New #meshcore tools arrived 😅
Amar Kulo
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#Sysadmin, programmer, Irget, gym rat💪🏻. Proud 🇧🇦in 🇸🇪. Operations manager & Security Manager @ Viskan System AB. Love gadgets, tech, #hackintosh, #electronics, #DIY, #tinkering, #security, #homelab, #infosec, #electronics, #3dprinting, #fishing, #climbing. Adrenaline junkie. Jajdza²!
So now, when I have my #meshcore ESP32 bridge for SenseCAP POC working as it should, it was time to tackle the ESP32 power hunger issue that also @selea pointed out.
As I can't run deep sleep, and even light sleep behaves almost the same, killing Wi-Fi, etc. I did the next best thing. Downclocked CPU freq to 80MHz and lowered chatter to the bare minimum.
This resulted in 4-5x improvements directly.
Here are some pictures before and after, but before ESP32 was sitting around 0.1-0.2A and CPU was around 60-65C. After the fixes, the CPU is under 50C, and power draw is between 0.035 and 0.042A. I am happy with this, so I will run it outside for some time to see how it works.
So I did a thing.
I bought a Seeed Studio SenseCAP Solar node to have as my #meshcore repeater. While it works ok as a repeater, I still wanted something it didn't have, and that was #mqtt to connect it to an MQTT broker.
SenseCAP had one feature that I didn't need: GPS, and didn't have one that I did need: Wi-Fi and something to run MQTT from, but that also meant that I could remove the GPS module and reuse GPIOs from it.
After some playing with firmware and testing, I managed to recompile the meshcore firmware (or applications, as they call them)) to output all packages to the UART (the serial port for us who still remember it). GPS module has been removed and replaced by an ESP32-S3-Zero, which was reprogrammed with MicroPython.
All in all, it works perfectly. Now we will see how much solar can charge and how much the batteries hold, and so far I am happy with the results. Everything still fits in the same box and is waterproof, making it still suitable for mounting outside.
Next project is to increase output to 1W and place it as high as possible to reach other repeaters.
To be continued.
P.S. I still blame @selea for showing me this and pulling me into this rabbit hole :D
I blame exclusively @selea for this new #meshcore rabbit hole I’m in. I take no responsibility whatsoever for it!
This is the kind of pettiness that I hate with Apple. Here is USB-C port, but it's only USB 2 port behind. In 2026. Same as they did with iPhone
RE: https://mstdn.social/@990000/115993630141888644
Imagine using reminders or tasks or calendar or anything for this, just imagine
