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• Added real time clock

  Enrico Gueli • 02/10/2021 at 18:23 • 0 comments

  Sometimes it would be nice to know what time it is while you're watching TV. Like when you're in lunch break while working from home and you have an upcoming meeting.
  

  Since the Speaker has four nice 7-segment displays, and can connect to Internet, why not adding a real time clock?

  First I introduced a mechanism for a "background text" to be displayed while no other important messages have to be displayed.

  Then I grabbed the TIme library (here's an example using NTP) and hooked it up to the rest of the system. And added a little logic to turn it off and on with a rarely-used button of the remote control.

  And there it is:

• Poor man's exception handling

  Enrico Gueli • 02/07/2021 at 11:29 • 0 comments

  Once a IR command is received, SpeakerIR will try to send a command to the speaker. When things go wrong, the display will show error messages like "Ev" or "Et". E means error, and the second letter referred to which action failed: "v" is volume change, "t" is TV input select and so on. But that doesn't tell why exactly did it fail :)

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• TM1637

  Enrico Gueli • 02/01/2021 at 18:16 • 0 comments

  As described in my last log, I decided to drop the MAX7219 and use the TM1637 LED driver instead. The reason is that it's a lot easier to find 4-digit seven-segment displays with this driver chip all in the same PCB, like this one from Robotdyn.

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• Farewell, old display from 2001

  Enrico Gueli • 01/30/2021 at 08:55 • 0 comments

  This project has (at least) one big shortcoming. But that same shortcoming was crucial to give me motivation to work on, and eventually complete, this project.
  

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• Fix top enclosure

  Enrico Gueli • 01/02/2021 at 15:29 • 0 comments

  I updated the top enclosure design.

  The hole for the USB port was a bit too much to the left, and it's now centered.

  The side walls were a bit too thin (0.90mm). I initially made them that thin to use some snap-fit. But it wasn't necessary in the end: the print tolerances make enough extra width in both top and bottom enclosure to make the necessary friction. With 1.80mm walls the case is now stronger, and it's much easier to remove the supports without breaking it.
  

• Power on the MusicCast device

  Enrico Gueli • 01/01/2021 at 20:50 • 0 comments

  Just merged a PR that also powers on the MusicCast device with the TV/Radio button.

  Can be fetched here: https://github.com/egueli/SamsungM7_IR/releases/tag/v1.0.1

  I'll also remove the old release's zipfile from this project; it feels like redundant work.
  

• Completed... ish

  Enrico Gueli • 12/31/2020 at 14:28 • 0 comments

  After months of (slow) development, the project is good enough for me to be used every day without hiccups, except a small software fix and another one in the enclosure that I'm printing right now. Will post updates soon.
  

  I'd love this project being used by others too. But I realize it may not be that easy. First, because I published this project here on Hackaday.io only yesterday and I still have to figure out a lot of things. Second, the firmware itself needs a few tweaks to be customized for an environment that's not like mine. A few things right off the bat:

  • When it starts, it looks for a MusicCast device called "Living Room" in the local network. Alas I couldn't tell to just pick up any device, because it uses "_spotify-connect._tcp.local" as a mDNS service name and many non-MusicCast devices may respond to that. You can change the device name in src/discovery.cpp.
  • The firmware assumes the TV is an LG, with its remote control sending specific IR codes. If you have a different model, you should change the IR codes in src/config.h. Which codes do you need? Open the serial console after the upload and watch for "[IR:xxxxxxxx]" text every time you press a button.
  • The minimum/maximum volume levels are hard-coded to 1 and 161, that's good for my Yamaha R-N602 amplifier. Yours may need different values. Again, they can be changed in src/config.h.
  • The firmware supports Samsung Multiroom and Yamaha MusicCast protocols, but only one at a time and it's configured for MusicCast at the moment. In src/config.h you can change that.

  That's all for now.

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