Welcome Roman/ESPBoy

Community
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Hey Roman!

I’m Jonne and I’m happy to have you here. I believe in openness and sharing. You are welcome to talk about ESPboy on Pokitto forum and port projects to it, as long as it also benefits Pokitto users. Perhaps some ESPboy projects can be ported to Pokitto? Who knows. But I am sure you understand and would feel the same way if I was on your forums, I am saying this so everyone knows exactly where we are. In fact we could do a swap: I will send you a Pokitto and you can give me an ESPboy! :smile:

Anyhow, you’re welcome to hang around, your project is very interesting and we are almost neighbours, because I understand you are in St Petersburg (?)

Jonne

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Hei jonne!
Thanks for your kind words about the project and a warm invitation to the forum.
I really excited about pokitto project especially that it helps people to engineering creativity and to make something fun together.
There are the same ideas I carry out with my similar ESPboy project.
I believe that sharing the experience, code, and creative passion is a good way, especially since the ideas underlying the projects are the same )
Right now i’m in Murmansk, about 200km from Finland, 2 hours driving by car and you are right that most time I’m in Saint-Petersburg which also is not too far from the physical border.
But today we see that there are no borders for good ideas and people worldwide if these people are really passionate about what they do.
It will be an honor for me to send you ESPboy to play as far as I’ll get the shipment from China with assembled devices in a couple of weeks.

Roman

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Oh man. I agree. But I am going to have to tell you a story now (long time Pokitto regulars know that now is a good time to get a drink or cup of tea)

10 years ago, around 2006-2011 I spent a lot of time in St. Petersburg. I was there every couple of months. We were collaborating with Stieglitz Academy and young russian designers. In 2011, I was one of the judges at Modulor, the biggest design competition in Russia. There was like 5-6 floors full of design in a big building.

At that time, I was sure that I was looking into the future. The amount of talent of the young designers was phenomenal. St Petersburg was such a cool place. You could literally walk around the city in the middle of the night, go from party to party. There was lots of cool electronic music and people were really friendly.

We had like 50 people from Russia over at Lahti. I was so convinced that these guys were going to create the future that I enrolled in a class to learn Russian language to be able expand my connections.

But then the world went another way.

I am hoping that one day we can return to those times of 2010 and that the cool creative future we saw then will eventually happen.

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It seems we have distorted a bit the meaning of this forum topic, but I really want to continue. :slight_smile:
Talented people and great ideas cannot be stopped by politics and state borders. Moscow, St. Petersburg and other cities around have become better than 10 years ago. I see it. The Internet and communication can no longer be completely banned. Cross-border travel is also open. My sister studied IT in Helsinki and is now teaching IT security at the University of Paris for example. No one ever hindered her in anything. True, this was also more than 10 years ago) I think COVID19 creates much more problems for moving forward and creating something for everyone and international projects than cursing politicians. But even in spite of this, people continue to find opportunities to do what they like and what they believe in.

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Getting sligthly offtopic is inevitable with linear comments and is OK here AFAIK, I personally don’t mind it. If it gets out of hand, @Pharap will split the thread, so no worries.

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Yes and it was most definitely my fault. I apologize and this sidetrack ends here.

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I gave it some thought and decided to split the thread for a few reasons.

  • because there’s no mention of the thread’s actual topic.
  • because the things discussed are important enough to be deserving of their own thread.
  • because it seems like the conversation would have continued had it not been off-topic and I think it would be a shame for it to end abruptly.
  • because it’s apparent that the conversation has had quite a bit of interest and I think interesting things deserve pride of place.

(Since I was mentioned by name, I should probably point out I’m not the only moderator, there are other moderators who could have chosen to split the comments off into a new topic - I certainly don’t have any kind of exceptional executive power. Perhaps I am more audacious though? :P)

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You’ve done a good job so far, please continue on the same track.

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I’ve found this interesting video about hw on breadboard:

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Maybe if @romans has an opportunity he could introduce the ESPboy project to all of us with a couple of lines?

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Thank you so much for this opportunity. It’s very nice that my device is of interest.

The idea was to make universal open-hardware & open-source modular device, Arduino IDE (and it’s numerous libraries) compatible, easy to use for prototyping and everyday tinkering.
And here it is.

If you ever played with Arduino, you can start with ESPboy in a few minutes and you can use almost all of the Arduino libraries and its example code.

You need only a few cheap parts from Aliexpress to assemble a simple version of ESPboy breadboard and perfboard (LCD, WeMos D1 mini, MCP23017 gpio port extender, 6 buttons, battery, speaker).

Another way to order free published PCB and solder full more reliable version of ESPboy. Or you can buy it assembled but still looking like DIY. The next step is to do PRO version in form of a real industrial-made device.

After a few months of work, i discovered Arduboy, Gambuino and Pokitto. This suggests that the idea is not original and that there is interest in such devices in the world.

Now there are 10 prototypes of attachable modules debugged and reliably working (like mp3 player, FM radio, GPS navigator, GSM phone, LORA messenger, RFID/NFC module etc…) and additional software like emulators (ZX Spectrum, chip8/schip, GameBoy), Arduboy library port and WiFi utilities etc.

You can find a detailed description at www site, hackaday page and design document with new ideas.

And maybe kickstarter 2021.

Will be happy to answer your questions.

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Plus an MCP23017 I/O expander :wink:

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A very impressive list of add-on modules!

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Its easy to make every new module because i just take the smaller module from aliexpress, connect it according to datasheet (standard interface like SPI, I2C, UART) to basic ESPboy device and take the right library. Add to the libraries standard example few interface features and GUI elements, and thats all.

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Another feature is AppStore. Starting ESPboy with A or B button pressed it connects to WiFi and then to AppStore. Choosing the App from the list it uploads to ESPboy in a minute and then resets with the new firmware. So you can turn the ESPboy to any gadget in 1 minute just connecting a new module and update the firmware from AppStore without any IDE or compilers or any problems with wires, computers, libraries or anything else.

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Probably already asked a thousand of times, why did you choose esp2866 and not the more powerful esp32?

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  1. ESP32 was not well described and supported (no Arduino IDE and libs) at the beginig of the work on ESPboy
  2. More power is not always a good thing. ESP32 is over powerful. There is an interest to have restrictions and to look for a creative approach to break them. (check pico8) ESP32 can do anything with 2 cores and 240mhz without any optimization )
  3. There are many of ESP32 devices (m5stack, odroid go) and i don’t want to compete with them
  4. I have an idea of a totally new device with ESP32 and think about the way to provide back compatibility with ESPboy DIY and PRO.
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I can definitely understand the desire to throttle the power back and have some challenges to solve.

I cannot wait for mine to turn up. It is taking a low boat from Russia to Australia. Last spotted rounding the cape and heading west!

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I think I will go the breadboard or bakelite circuit board wire-it-yourself path. It’s been a long time I have not fried some electronic devices due to bad wiring. So I’m heading to Aliexpress site. I just fear I may need a lot of spare components just in case something goes wrong :grin:

I hope your boat from Russia arrives soon!

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I’d be tempted to build one of these if I thought I could fit it in a dreamcast VMU… :stuck_out_tongue:

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