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Why I really made gCore

A project log for [OLD] gCore - For GUI-based gadgets

An ESP32-based controller board for the Adafruit 3.5" LCD featherwing display designed to serve as the base of portable gadgets.

dan-julioDan Julio 05/09/2020 at 19:430 Comments

I have been experimenting with the Flir Lepton 3.5 radiometric thermal imaging camera module for a couple of years now (documented here) with the end goal of making my own useful camera.  The Lepton 3.5 has a moderately intense interface and requires a fair bit of capability in the micro reading image data from it.  I had great success using the PRU co-processors in the Beaglebone family of linux SBCs but ultimately decided that the boot time of linux was too slow for a device I just wanted to power on and use immediately.  I found that ESP32 was capable enough and set about designing a board around it to use in a camera.  Along the way I figured that the board could also be used for other things and finally settled on the gCore design.

Finally, after writing the support code and documenting gCore I've had a chance to actually work on the camera.  At the moment the camera functions are complete.  I plan to add the ability to record images and videos and have a wifi-based interface for external control and viewing of the camera.  Files will have json content including the raw radiometric data and telemetry from the camera.  This allows me to generate images or perform thermal analysis on the image(s).

The Lepton can be rotated through a 90° angle using a couple of 3D printed mounts.  The camera also includes a Maxim/Dallas DS3232 RTC powered by the main LiPo batteries with its own ultra-low quiescent current LDO.  This chip also has 236 bytes of RAM used to store camera settings and parameters.

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