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• So I didn't do anything these past 2 days...

  venomboss985 • 04/11/2022 at 05:22 • 0 comments

  Ok ok ok... but here me out, right? I just got a couple of great ideas that I'm going to make hopefully within the week if I don't get sidetracked again, alright? So just bare with me on this one...

  Ideas I had:

  • Scrap everything except the main bits (Feather board, display, battery, piezo, switch)
    • The main reason for this is due to things being 1) out of stock, but really because 2) I had too many things I wanted to do and if I ordered the parts, tried to prototype, etc. etc... I would forever be prototyping and things would never get done
  • Use an ATtiny85 as an RTC (RTC85) and use the internal file system in the Feather as the SD card replacement and have a dumpInfo() function or something when it's wired to a computer
    • This does a few things for me:
      1. Cuts down on costs and time (since I already have ATtiny85's on hand)
      2. A cheap workaround for an RTC
      3. Allows me to do a lot of other stuff like have a modular component to the project
  • Use the unregulated voltage from battery into the RTC85 (it'll probably fine, right?) to always have power

  That last one definitely needs a little bit of work and the other ones require a lot of testing before actually deciding to put it in the final project. We'll see in the next devlog.

  Thanks for reading,

  - VenomAI

• Significant progress (probably)

  venomboss985 • 04/09/2022 at 07:36 • 0 comments

  As the title may suggest, I'm not entirely sure how much progress I actually made for this project, but it's progress nonetheless. I'll let you be the judge of that, so let's jump right into the report.

  Over the past couple of days, I have:

  • Set up 'thread based operating system'
  • Set up Bluetooth
    • Run in threads
    • Get current time from phone
    • System runs independently from connection status
  • Set up battery status
    • Run in threads
    • Get current voltage level and print (as voltage or percent) every 10 seconds
    • Get charging status and turn on/off LED_BUILTIN accordingly
  • Tested threading with a slow display
    • Once display finishes updating, system will 'catch up', before then, everything is 'paused'
  • Created an app cycler with a button and signal edge detector (had to look up what it was called)
  • Created 3 separate 'apps'
    1. Home Screen
       1. Prints current time through serial console
    2. Weather App
       1. Prints temperature, pressure, altitude, humidity, and magnetometer data to serial console
    3. Music App
       1. A simple script that plays a preloaded song (Song of Storms)
       2. Song can be looped by setting a jumper to a positive voltage or finish the song by setting a jumper to ground
       3. Song can be stopped (mid song) by setting a different jumper to a positive voltage

  Some things I attempted to get working, but was unsuccessful were:

  • Creating a working compass (a long standing problem of mine)
  • Accelerometer and gyroscope data (I'll get it working tomorrow maybe)
  • Calibrating magnetometer and gyroscope (not entirely sure what I'm doing lmao)

  Lastly, things I'll be doing tomorrow (if I don't get sidetracked):

  • Notifications? (with ANCS)
  • Clean up code a little bit
  • Test a few more things before deciding to switch to using SPI for display
  • Project page update for Hackaday and Trello
    • Clean things up a bit
    • Make things a little more consistent across platforms
    • Add photos and videos of project so far
  • Make a YT video?
  • Stream progress tomorrow on Twitch?

  Other than the calibration of the magnetometer and gyroscope, learning Bluetooth programming, and the compass portion of the project, things are looking pretty smooth so far. Those are really the only speedbumps (as of this post) I'm facing currently. Especially the calibration of the magnetometer and gyroscope. I can't tell if I'm not finding the right resources or if I'm just implementing it wrong or something (probably a combination of both), but who knows, maybe some day in the future, I'll look back on these logs and laugh as it was just a simple thing I had not done yet. Same thing with Bluetooth, I just use the Adafruit learning guides, but don't really learn what these functions do other than the most vague of ideas.

  I'm sure some of you out there are much smarter than me and have figured this stuff out already; in which case, please do let me know of any tips or tricks you may have for this kind of stuff, it is always appreciated as this is my first 'real' project. Alternatively, if you have any questions or comments on this project, let me know in the public chat! Until next post...

  Thanks for reading,

  - VenomAI

• And so it begins...

  venomboss985 • 04/08/2022 at 08:41 • 0 comments

  Technically, it began in October of 2021 when I planned out and ordered the parts for this project, but decided a complete rewrite, rewire, and redo was a much needed thing for this project to be somewhat feasible to finish. I started the rewrite yesterday by setting up a Trello board for the project. This would allow people to see active progress updates to the project without me having to write in here everyday (as fun as this is, it's much faster to drag and drop and type incomplete sentences). As far as this devlog goes, this wasn't really planned out to say anything in particular other than to say this is the official start of the project, there is a Trello board available to look at, and everything will hopefully be polished up within the coming week.

  I have nothing else really to say, so thank you all for looking at my project. If you have any questions or comments, let me know in the public chat section and I'll be sure to read and reply to the best of my abilities.

  Thanks,

  - VenomAI

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