- Sun Jan 27, 2019 5:36 am
#80294
Hi Heckler and thanks for replying.
First thing I need to work on is checking the forum more frequently! Sorry it's taken me so long to spot your reply.
Last thing I did was start to setup a learning ir controller for a TV that we wanted to use to display signage. Historically this has been difficult because the TV has a fixed timeout - switches off after four hours with no ir control input. We want it to switch off and on at fixed times with no user intervention.
Easy I thought, PowerPoint video on usb, capture useful IR sequence and use that on a timer to start things off and give it the occasional nudge during the day. Old broken dvd player in the office, ripped ir input chip from that, ir diode from poundshop remote, 10 minutes basic, off we go. Perfect supersimple espbasic project. As a backup, can do similar with a Lidl learning remote which supports timed macros.
Unfortunately it turns out that our TV only makes 'play from usb' available if a USB device is inserted after it powers up... So no good for timed unattended operation like that.
I used a pi I already had to control the TV via cec, and play video via HDMI. Easy, just need to replace it with a pi zero w so I get mine back...
This did rekindle my interest in esp8266basic - it's hard to see how you could code the same thing in a simpler way, with the same level of flexibility. I think the 8266 is probably past its peak, certainly for battery operations because of its power consumption but if we could remedy the problems with esp8266basic it gives a platform for moving on to esp32basic - and that has a lot going for it, it can fit a niche that the pi zero w can't.
But mostly, I just like a challenge, so I'm applying on an occasional basis my complete lack of c++ knowledge to trying to fix the issue.
Skip this next bit if you don't like wingers... Rant starts..
I have to say that the more I dig, the more I understand why it was so hard to sort. If you compile the programs with the later versions of the development environment (which include fixes for things that might have an impact on the problems, and also access to tools exception decoder) they throw large numbers of errors, I think because different versions compile to different methodologies, but I can't find (quick scan only) the changes documented. C++ doesn't enforce many coding conventions so functions - the building blocks of a c++ program - are not supersimple to pick out reading the source with a program, and the builtin debug functions in arduinocc are - well, from what I've seen, almost nonexistent.
End of rant...
So in the odd free moment I'm trying to nail down the problem. Making some progress I think but needs a lot more time to understand espbasic program flow a bit better, and get access to later versions sorted out.
Thanks to all the people who've posted on the forum I've got some clues to go on - for example, what you just said about development, bugs and stability in deployed environment.
I very much hope it just needs time and focus (I'm sadly lacking both at the moment), but I'm mostly pinning my hopes on NOT knowing what code is supposed to do.
Once (if) that's sorted I'm going to be working on some environmental management stuff, though tbh the way costs for built units has dropped through the floor I may just buy stuff - easier for my successors to support. When I started looking at this you couldn't get this sort of thing pretty much at all, now look how cheap it is...
All good fun. Thanks again!
First thing I need to work on is checking the forum more frequently! Sorry it's taken me so long to spot your reply.
Last thing I did was start to setup a learning ir controller for a TV that we wanted to use to display signage. Historically this has been difficult because the TV has a fixed timeout - switches off after four hours with no ir control input. We want it to switch off and on at fixed times with no user intervention.
Easy I thought, PowerPoint video on usb, capture useful IR sequence and use that on a timer to start things off and give it the occasional nudge during the day. Old broken dvd player in the office, ripped ir input chip from that, ir diode from poundshop remote, 10 minutes basic, off we go. Perfect supersimple espbasic project. As a backup, can do similar with a Lidl learning remote which supports timed macros.
Unfortunately it turns out that our TV only makes 'play from usb' available if a USB device is inserted after it powers up... So no good for timed unattended operation like that.
I used a pi I already had to control the TV via cec, and play video via HDMI. Easy, just need to replace it with a pi zero w so I get mine back...
This did rekindle my interest in esp8266basic - it's hard to see how you could code the same thing in a simpler way, with the same level of flexibility. I think the 8266 is probably past its peak, certainly for battery operations because of its power consumption but if we could remedy the problems with esp8266basic it gives a platform for moving on to esp32basic - and that has a lot going for it, it can fit a niche that the pi zero w can't.
But mostly, I just like a challenge, so I'm applying on an occasional basis my complete lack of c++ knowledge to trying to fix the issue.
Skip this next bit if you don't like wingers... Rant starts..
I have to say that the more I dig, the more I understand why it was so hard to sort. If you compile the programs with the later versions of the development environment (which include fixes for things that might have an impact on the problems, and also access to tools exception decoder) they throw large numbers of errors, I think because different versions compile to different methodologies, but I can't find (quick scan only) the changes documented. C++ doesn't enforce many coding conventions so functions - the building blocks of a c++ program - are not supersimple to pick out reading the source with a program, and the builtin debug functions in arduinocc are - well, from what I've seen, almost nonexistent.
End of rant...
So in the odd free moment I'm trying to nail down the problem. Making some progress I think but needs a lot more time to understand espbasic program flow a bit better, and get access to later versions sorted out.
Thanks to all the people who've posted on the forum I've got some clues to go on - for example, what you just said about development, bugs and stability in deployed environment.
I very much hope it just needs time and focus (I'm sadly lacking both at the moment), but I'm mostly pinning my hopes on NOT knowing what code is supposed to do.
Once (if) that's sorted I'm going to be working on some environmental management stuff, though tbh the way costs for built units has dropped through the floor I may just buy stuff - easier for my successors to support. When I started looking at this you couldn't get this sort of thing pretty much at all, now look how cheap it is...
All good fun. Thanks again!
