After last weeks email, this might not be quite so impressive!! I had big plans to get all those tasty add-on cards all routed and ready to order, but then I blinked, and it was Friday!!I spotted this post from SolarOS and it thought it was about time for me to get my CL-32-CAM add-on board soldered up and see what it can do Its a bit messy, and I wasnt really holding out much hope of it working first time. I used the SolarOS expansion app to try and hook up all the pins to the camera module and I was 2 pins short!!  Looking at my schematic, I had TWI_SCK and TWI_SDA linked to the i2c bus (they sound like SPI pins right??) but on the proper pinout for the camera module, they are listed as SIO_C and SIO_C, so that doesnt quite fit!!  Nilseuropa (Mr SolarOS) worked some magic to let the pins match with i2c and it actually pops up on an i2c scan!! So thats a working camera right?? WRONG!! if you scroll back up and compare the pin order (my pin numbers are reversed, but thats not the issue) you will see that one image has the data pins in the order of 0, 1, 4, 3 and the other has the data pins ordered 2, 1, 3, 0 !! Also my pins start after 2 empty pins, but the other diagram I found has the data pins starting straight from the edge!! There are also some other issues, but essentially the board is duff!! I think the best plan is to find some modules, and tweak my board to match those, rather than just relying on some random schematic on the internet!!I had mentioned last week that I had ordered the dev board for the potential new core MCU for the release version of CL-32. Well that dev board landed this week!!  There are so many pins!! Of course I had to give it a quick test!! So I installed the MounRiver Studio software to have a quick look at how that works. It is always a pain having to use random software to program a chip, but its normally the best way to get full access to all the tools!!I didnt get any further than loading in a bare bones project, and uploading that to the board, but I can already see that the IDE is much faster and cleaner than the MPLAB IDE for the AVR16EA32 chip I am currently usingI need to test to see if it can run from the battery voltage as I am doing now, and I also need to see if the chip is capable of reading its own supply voltage. If those both seem possible, then it could be a really great upgrade to the CL-32 core!! bumping from 8 to 32 bit, from 20 Mhz to 80 Mhz CPU clock, and possibly 10 extra pins to play with!! All this, and it might even end up being a tiny bit cheaper!!While I have not been all that productive, ByteWelder over in Tactility towers has been busy!! He has been working on getting Tactility playing nicely on monochrome screens  Tactillity is kinda more geared for fancy colour touchscreen devices. Using it on a non touch device adds navigation challenges, and the previous iterations of it didnt have the fancy uiIt is quite exciting to have multiple options for the device software. I could make the best hardware in the world, but without good software, it is basically garbage!! Each OS has its own strengths Tactility is great for beginners with its swish new interface and navigation, it super easy to get your CL-32 online and downloading apps without typing much more than your WiFi password SolarOS needs a bit more skill and you need to remember which commands you need to be typing to get things moving (although there is autocomplete and the help documentation is stellar!!) but if your the kind of person who wants to be connected onto a linux server via a LoRa/MeshCore connection, then you should feel right at home!! Meshtastic will get you straight onto the LoRa mesh train (when i get round to finishing that!!) and I hope that I can get the proper standalone version working on CL-32 (or a variant of it) so that you can use it without the need of a mobile phone Meshcore is just as popular, but I have yet to look at the firmware properly. I would love to get it properly supported in the same way as Meshtastic, but it might be less of a priority as SolarOS has Meshcore built in, and Tactility has Meshcore support coming soon!! Then there is my half finished attempt an OS… It might never get finished (by me at least) but it could be a good springboard for someone starting out as an example of what not to do 🤣🤣 So it is back to the add-on cards, and getting them fleshed out. I am hoping that I can get a few of them done and ordered so that I can do some good demo’s of what CL-32 can do, and get everyone wanting one in preparation for some crowdfunding Lets see what next week brings… |
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