
Espism, Eagle view
Currently it works as an ISM sniffer posting the received packets on the MQTT topic espism-<macaddr>. Packets are posted in hex followed by the RSSI value:
espism-5ccf7f147cd Hello from 172.16.3.120
espism-5ccf7f147cd 016340630001000000c375b642[-27]
espism-5ccf7f147cd 630180[-57]
A set of four LEDs indicate received packets. Well three LEDs as I made a mistake on the ground plane. The MQTT server IP and RFM69 network information is hard coded into the binary.
I ported Andreas Heßling’s STM32 RFM driver to the lovely ESP Open RTOS, my swiss army knife for ESP8266 development. The type-A right angle 90 degreee USB connector and 3x6x2.5mm push button can be found for little money on eBay. The push button currently serves no purpose but the plan is to perform a “master reset” of the device using this button. The rest of the BOM consists of 0603 resistors and capacitors, an LM1117 3.3V regulator and a SOT23 P-mosfet for driving the 0603 LEDs. Oh, and the ESP12F talking to an RFM69CW. The BOM should add up to about the price of lunch.
The FTDI connector can be found on just about any ESP8266 design. If you are building a gadget to be deployed somewhere and not a full blown development board, the FTDI connector is somewhat overkill. And it is quite large. A few pins could be shaved off but we still have a through hole connector invading the other side of the PCB.
I ended up designing my own connector and it has been used sucessfully in all of my recent projects. The connector consists of five test points providing power, GND, TXO, RXI and GPIO0 for boot control. It takes very little single sided PCB space and is inspired by the TagConnect I use at work. Note that the power provided through the connector is unregulated.
Esprog pogo pin connector
Gadget programming
Adapter, Eagle view
I also designed a pogo pin connector to mate the test points and a small board with a DC barrel connector and the FTDI connector. This board has two switches for power and boot mode selection.
If you look carefully on the pogo pin adapter you see that the power pin is somewhat retracted. As the adapter will be hand held, the four other pins can be aligned to the device and with a gentle push power will be applied.
News: the crowd sourcing campaign for the AAduino will start soon, sign up at CrowdSupply to be notified! The specs have been beefed with an STM32L0 cpu and the temperature sensor is now an industrial grade TMP102.
I have been using Nathan Chantrell’s Tiny328 for quite some time as my swiss army knife ISM radio node. Now I wanted a more slim ISM node as my setup with a Tiny328 on a breadboard is not very “deployable”. I could of course 3D print a case for the Tiny328 but I have limited access to 3D printers and do not feel I have the time to explore that exciting part of the maker world just yet. This leaves me with finding off the shelf project boxes with a compartment for 2x AA batteries and the “radioduino” (and in an acceptable form factor). That search came up disappointingly, and surprisingly, short. I did have a set of standard eBay AA battery holders and looking at the 3x variant it occured to me. I needed to shrink the radio node, and the AAduino was born.
Honey, I shrunk the radioduino!
The AAduino is an wireless Arduino clone the size of an AA battery with Keystone battery terminals rotated 180° to act as positive and negative terminals. It is powered by an ATMega328p and is fitted with an RFM69C companion. There is room for two DS18B20 temperature sensors and an indicator LED.
I still think it looks a bit weird 🙂
It runs at 8Mhz to allow for greater life span since the CPU can run at a lower voltage. I have fused the 328 to brown out at 1.7V which is a bit out of spec at 8Mhz and slightly below what the RFM69C needs. Running at 4Mhz would be more suitable but I will see how well the node performs when the batteries are draining out.
AAduino, RFM69C side
Since the RFM69C is somewhat wider than an AA battery I used a file to make it slightly narrower. There is some room for that kind of modification without damaging the module. Update, the RFM69C will fit without modification. Next I clipped the legs of the DS18B20 until about 5mm remained and soldered it to the 3x pin header on the AAduino. I then drilled a hole in the battery box where the sensor can protrude and a small hole for the LED to shine through. The wire out of the battery box was cut, shorted and stuffed away inside the box.
AAduino inside 3xAA box
I use battery terminals from Keystone available from RS Components, positive and negative. There seems to be a cheap eBay alternative but I have not tested those. The + and – markings on the PCB indicates (this is important, read carefully) the positive and negative poles of the battery we are pretending the AAduino is. The Keystone spring contact should be soldered to the + marking and the button contact to the – marking. There is no protection diode here so be careful. Also note! If you want to power the AAduino from a bench power supply, connect the power supply’s black negative lead to the + marking and the red positive lead to the – marking.
The 3xAA boxes are also from eBay and there seem to be two different types. One that is really good and one that is really crappy. I will let you in on the secret of buying the correct one. The good ones have a nice build quality and plastics and look like this. Note the rectangular piece of plastic below the battery compartment extending from side to side.
Good 3xAA holder
Looking at the crappy ones, well you can tell can’t you? In the top left corner it seems someone used a soldering iron on the poor thing. The lid does not snap in place very well and the plastics is really cheap.
I have had some questions about the possibility to purchase Esparducam boards and also about the bill of material. While I am looking into selling spare boards, here are some instructions about building the boards. Here is the link to order the PCBs [dirtypcbs.com].
If you have never tried building surface mounted boards yourself I highly recommend you try it! I started here [nathan.chantrell.net] and googled my way from there.
The following parts are optional depending on what you want to do with your board:
Reverse current protection
D1 SOD-123FL, schottky diode for reverse current protection [eBay],
If you feel brave you can bypass the diode by placing a blob of solder across SJ2 on the back of the board.
Adding motion detection
If you want to attach a PIR [eBay] you need:
J2 JST ZH connector, 3 pin [eBay]
R6 220k 0603
R7 100k 0603
R6 and R7 was going to be a voltage divider that I messed up leaving R7 optional. Please note that the PIR does not work at 3.3V. To bypass this without adding a 5V regulator I simply feed the PIR with the raw board voltage which in my case is 5V.
Controlling power to the Arducam Mini
If you want to be able to control the power to the Arducam Mini board you need Q2 and R5. If you feel ok to have power constantly enabled simple place a blob of solder across SJ1 at the back of the board.
Q2 P mosfet, SOT-23 [eBay]
R5 4k7 0605
External flash
The external SPI flash is also optional. Please note that the footprint is somewhat too narrow, some flashes might not fit.
U2 SPI flash SOIC-8
C5 0.1uF 0603
Adding header pins
These optional headers are for attaching add-on boards or pins for taking measurements
JP3, JP6 8 pin 2.54mm male header
JP4,JP5 8 pin 2.54mm female header
Sometime ago I came across the Arducam Mini which is quite a nice camera module from UCTronics. It is a small PCB with a two megapixel OmniVision OV2640 sensor, an interchangeable lens and an FPGA to do the heavy lifting of image processing and JPEG encoding. Priced at around 24 Euros (lens included) you can easily buy a few without hurting your wallet and combined with an ESP8266 you can build quite a low cost wifi camera. Or several. Because designing and building PCBs is both fun and inexpensive I designed a board to go with the ESP8266/Arducam Mini combo, aptly named the Esparducam. And uniquely named too, try googeling for “esparducam“. Heck, even the domain name is available at the time of writing 🙂
The Espaducam board
Anyhow. The Esparducam board is a development board for the Arducam Mini module and is quite well suited for ESP8266 development in general.
Espaducam with Arducam Mini module
The board is powered through a barrel connector at a minimum of 5V (upper limit untested) and all the IO pins on the ESP8266 are available on pin headers. The double rows are intended for the design of small breakout boards that sit on the inner 0.1″ aligned headers while the outer headers allow for connecting logic analyzers/oscilloscopes and so on. The Arducam Mini module plugs right into the front header and the standard FTDI connector is at the back of the board.
Image quality is, imho, quite decent at this price point, here are a few samples.
Included lens, 640×480
3.2mm lens, 640×480
3.2mm lens, 1600×1200
An optional SPI flash can be mounted for image storage and you can connect a standard eBay PIR module to the white JST header next to the FTDI connector if you want to build a motion triggered camera.
I am no hardware engineer but if you are and you find any silly design mistakes please let me know.
Schematics
You can order the Esparducam board form DirtyPBCs and I would love to know if you build one. I plan to build a few for house monitoring, kite photography, reading my water meter and whatever else I can come up with.
The demo application listens to port 80 for HTTP GETs and will capture and return an image. It also has a command line interface on the serial port and the command ‘upload:<ip number>’ will capture an image and upload it via HTTP. A Python script is included that will receive and display the image using your system’s default image viewer. Note that the demo application is just that, a demo application. It does not handle simultaneous clients, errors or anything else that occurs in the real world.
Lastly a note about the lens. It uses a mount called M12xP0.5 and there are plenty of lenses to choose between. The one included with the Arducam Mini module has about the same field of view as a normal 50mm lens on a full frame DSLR. I would recommend getting a 3.2mm lens or shorter for some more wide angle if you plan to use the module for surveillance applications. The 3.2mm lens (called LS-40136) can focus at a very short distance making it a candidate for water meter reading applications.
I have yet to try the even shorter ones like the LS-20150 at 2.8mm or the LS-40166 at 2.6mm.
The Esparducam turned out so nice it became my preferred ESP8266 development board, why is a different post.
This is followup to my post about building a low cost wifi camera. I mentioned that the Esparducam board is well suited for ESP8266 development in general and here is why. In addition to the Esparducam board I also designed a number of addon boards. The boards are very small (21×26 mm) meaning you can fit two of them into a standard 50×50 mm PCB you can get produced for very little money. If you want to try a new component or connector and perhaps a newly designed footprint, make a “boardlet” and try it on the Esparducam.
The RFM69C breakout board
The “ISM boardlet” mounts an RFM96C for building a low cost ISM to Wifi gateway. The board has an optional LED (driven by a mosfet) for link indication. I ported André Heßling’s RFM69-STM32 driver for this board and even though I have not had the time to test that much, basic transmission works.
The ESP Pinlet
The next board, the esp-pinlet, serves as a test bench for ESP12 family modules. After soldering an ESP12e module to an Esparducam board I noticed it would not connect to my Wifi network. For the price of ESP8266 modules, I cannot complain about broken modules but I want to make sure the modules I mount on my boards actually work before soldering. So how do we test ESP12 modules without soldering? Pogo pins! The pinlet board has 1.02mm (40 mil) holes for pogo pins that allows for an ESP12 module to be firmly pressed against the pins while flashed and tested. You can find these on eBay.
Th pogo pins I used initially where not that good as the needle like shape made them get stuck in some of the ESP12 modules. A much better alternative is the P75-E2 [eBay] type of pin (still 1.02mm / 40mil):
P75-E2 pins
If you plan on building a pinlet board, make use of the fact that you get ~10 in each order to help with alignment.
Pin alignment
The stack here (top to bottom) is the board having the pins mounted, a spacer board (the red one), five pinlet boards for alignment and at the bottom one board flipped upside down to keep the pins from sliding downwards. The package is fixed with tape and ready for solder.
Having spent some time building the Wifi Ghost I wanted it to be something that was actually used. Few people in the house found the interest to change color on a daily basis (myself included). Then it occured to me, why not let the pilots of the aircrafts buzzing around the airspace of southern Sweden control it? They will probably never know that by passing within a few kilometers of my ADS-B receiver they will light up my study.
This will be a small project as most parts are already in place. The ADS-B tracker from my Skygrazer project will feed a script that sets the ghost color via its MQTT topic. What color though? Well, the most prominent color in the airlines’s logo of course! Make a Bing image search for the name of the airline with the word “logo” appended, pick an image, download and analyze. The color will be dimmed according to the distance to the aircraft. I use a maximum distance of 2 kilometers making the light fade up and down whenever an aircraft passes near my house.
The result? A wifi ghost light put to good use. And art 🙂
