Mastodawn

Pete Keen Dec 17, 2024

@codeofamor have you decided on a speaker setup yet or still prototyping?

@zrail Doing what I always do. Reusing and upcycling what I have harvested or is not otherwise engaged elsewhere. I have for this project: two almost fully functional $700 when brand new (12 years ago) Bose SoundDocks, a Logitech 2.1 sound system speaker set, an altech-Lansing 5.1 surround set that needs the power source ripped out, a Bose driver from a accoustimas module, a JBL Clip 2 in pieces, 2 x 2x30W amp modules (cheap but damn they're decent and loud), a heap of I2S stereo, and I2S mono boards for both input and output, and quite a few other myriad bits and pieces. So yeah, I'd say decided. 🤣

@zrail (off the top of my head that is)

Pete Keen Dec 17, 2024

@codeofamor that sounds like a) a ton of fun and b) a very deep parts bin. Love it!

@zrail out of necessity, and self-care for my hands, my bins are not so much deep (yowch) as wide, and multitudinous. 😁

@codeofamor Which I2S chip are you using? I have a setup using a PCM5102A which provides an unamplified output, then I just plug in some amplified computer speakers. It's been working well enough that I committed it to a circuit board, I'm just waiting for those boards to be delivered now.

@Shdwdrgn lol yup! the PCM5102A is the stereo out from I2S that I'm using. Ridiculously cheap from Ali.

@Shdwdrgn side note: I usually commit my stuff to self-etched boards but I haven't been well enough and organised enough to do it for a year or two now. I moved into my own space early last year and I added smart climate control - I have literal breadboards in 3 places in my home still. It's borderline shameful (if I wasn't unwell).

@codeofamor I've been getting boards from PCBway. I usually have a few to make for each order so it saves a lot on shipping, but to me the best thing is they can create boards suitable for surface mount components which is something I could never do. Eventually I want to try building a custom board with the D4 Pico chip but for now I've just been using header strips to connect existing modules (I do a lot with the ESP8266 and ESP32 versions of the D1 mini).

@Shdwdrgn Oh I ADORE SMD tech. It saves me a shit load of drilling. Ever since I moved to hand-soldering SMDs, I only use THT for prototyping. With my gradually refined (over many years of day in and day out work on it) process, I can comfortably make boards down to ... was it 0.2mm precision? I think so. I haven't been up to doing it for 2 years. Health crap. I had a lot of time and no money so I made everything from scratch including tools, tank, etc.
I started a long time ago, after manual gates and such, with using Arduino, then atmega chips and attiny chips, back when you could score huge hauls by joining sample programs. I still have unused samples. When the ESP8266 chip/modules came out, the step up in everything (except the low level register programming I enjoyed, and the extremely precise multiple free running ADCs) were a no-brainer.
Funnily enough, the last serious prototype I was working on two years ago was called the VASPER. A carefully designed and thoroughly tested bridge between one ESP8266/ESP12-E module and one Atmega528 chip. With naked mesh networking, and all the boons of the ESP tech, and all the Swiss clock precision of the atmega device. The bridge was clocked at the fastest possible rate between the two using SPI around CLK/2, parallel transfers.
Um... so that's one tip of my iceberg collection for you. Nice to meet you!

@codeofamor Well nice to meet you too, and yeah, that iceberg runs deep! 😉

I think the last time I made my own PCB, the C64 was one of the top computers and you could buy a bottle of etchant from Radio Shack. I briefly played with arduinos until I realized just how powerful the ESP8266 chips were. I'm still using several for weather data collection. My other (PCB) project is model trains, building sensor input boards, piping the data to the servers and displaying the live info on a web page, then feeding back to directly run the locos. All these little chips just blow me away, we had nothing like this when I was a kid!

So do you have any posts on the climate control stuff? Some day I want to grab an ePaper touch display to replace our thermostat, but that might be the limit of what I can do without rebuilding all the vents.

@Shdwdrgn I don't! My debut on Mastodon is a far more recent achievement. I had a good reason to leave them as breadboards for perhaps 6 months to a year (I had no idea what kind of sensors I might want to expand with), and in that time I have added and removed a bunch of things to arrive at a bare minimum for now. I'll snap a pic and send at some point. If you haven't played with ESPHome already, you should totally check it out (as well as HomeAssistant) - thanks to those two projects, I haven't written custom firmware in years (not a great thing - but neither have I been in condition to, so it works out). You'll need a Chromium/Chrome-based browser. The simplicity of it blew my mind.
The trains thing sounds fascinating. I can never get myself to sit still on any one hobby and I kind of admire those who can invest their time to a focal point that isn't a short-term project. The longest I did was 18 months on a single project of my own... but I do come back to them and such... and I'm rambling.
I saw cheap ePaper displays on Ali today too. I think you'd be able to replace your thermostat with much of the same of what I do. It's not the heat/cool control that you really need lots of attention with - it's the thermostat, and the data and algorithms that control it.

@codeofamor I tried using ESPhome at one point for my weather station data, but it just didn't do what I needed. Maybe some day I'll poke at it again for other projects.

Oh nobody said anything about sitting still! It's something I get back to every couple of years, but once we get through the holiday I want to make a big push towards trying to get stuff wired up this Winter. My goal is using the sensors to write software for intelligent control of the trains... could be cool if I ever get to it!

@Shdwdrgn So many projects competing for my limited attention span and time. All the time. 😁

@codeofamor Sleep is so overrated, and such a waste of valuable time. Plus that whole pesky "work" thing keeps interrupting me...

@Shdwdrgn I live in a strange unenviable situation of being now incapable of the latter and unstable in the former. While I have more time than many available, it isn't always mine to use freely.

@codeofamor Oof that doesn't sound good. It would be nice if we could eliminate sleep without all the pesky side-effects. I'm just looking forward to retiring in another decade so I have more "me" time.

@Shdwdrgn Remind me to show you a sample of the indoor climate data (via both mentioned tools) I used to more than halve my energy bill.

@codeofamor @Shdwdrgn broadly speaking, what does that entail?

(I have a pinned post describing my current setup)

@GuillaumeRossolini @codeofamor Basically the furnace wires can go to simple relays to activate the furnace, AC, and the blower motor. Then if you have sensors in other places around the house, you can get an average temperature rather than a single point. And a humidity sensor lets you adjust more for comfort than a fixed temperature setting.

One thing I found that really helps, though, is simply running the blower 24/7 to keep the air moving around. I think my furnace only runs half as often now.

@GuillaumeRossolini @Shdwdrgn Here are a couple of quick screencaps from some of the sensors on my climate nodes. What I have found over time is this: the more things that are observed, the more obvious patterns become. The more obvious patterns become, the easier they can be adjusted and optimised. In addition to these metrics, I monitor others, which I don't have at the moment due to a change in power monitoring that I have yet to adjust. It used to track the heating status as well as power used daily. Combining these helped me to adjust thermostat logic until the heating cut in only precisely when it was needed. There are many ways to do this. PID is but one approach. Though it is industry standard. I also incorporate PIRs/Human presence detection in each of my nodes to help me gather data about my stay in different locations in the apartment. They will also play a role in an upcoming attempt to improve my balanced control of computer break-taking.

@codeofamor @Shdwdrgn it looks incredibly reliable!

I’d love to have measurements so precisely equivalent between rooms, but I guess with an old home that’s just how it is

@codeofamor @Shdwdrgn

This is how it looked at the time I set it up
https://infosec.exchange/@GuillaumeRossolini/113227999879395134

And attached here was this weekend. I tend to lose nodes over time (I have 3 today) 🤷‍♀️

Guillaume Rossolini (@[email protected])

Attached: 1 image Today I soldered a few more of my custom air quality thingies, flashed them with the exact same program as the other ones, gave them a USB adapter and plugged them in their own spot in the house They automatically found their path in the mesh, then they started sharing and recording their readings, which automatically appeared in my dashboard, and all I had to do was rename them there In the picture, the number in the parentheses is the number of readings for the day (more or less one per minute) and all bars and lines represent average readings for the day; I have one graph per room to get the timelines Humidity and temperature are on the left axis, all the other are on the right axis (Looks like the one in the bedroom crashed again) The one in the attic is missing however long it took me to solder the new things, since that’s the one I unplugged to use as a template #electronics #bme680 #esp8266

Infosec Exchange

@codeofamor @Shdwdrgn I used to want this system for the same break-scheduling reason, and then I noticed how reliable my chosen components were 🤪

@GuillaumeRossolini @Shdwdrgn Break scheduling is one of my future uses for my hardware. 😊

@GuillaumeRossolini @Shdwdrgn Is this a custom chart written with Charts.js? It looks good.

@codeofamor @Shdwdrgn yes! Exactly

And thanks 🥹

Guillaume Rossolini Mar 9, 2025

@codeofamor @Shdwdrgn in case you’re curious, I finally pushed the code and some documentation

https://github.com/GuillaumeRossolini/griotte

GitHub - GuillaumeRossolini/griotte: GR IoT

GR IoT. Contribute to GuillaumeRossolini/griotte development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub

Shdwdrgn Mar 9, 2025

@GuillaumeRossolini @codeofamor Nice! I'll check through it later tonight.

Unfortunately I had to put aside my ideas of air quality testing until Trump gives up on this stupid idea of tariffs. I don't even trust ordering some new circuit boards from PCBway until things calm down. 😦

@GuillaumeRossolini @Shdwdrgn Old home, more nodes, slightly more complicated logic, but it should be easily achievable with the right selection of components, firmware, and software.

@codeofamor @Shdwdrgn it’s ok that each room has its own trend, they don’t all have direct ventilation or an open door policy

@Shdwdrgn @codeofamor is that e-paper or e-ink? 😆

J/k

@GuillaumeRossolini @codeofamor Uh... maybe? I dunno, who can keep up? 😁 I've seen three-color displays available, just have to combine it with a touch sensor and use something more energy-efficient than a relay (my thermostat doesn't have any power going to it so I'll have to continue running from batteries).

@Shdwdrgn @codeofamor my latest understanding is, e-ink is the one that retains a pattern after power off, while e-paper simply has a papery feeling to it but is a classic display (and probably counts as a buzz word)

@GuillaumeRossolini @Shdwdrgn Slight correction: ePaper is the technology in general that retains image without power using painted, polarised, nodules. eInk is a trademarked version of the technology reserved by Amazon. That's it.

@codeofamor @GuillaumeRossolini This discussion has me looking over displays again... There's a nice 5.83" red/black/white ePaper display that requires a waveshare interface -- but there are ESP32 waveshare interface boards available so it sounds like a good match? I would still need a touchscreen overlay though.

@Shdwdrgn @GuillaumeRossolini I would get a combined touch interface. Be sure you absolutely need ePaper for the job because LCD touch screens are quite cheap.

@codeofamor @Shdwdrgn really? Because I’ve seen screens marketed as e-paper that are full screen and 60 fps, but maybe that’s just an e-paper VS ePaper thing and I didn’t notice

@GuillaumeRossolini @Shdwdrgn So much is marketing hype. Ugh. I hate it.

@GuillaumeRossolini @codeofamor The subject is further confused by all the vendors selling "E-Ink electronic paper display"... OK so which one is it???

@Shdwdrgn @GuillaumeRossolini Buzzwords being used to attract your searches

@codeofamor @GuillaumeRossolini The thing is I specifically WANT ePaper for the power saving. I had an idea that I could leech some power through the existing wires, maybe enough to keep a battery topped off, but that's still a big "maybe". If I have to run exclusively on battery power then an LCD screen simply wouldn't work.

@Shdwdrgn @GuillaumeRossolini Battery power for a household device makes no long term sense. I think that is the block you're trying to work around. Why does the thermostat for an obviously mains powered heating and ventilation device require batteries?

@codeofamor @GuillaumeRossolini The thermostat is located in a convenient location of the house where it's easy to reach, but unfortunately there are no nearby power outlets available. The original thermostat was a manual unit which required no power. The current device runs from batteries but it doesn't need to power radio transmitters like the ESP32. To get direct power here I would need to staple a wire down the wall and into another room.

@Shdwdrgn @GuillaumeRossolini Okay. Fair. I've always been a fan of running wires although it does take extra crawlspace effort. So it's there because of user interface position? Or control wires? Or both? I think I would likely need a clearer view of the entire situation to be able to give constructive input on angles going forwards. If there are existing control wires present, running a nice thick 12V or 5V carrying pair alongside them might be an option to mains.

@codeofamor @Shdwdrgn this is a fair point

At first for my project, I wanted to avoid drawing more power from the grid, as tiny as the change would be, it was a thought exercise about the principle of it

Eventually I realized how dangerous my custom thing could be, since I know little about power & batteries, and I’d likely cause overheating and fire

And I do have outlets everywhere, so… USB dongle on mains it is for me!

I lost a year to this 😄

@GuillaumeRossolini @Shdwdrgn It is a process of evolution. Seeing as you avoided flames and destruction I would say you passed. It's not a loss if you come out on top and better for it.

@Shdwdrgn @GuillaumeRossolini I sometimes get caught in this loop - I get stuck down in a detail because of previous conclusions. Sometimes I need to stop and ask myself why. Okay. More than sometimes.

@codeofamor @GuillaumeRossolini Sure, but this is why I'm wondering if any power can be leeched from the existing wiring. Like does the fan control wire have a significant amount of power flowing whenever the fan is turned on? I need to break out the meter to find out if there's anything I can work with.

@Shdwdrgn @GuillaumeRossolini Depends on the age and technology of the control tech. I would consider the trick of soldering wires that you want to run to the existing fan control wire (off, of course), in addition to a new fan control wire, and then just pulling them all through to the thermostat location using the current fan control wire. Depends on how it's been tied though.

@codeofamor @GuillaumeRossolini I would have to pull the whole wire down through the wall and floor into the basement, and if the attachment to the new wire comes apart then that means ripping the wall apart to repair it, and the wire comes out *behind* the furnace so I'd have to also disassemble that. That's not something I really want to take a chance with! Ideally some CAT5 wire would solve everything, which I have plenty of.

@Shdwdrgn @GuillaumeRossolini Sounds like a job for a tongue (what we use and have used for a long time here and in many houses - a super long hard plastic strip that we use to run cables up and down and across inside walls and cavities. We just tape them to it and work it through. It's a shit job but it only needs doing once, and always makes things better.

@Shdwdrgn @GuillaumeRossolini Alternately, you could simply repurpose the wires that are already in place. As long as there are three or more, you've got power, ground, and a serial control interface. Then you can work on a control conversion at the furnace side and a nice controller at the thermostat side. Even two wires would be enough, provided they aren't stupid thin, to run a wireless ESP32-based control panel. Provided your wifi signal is strong enough (or you use ESP32 bare mesh and enough nodes). But then, if you're going to transition to a full ESP32 wireless system, is there a point in having a physical control panel at all? Home Assistant combined with ESPHome (or not) allows me to have all non-automated controls on my phone.

Shdwdrgn Dec 18, 2024

@codeofamor @GuillaumeRossolini There's lots of possibilities if I want to get creative... But my wife has to be able to operate it too. 😁 Worse, I'm getting to the point where I have to consider what happens if I get too old and have to sell the house some day.

On the other hand, I also plan to set up an ESP to run the sprinkler system, so maybe I just need to go all-out.

Hmm I just thought of another possibility... there's a doorbell above the thermostat, although I'd have to go over a couple studs.

@Shdwdrgn @GuillaumeRossolini Now you're using the ol' noodle!🍜

@Shdwdrgn @GuillaumeRossolini Solid foundations are a good start for future projects. Use me to bounce stuff if you want!

Shdwdrgn Dec 18, 2024

@codeofamor @GuillaumeRossolini Oh sure, MORE projects... I still need to get the ESP32-based intercom put together (after I find the parts and schematics again). At this rate I'll never get to my trains this year!

@Shdwdrgn @GuillaumeRossolini So many open projects, so little time. This is the way of the genius tinkerer. One of my projects is a better project management system. lol.

@Shdwdrgn @codeofamor “this year”? It takes me weeks or months for each iteration