[HN Gopher] TinyPICO - tiny fully-featured ESP32 board
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TinyPICO - tiny fully-featured ESP32 board
Author : taf2
Score : 79 points
Date : 2021-07-12 20:04 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.tinypico.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.tinypico.com)
| xvf22 wrote:
| Following his Charmhigh PnP saga was a bit painful so I'm glad
| that his Neoden has so far not let him down too much. The issues
| he's had with JLCPCB are interesting cautionary tales I never
| would know about otherwise (changed gerbers etc.)
| Escapado wrote:
| I've always wanted to try getting into iot and see if I can set
| up a small network of sensors each attached to one of these tiny
| low power boards and see if I could operate them using some sort
| of energy harvesting so they'd be mostly maintenance free.
|
| If anyone more knowledgeable would like to share their insights
| or favourite ressources on the matter I'd be really interested.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| Most efficient & easy would probably be a nrf52840 (you can get
| the nrf52840dongle for $9, it has a wide voltage range and low
| power sleep modes and USB).
|
| You can communicate over the 802.15.4 radio which is very low
| power compared to WiFi.
|
| I'd use RIOT-OS, Zephyr has official support from Nordic, but
| that's what I'm familiar with: You can create a 6loWPAN network
| where each node gets an IPv6 address, they can communicate to
| the IPv6 world through a border router which would be another
| nRF52 Dongle where the USB serves as an USB-Ethernet Uplink
| that you plug into your router.
|
| You could then use CoAP to send the data to a server somewhere
| (or just plain UDP) and sleep most of the time.
| zhouyisu wrote:
| I followed a project named parasite
| https://github.com/rbaron/w-parasite
|
| I made a small MPPT solar harvester with a 0.47F supercap. This
| system reports soil moisture without using battery. It works
| even when weather is cloudy.
|
| Hope this gives you some insight.
| jcims wrote:
| MQTT is very good for this. I had a hairball of a raspberry pi
| setup driving a distillation process. I bought a ten pack of
| NodeMCUs (esp8266 but same basically) and moved all of the
| hardware off of the pi and distributed it across 4-5 of the
| little dudes. All comms were MQTT over WiFi and it worked
| great. (NodeRED was fantastic driving all of that, and i used
| Tasmota on the NodeMCUs, theres an ESP32 build for that.)
|
| For low power you can obv turn off radio when youre not using
| it. Probably some simple way to sleep/shut it off completely as
| well.
| jws wrote:
| The ESP32 modules with FCC certification appear to all have RF
| shields over sections of the board with the antenna outside.
|
| It's possible the space saved by omitting an RF shield will
| foreclose any certification.
|
| Okay for prototyping if you are don't mind polluting your local
| luminous ether, but check before planning commercial use.
| mrlonglong wrote:
| I have a dual core 64 bit RISCV Pico style board siting on my
| desktop until I can figure out how to build a bare metal
| operating system for it.
| dang wrote:
| Show HN is for sharing your own work:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html.
|
| It looks like this is someone else's work, so I've taken Show HN
| out of the title now. If I got that wrong and you're the creator
| of this project, let us know and we'll be happy to put this back
| in the Show HN category.
| MattGrommes wrote:
| Here's a link to the Crowd Supply page:
|
| https://www.crowdsupply.com/unexpected-maker/tinypico
|
| Either I overlooked it or he doesn't have it on that page.
| mathgorges wrote:
| The buy page is linked at the top [1]
|
| It's worth click through to -- depending on where you live
| another vendor might be considerably cheaper for you.
|
| I'm in the US and Adafruit worked out to be ~$10 cheaper than
| CrowdSupply for me with shipping and tax.
|
| [1]: https://www.tinypico.com/buy
| yoursunny wrote:
| This looks great. It's the smallest ESP32 board I've ever seen.
|
| There needs to be an ecosystem of "hats" such as OLED screens and
| environment sensors and buttons, so that it's easier to build
| simple projects.
| witnessmenow wrote:
| He has them!
|
| https://www.tinypico.com/add-ons
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| The Lilygo TTGO Micro32 module with the ESP32-PICO-D4 chip:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07RLLY5WZ
|
| https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32869180373.html
|
| is smaller - just 19x13mm! Though it doesn't include USB
| connector, power supply, USB-serial IC, etc.
|
| It's used in the Open Smartwatch project (https://open-
| smartwatch.github.io/).
| [deleted]
| mysterydip wrote:
| While I love all these "how small can we make an IoT board,"
| they're all outside my skillset to actually do something with. Is
| there a recommended more fully featured board to tinker/learn on?
| Saris wrote:
| The ones that come up from searching "esp32 dev board" on
| amazon are the most common ones for about $10, lots of guides
| will reference it as well.
| adbachman wrote:
| You could go with something like the Adafruit FunHouse:
| https://www.adafruit.com/product/4985
|
| WiFi, lots of built in hardware (temp + humidity, light,
| microphone, buzzer, buttons, LEDs, etc), and CircuitPython
| means you can program it with a USB cable and a plain old text
| editor.
|
| More bucks than the "smallest ESP-whatever" dev board, but
| handy for learning.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| You might like a board that has a qwiic or other similar style
| of connectors (https://www.sparkfun.com/qwiic). The idea is to
| standardize microcontroller peripherals like sensors,
| actuators, lights, etc. onto simple buses with shared
| connectors so you don't have to learn or worry about routing
| and wiring things up yourself. There are tradeoffs or course
| but it's a great way to get going and prototype stuff.
| mathgorges wrote:
| Raspberry Pi Zeros are cheap, easy to find, featureful, and
| user friendly :)
| pugworthy wrote:
| You can get just a regular Arduino variant, but really this is
| not that much different. Feature rich, for sure - but still at
| its core something you can just use like a basic little Arduino
| for basic stuff.
| analog31 wrote:
| See a sibling comment from @yoursunny about "hats."
| Microcontroller boards tend towards being general purpose,
| meaning you have to add sensors and actuators to realize any
| kind of useful application. For some of the more mature boards,
| there are aftermarket "hats," which are pin compatible boards
| that contain functionality to suit your interests, such as
| controlling relays, small to large numbers of LEDs, various
| physical and environmental sensors, etc. Many of these "hats"
| are accompanied by code libraries, so you don't have to delve
| too deep into the guts right away.
|
| It wouldn't hurt to look for a completed project where someone
| has posted a tutorial on how they did it, and duplicate it.
| Then you can take small steps towards adapting it in a creative
| way, e.g., by writing new code for it, or adding more hardware
| goodies.
|
| Like programming itself, you have to let hardware hacking grow
| on you. Maybe it will and maybe it won't. If it does, then it
| can be a fascinating rabbit hole to go down.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| There is plenty of software for the esp32, knowing a bit of C
| has never hurt
| retox wrote:
| I had to write C for the first time to get arbitrary text
| scrolling across a random 4x7 seg display I had left over
| from another project. It was tougher than I thought it would
| be, but getting the tooling set up with VSCode was tougher.
| There was a big sense of accomplishment that came from
| getting code running on something that doesn't look like a
| computer though, very rewarding.
| luma wrote:
| The ESP32 platform is pretty damn powerful and is something of
| a "kitchen sink" approach to embedded IoT. You won't find too
| much more capability without going to an SoC.
|
| Here's what I'd recommend - pick up a cheap dev board!
| Shouldn't cost you more than $10 and a USB cable, and you can
| get to hacking straight away. It's easier than you think, I
| promise!
| FirstLvR wrote:
| The name is hilarious in Chilean Spanish
| zeroping wrote:
| This looks like a suitable ESP32 version of the Teensy
| microcontroller dev boards. And even better, they're open
| hardware. Excellent!
| Huwyt_Nashi055 wrote:
| I must admit, I'm very surprised by the success he's having with
| the TinyPICO. I would never have guessed there is such a large
| market of amateurs in this niche who are experienced enough to
| know what they want yet lack the skills to know how to do it
| themselves (in an age where any hobbyist can order a fully
| assembled custom PCB from China for pennies!).
|
| With that disclaimer, I mean no disrespect when I say this is a
| very basic design that I'm sure myself and any other experienced
| hobbyist or professional could whip up in an afternoon. There's
| nothing new or innovative here. It's small, it doesn't make any
| glaring errors in terms of low power design and... Well, that's
| about it.
|
| Slap on the cheapest components you can find on LCSC and you've
| got a roaring success. It's disappointing how low the bar is,
| electrically at least.
|
| He does, however, hit the nail on the head with design,
| networking, presentation, etc. There's even a devoted community
| that has grown around this board, who would swear to you it's the
| best thing since sliced bread.
|
| Maybe there's a lesson there.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| Seon Rozenblum is a hard working Australian maker and it's worth
| supporting him by purchasing his TinyPico.
| AutoFlagged001 wrote:
| He's actually Jewish. Based in Australia, though.
| mrlonglong wrote:
| What exactly does his religion have to do with this
| discussion? It is irrelevant!
| AutoFlagged001 wrote:
| I wasn't talking about his religion. He's ethnically
| Jewish.
| dang wrote:
| " _Don 't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them
| instead._"
|
| a.k.a. please don't feed the trolls
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| bigtones wrote:
| Awesome project !
| AutoFlagged001 wrote:
| I must admit, I'm very surprised by the success he's having with
| the TinyPICO. I would never have guessed there is such a large
| market of amateurs in this niche who are experienced enough to
| know what they want yet lack the skills to know how to do it
| themselves (in an age where any hobbyist can order a fully
| assembled custom PCB from China for pennies!). With that
| disclaimer, I mean no disrespect when I say this is a very basic
| design that I'm sure myself and any other experienced hobbyist or
| professional could whip up in an afternoon. There's nothing new
| or innovative here. It's small, it doesn't make any glaring
| errors in terms of low power design and... Well, that's about it.
|
| Slap on the cheapest components you can find on LCSC and you've
| got a roaring success. It's disappointing how low the bar is,
| electrically at least.
|
| He does, however, hit the nail on the head with design,
| networking, presentation, etc. There's even a devoted community
| that has grown around this board, who would swear to you it's the
| best thing since sliced bread.
|
| Maybe there's a lesson there.
|
| (Why is this flagged...?)
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| That's absolutely nuts :) I love it.
|
| I wonder if we're going to see more and more edge computing in
| IOT sensor networks.
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