NodeMcu is a Lua interpreter with a good set of support libraries for the far-too-cheap ESP8266. I’m impressed with how easy it is to script up a Wifi connected thermometer using a DS18B20 1-wire thermometer, MQTT for publishing, and Wifi to a OpenWRT router for the transport.
A while ago I posted about cutting the ACME Arietta boot time down from ~30 s to ~4 s. Here’s the hacks I did to get there. After the kernel has finished initialising it runs ‘init’ which is responsible for setting up the system and starting any services.
I’m having fun with my Olimex ESP8266 dev board. For ~5 Euro you get a 80 MHz processor, built in Wifi, a bunch of I/O, and “IoT” style libraries with a RTOS.
I’m using golang as the language for my self balancing robot project. It should be interesting as golang is designed for server loads, not for realtime, but the bot will need to update at 100 Hz (10 ms/cycle) to say upright.
I’m working on a self balancing robot as a coming-into-winter-something-inside-sounds-good project. Today I got it driving about: not balancing, not smart, but still a good milestone. It’s been a lot of fun due to the different tech involved.
I’m quite enjoying my Multiplex Dogfighter. I just fitted a new spinner and mount to replace the one chipped in a crash, and it’s smooth and quiet again at full throttle.
After a night of hacking I have the cutest console ever: fbcon on my Arietta G25 showing on a 84×48 Nokia 3310 LCD thanks to fbtft. The nice thing is it’s tiny enough to fit on my RC car but shows as a standard framebuffer so will work with everything.
Short story: my Arietta G25 now boots to prompt in 3.9 s instead of the stock 50.7 s. Nice. I had a hack about with reducing the boot time of the Arietta G25 ARM9 based Linux board.
I picked up two Acme Systems Arietta G25‘s. They’re a tiny Atmel ARM9 powered board with most of the I/O out on a 0.1″ header. I hope to hook one up to a GPS to send up in my plane and record the track and speed.
Two good runs with my plane today, including a good looking flare out on the second landing. The plane pulled up, stalled, and correctly came down on its belly. The very first try was… unfortunate.