Sorry I'm not mitxela, I just find pretty much all their projects old school hacker awesome.
Good suggestion but from their article it seems like there's some really odd silicon level interactions going on so who knows? Might be worth getting a CH32v003 and finding out!
See also the CH32V003 [0] (more expensive variants also available), a neat, cheap and standalone RISC-V with plenty of modern & flexible peripherals, good package options, single wire debug and an open toolchain [1] for ~20c per.
Mitxela has a great article on them [2] and I totally agree they have a lot of the same joy & simplicity of the ATTiny - but with the added bonus of lots of interesting DMA controller misuse!
The peripherals have a very STM feel (in a good way) which perhaps isn't surprising given WCH's history.
Came to say this too... I was really pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to get a full dev & build & test environment set up with Visual Studio Code, and how well their little WCH-LinkE debugger works (both SWD and UART in one, Segger could learn from that...).
Now I'm experimenting with their BLE variant, which is a lot more complex, but still simpler than what I'm used to.
I just stumbled onto these recently. The big hang up for me is that the programmer is proprietary. I was hoping there would be a bootloader onboard like the CH552. No dice. In waiting a bit more than a week to get one shipped. They’re not expensive, but I’m annoyed that I can’t just load some software on an Arduino and flash the chip.
(Note you can debug open source, just not program afaict)
This is not true as a blanket statement unless you are talking about commercial flying, large drones or restricted airspace. I'm not sure what country you are referring to but I haven't personally come across one that requires a per flight permit outside of higher risk commercial operations. Most EU countries are pretty harmonised on drone rules at this point.
Sub 250g drones such as the DJI Mini series and the Autel Nano will give you the most flexibility in places you can fly legally.
> I haven't personally come across one that requires a per flight permit outside of higher risk commercial operations
Portugal requires approval from the coast guard if your planned flight is within certain distance from a beach/the sea, which is quite easy in a coastal and islands country.
I don't read Portuguese but there's nothing specifically regarding beaches in their courtesy translation [1] beyond avoiding areas next to SAR helicopter bases (which is fair enough) and there's nothing on their UAS restrictions map [2] that would be unusual in any other EU country.
I have flown (below 120m obviously) in Portugal near the beach with a <250g drone after checking their UAS map so it would be good to know what I missed? Possibly you are referring to some additional local restrictions?
Hm, can't find anything about it now, but it was the case in 2021, at least for the Azores. If memory serves me right I even had to send some signed papers via the post because their online portal wasn't ready yet (which it seems to be).
Water bottle rockets that have to carry and land an egg without cracking it are fun, and the launcher except pump can be 3d printed. The kids can make the rest of the rockets out of cardboard/foam/plastic bag parachutes etc).
The Olimux ESP32-POE / wESP32 boards have a proper ethernet connection and PoE support. Means you don't need to worry about wifi coverage or power as long as you can get an ethernet cable to it - and those are cheap & easy to find in ludicrous lengths for outdoor use.
The Olimux ESP32-POE / wESP32 boards have a proper ethernet connection and PoE support. Means you don't need to worry about wifi coverage or power as long as you can get an ethernet cable to it - and those are cheap & easy to find in ludicrous lengths for outdoor use.
ESPHome also has deep sleep support - so for some use cases you can just wake up every x minutes/hours, connect to wifi, do thing, back to sleep for x minutes. In deep sleep a decent ESP32 board (firebeetle or tinypico) will last for months on a small lithium cell. For a quick sensor, the whole wake up/read sensor/update HA/sleep again takes a second or so depending on wifi configuration.
Useful for something on a schedule like sprinklers or slow sensors (soil humidity or whatever).
You can also wake based on interrupts, which is good for stuff where you are using a low power external sensor that does interrupts (wake ESP up if humidity gets to x) or a GPIO switch (magnetic entry/float switch/etc etc).
Firebeetles and tinypicos both have cell connectors and onboard charging directly for lithium pouch cells. You could also get a cheapo solar power bank, although you'll want to do some research to make sure the relatively light load of an ESP32 will keep it powered on.
I second the Olimex ESP-POE boards. I use them for all my ESPhome projects as I'm a big fan of wired connectivity and having the ability to power them over PoE is awesome.
They also have a wide variety of sensors that connect with a ribbon cable (they call it uEXT) with no soldering required. Many of the sensors are supported by ESPHome.
Additionally, phone GPS chipsets are often built into the baseband modem and performance might be limited compared to state of the art (and just price, packaging limitations for antennas, assumption that a phone always uses A-GPS etc).
The dual frequency chipsets used in modern high-end fitness watches & drones have pretty spectacular performance even in incredibly built up areas with high tower blocks or under tree cover (they usually have a barometer as well to help with the altitude problem).
Interesting article, be helpful if there was a breakdown of why the author thinks people are dying. Seems from the article like there are three problems:
- SAR teams knowing where people are - SPOT/inReach, PLB, Recco (at a push)
- SAR teams knowing that someone is in trouble: SPOT/inReach, PLB, VHF, Satphone
- Members of a climbing team knowing where each other are: SPOT/inReach, VHF, Satphone, Meshtastic (or something of that style)
I imagine that SAR is really really hard on Everest even if you do know where the casualty is so knowing where other members of a climbing team are might be the most important one?
You're right on what some of the major problems are but, there are no SAR teams on Everest. Your SAR team is the expedition outfit you signed up with. Many are under-manned and under-equipped but even the best ones won't be able to facilitate a rescue much of the time (due to weather, altitude and manpower issues). The climbers all know this.
Many of the bigger outfits do co-operate on rescues where they can, but aside from that there is no official rescue organization.
Price-wise a P1S will work out cheaper unless you get a really poor quality Trident kit (which I wouldn't do).
If you just want to print stuff (like if the printer is to support another hobby, or you have a business) get a P1S/X1C or a Prusa MK4. I wouldn't personally bother with an AMS until down the line when you're sure you need it.
VORONs are fantastic if you want a fun and very well documented robot building project, and at the end you get something pretty comparable to a Bambu. It can be a frustrating process at times but you'll learn a lot about a variety of interesting stuff. The printers are also massively hackable and moddable, and they have larger build plate options (although ~250mm^2 is realistically enough for most home users). Bambu is the exact opposite mentality, fully closed source, they work incredibly well but are effectively a black box. Think Linux vs Mac.
Another option would be to see if you have a local maker/hackerspace, they will usually have at least one decent printer.
While I do use the AMS for multi-color prints, it's actually more useful to me because I can keep four filaments loaded at any time and it's easier to swap filaments out of the AMS that from behind the printer. I try to avoid prints with a ton of color changes just because of how much it slows down prints and the amount of waste it generates.
If the Prusa XL wasn't so expensive for 5 toolheads I'd get that since its' much faster for filament switches and the minimal amount of waste it generates.
> I wouldn't personally bother with an AMS until down the line when you're sure you need it.
If the parent comment plans to print a lot of large parts, AMS will be useful. You can load multiple spools of the same filament, and a Bambu printer will switch spools when it runs out and continue printing without any intervention needed...
I was iffy about whether I really 'needed' the AMS or not when I bought my X1C.
It has since proved its worth many times over, and the auto-refill is as much the reason as multiple colors/support filaments. I'm only holding off getting a second because I want to wait for a larger-format bed printer first.
Good suggestion but from their article it seems like there's some really odd silicon level interactions going on so who knows? Might be worth getting a CH32v003 and finding out!