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30-Oct-20 6:28

Yes, you plagiarised it from my first reply to Honey below.

Re: Feud for Thought

W∴ Balboos, GHB2-Nov-20 6:06

W∴ Balboos, GHB

2-Nov-20 6:06

Not plagiarized - but inspired by your post. The two near-words that make up copious just stood out all of a sudden.

If you like I'll update the post with inspired-by.

Ravings en masse^
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010

Re: Feud for Thought

Richard MacCutchan2-Nov-20 6:52

I am so proud of myself right now

2-Nov-20 6:52

My comment was posted with my tongue firmly in my cheek; no attribution necessary. Smile | :)

honey the codewitch30-Oct-20 5:53

30-Oct-20 5:53

I stayed up until 2:30am working on my father in law's pump monitor.

It turns out I had accidentally flashed the onboard wifi chip with bad microcode. Unsure | :~

To make matters worse, you can't just find a bin file and reflash it. No, you have to cross-compile the firmware sourcecode and *then* flash it. Dead | X|

To add to the complication, the firmware is different depending on how much RAM and EPROM you have and the board shipped with no instructions and doesn't say its configuration. The boards ship with different sizes of each.

Anyway, I finally got that done, and then I finally figured out how to monitor the hardware serial port #1 from my PC so I could get debug spew. That was a godsend!

Now I've got it doing everything it should - connecting to wifi, logging in and sending UDP packets every half second to a fixed IP address based on the state of 3 digital input pins.

What's left is to basically drive some switches carrying 3.3volt DC, flipped by their 120volt ac inputs using a dry relay setup, and then testing to make sure the client software works on windows, not just linux.

Woot. I'm very nearly done with this little monster.

The thing that gets me is I have no idea how I managed to pull this off with no instructions. Even just installing the toolchain to compile the firmware was a nightmare.

I'm excited.

If anyone wants to know how to build and flash firmware for an Arduino Mega with an onboard ESP8266 wifi chip, I'm your monster!

Real programmers use butterflies

Greg Utas30-Oct-20 6:05

Greg Utas

30-Oct-20 6:05

Sounds like you're have a fun time through all the suffering. I wouldn't even know where to start! Laugh | :laugh:

Robust Services Core | Software Techniques for Lemmings | Articles
The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.

honey the codewitch30-Oct-20 6:27

30-Oct-20 6:27

I didn't know where to start either. That's how I almost bricked my wifi chip! Laugh | :laugh:

Real programmers use butterflies

Richard MacCutchan30-Oct-20 6:08

30-Oct-20 6:08

I hope you made copious notes, as we are all looking forward to reading the article.

honey the codewitch30-Oct-20 6:24

30-Oct-20 6:24

I'm not going to cover reflashing the firmware because it's different on every device. That's what makes it so complicated. My way works for a robodyn board clone with a particular esp8266 configuration of(32Mbit/1024x1024) in terms of memory, and flash sizes. The odds most everyone having that same thing aren't very good, and if they did it wouldn't be this board, which isn't the most popular. I may write an article about that portion in the future.

That said, you don't need to flash the "AT" firmware to the 8266 if you don't muck it up in the first place like I did. They come out of the box with that firmware.

I will cover installing the WifiEsp package using the Arduino IDE, and wiring up the Arduino Mega style board to the pump circuits using relays.

I'll also cover the client software.

It may be a bit before I can produce an article as we still have to purchase the outdoor wifi repeater(s) to get the signal down to the pumphouse, and get the 3 relays to make it work

Real programmers use butterflies

Richard MacCutchan30-Oct-20 6:27

30-Oct-20 6:27

My comment was half in jest, but I am sure any article on what you have done will be welcome.

Randor 30-Oct-20 7:11

Randor

30-Oct-20 7:11

honey the codewitch wrote:
What's left is to basically drive some switches carrying 3.3volt DC

You could use a single 18650 cell and get over a year with just one battery. With a small power bank you could probably get 3-5 years.

ESP8266 - 1+ Year 18650 battery lifetime - Qball's Weblog[^]

honey the codewitch30-Oct-20 7:14

30-Oct-20 7:14

I have unlimited 120vac power right there. My biggest problem is going from 110-120VAC to <5 DC.

Here's the deal: There are existing circuits in the pumphouse that report the status using a series of standard incandescent lights. They are all 120vac. What I'm going to do is tap the power to those lights and use them to drive some relay coils. The associated relay switches will be wired into the arduino. Easy peasy, because I don't care much about contact bounce or anything.

Real programmers use butterflies