Smart Poi

Simple D1 mini Circuit

Although the Smart Poi is based on ESP-01 for size reasons, I find it easier to use the excellent D1 mini for testing. Here is the basic setup:

Notice that the D1 mini is powered from a battery source (4 x NiMH AA in series). This is not entirely necessary, you could get away with plugging in the D1 mini via USB, and connecting the APA102 strip to the 5v pin. The problem comes in when the LED strip starts drawing too much power, you will have dropouts in Wifi connectivity, or wdt resets and won’t know if it’s the code or just power.

Use the offline code from my Github repo to get started:

SmartPoiOffline code

This code works fine on other Arduinos as well as ESP8266 chips. Just change the pins.

 

Android for Africa!

Living in Africa is absolutely analagous to living in the old wild west sometimes. Just driving to work here can be a life threatening proposition some days. Protests, cash-in-transit heists, blown up ATM’s, hijackings and street beggars at every traffic light all threaten to disturb ones peace at any moment.

A bit like running Android on your phone really. That is unless you are up to date with the latest patched version. Which runs on precisely two devices as far as I am aware. The rest of us are left to make shift in yesterday’s abandoned OS graveyard, where the bad guys have their playground.

Privacy concerns? First world problems! Just be thankful that nobody screen captured your banking app today – while slowly cooking your phone casing with illicit cpu bitcoin mining cycles.

From a development perspective the OS is no better, a dictatorship with a fickle overlord. Time to change your code again, unpack and repack the activity car, it’s an API roadblock. Pay the play store compliance tax now or try your luck on the sideloading second economy, where your cloned apps beg at the same alternative app store intersection as you, with a flashy ad platform sign held high.

Gotta love Android. It’s the wild west out here. Android for Africa!

 

Smart Poi Emulators

Two emulators are featured here, the first takes all images in a folder and shows them in sequence, as they would look on the spinning poi:

 

The second program receives RGB values from serial connected poi chip and displays on screen. This is showing what is actually being sent out to the LED strip, useful for testing – I was getting a bit tired of spinning the poi whilst programming them and the Android transmitter app at the same time.

The image below is of the computer generated default offline patterns, but if wifi sent images are available it looks somewhat similar to the above. Colour is not yet optimized.

 

For the serial sending to work on the poi, a fairly large change in code is needed. The serial necessarily slows everything down drastically, so it’s for testing only.

Programming the ESP-01 using Arduino IDE – some notes

The ESP-01 are so cheap and versatile, you just have to use them. (Get one on Aliexpress for just $2 here: http://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/kNB84VvO) In the couple of years using these amazing cheap powerful chips, I have had my share of problems. Here are some big ones to avoid:

Problem: The programmer doesn’t work all the time.

Solution: Increase power. I use a cheap usb interface like this one: 

You can buy one on Aliexpress here: http://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/E7AiIOhw

First of all you need to know that you can’t just plug the ESP-01 module into the handy header socket and press upload on the Arduino IDE. You will get an error, as the ESP-01 needs to be put into programming mode. I did this by shorting the GPIO 0 and gnd with a wire. The ESP-01 still plugs in.

Now Arduino can upload! Unfortunately I was having intermittent “unable to upload” errors even after this hack, and a new batch of ESP’s from a different supplier barely worked at all. Something else had to be done. Adding a breadboard power supply did the trick, unfortunately with the addition of 7 wires and a breadboard, as well as an adapter for the ESP-01 and a switch to toggle programming mode…

*Update: you can ignore the above, nowadays I just click on upload and quickly unplug/re-plug the esp-01 (unplug the 8 pin header, not the usb!). Seems to do the trick!

Problem: Blink sketch says it’s uploaded but LED doesn’t blink.

Solution: After checking the pin numbering and seeing some possible related issues on a google search, I checked out the Arduino ESP8266 settings.

It turns out that all ESP-01 are not made equal. Most come with 1Mb flash but the type of flash (?) and the way it’s connected can vary. Hence the “flash mode” option. In my case, after extensive testing, DOUT was the correct choice. The LED blinks again.

Problem: After ESP8266 tool update, the dreaded WDT reset happens after a few minutes (time depends on what the program is doing)

Solution: After some testing I found it was a memory overflow causing the issue. This led me to refine the google search and finally I found a relevant bug on github, to do with LwIP (the wifi firmware?). Here is the setting in Arduino:

Changing to LwIP v1.4 Higher Bandwidth worked for me… It’s possible that this bug has been fixed by now, but I am sticking with the working version at the moment.

To summarize,  ESP-01 is a bit tricky to program, there are so many variables in programming it, however they are so small and cheap – and despite many mistakes I have yet to brick one of these. I guess it’s worth the hassle*.

*UPDATE: CHECK OUT MY SMARTPOI PROJECT, made with the ESP-01 and APA102 LED strip.

What it’s really like to be a developer

The long road to Smart Poi, visualized:

In order to make this video I used a program called gource. It takes your Git commits and creates an infographic video automatically. I modified the programmer avatar using the –default-user-image setting.  If you want to see something spectacular, check out the linux kernel gource!

k8 Clubs what are they and don’t they come with a remote already?

K8 prophecy clubs and balls come with their own remote, which controls all the colour settings. Why did I make another remote then?

 

Well, first of all, the clubs and balls may glow in the dark, but the remote certainly doesn’t*. The remote is very small and conveniently fits in a pocket, however it is virtually impossible to determine by feel which end is the business end. And by that I mean the end with the IR LED on, so that your hasty button presses actually have an effect… because as we all know, if you point the remote at the stereo, the tv will not change channels.

*Update: I wrote to K8 recently with regards to getting some new equipment, and it turns out their new remotes glow in the dark. They also have an awesome new record pattern function, to make changing colours easier. Can’t wait until I can afford the new K8’s!

Then there are the fiddly buttons, I have to admit my eyesight is not the best and I have broken too many pairs of expensive prescription glasses to hazard wearing them at my juggling gigs (juggling club to the face… it happens). So inevitably I end up squinting in low light trying to see which button does what, I quickly decided this was not the way I wanted my show to go.

Here is a shorter (low ceiling) version of my show running from an IR dongle, on a laptop, synchronized with some DMX lights via midi. Super complicated setup, I gave up on this after a couple of years of doing it. I needed an easier way…

Introducing the ONE button remote.

How does this work? One very prominent button, when held down will repeatedly send the correct signal for my equipment at the time I am pressing it. Once pressed, the program increments to the next required signal and that one is sent on the next button press.

One button, many signals. So now, in my show I occasionally hold up a remote and change the program on my IR juggling toys. I don’t need to be able to see the remote in order to do this, finding the remote takes no time (it’s tied to my homemade juggling equipment stand) and the button is big and can be found in the dark. Also the signal of MY remote is quite a bit boosted from the k8 version.

Here is an arduino sketch which demonstrates the principle (without the IR, I will share the k8 codes if anyone is interested).

EepromOnOffLedExample

Simply put, there is a number saved in EEPROM. Every time the Arduino boots up, the number is incremented, and saved again in EEPROM. The saved number corresponds to an IR signal. Thus a different signal each time. I make sure to loop the number back to 0 again of course at some point, otherwise the EEPROM register will overflow, blowing up the Arduino in the process I imagine 😛