billsalt

Most recent activity

• Bluetooth buffer question -- tracking down an issue..

  @billsalt started

  • 7 comments
  • 105 views

  @Gordon replied
• Bluetooth buffer question -- tracking down an issue..

  in Puck.js, Pixl.js and MDBT42 • 1 week, 1 day

  

  Yep!

• Bluetooth buffer question -- tracking down an issue..

  in Puck.js, Pixl.js and MDBT42 • 1 week, 3 days

  

  Hi @Gordon,
  Sorry for the delay; other (paying) work... As it turns out, your suggestion got me to the right track inadvertently. I've had a serial-output sensor connected to Tx, Rx. When you suggested I connect to the default TX/RX, I couldn't because they were used. I think you get the picture... It was spitting out data whether or not the device was connected to Bluetooth. It appears that Espruino took it for debug port when disconnected and was sometimes messing things up when I tried to reconnect (or while disconnected).

  I moved the sensor UART to a different GPIO and it seems to be much happier. Does that make sense to you?

  The project is an air quality sensor made from Adafruit parts. We've had a horrible fire/smoke season on the US west coast this year, and the air quality monitoring stations are rather sparse and do not report in real time. Most of the consumer sensors are handheld with a display and a bit expensive. I now have a Bluetooth, battery powered sensor. I'll be posting it once I get it tidied up into an enclosure. Probably post it to hackaday as well so that others can use it.

  Thanks!
  Bill

• Bluetooth buffer question -- tracking down an issue..

  in Puck.js, Pixl.js and MDBT42 • 2 weeks, 4 days

  

  Probably one for @Gordon, but please chime in if others have help - I'm trying to track down an issue with a couple of my designs. After some long-ish period of time (many hours or days) of not being connected, my sensor designs 'crap out' and need to be reset and reloaded with js code.

  I'm doing something probably bad which is just to keep writing to Bluetooth (Bluetooth.println()) without putting it into a NRF.on(){} construct. In other words, it is trying to output to Bluetooth when not connected. I'm going to guess that not only is this not a good practice, but it may be filling up some buffer to the point of producing the 'crap out' behavior.

  I'll try putting it into the appropriate NRF.on and putting some test time on it, but if you could let me know if this is indeed an issue it would help me feel like I'm on the right track to getting the sensor more reliable.

  Thanks!

• Espruino IDE on Windows 10?

  @billsalt started

  • 9 comments
  • 135 views

  @Gordon replied
• Espruino IDE on Windows 10?

  in Puck.js, Pixl.js and MDBT42 • 2 weeks, 5 days

  

  Thanks @Gordon and @Robin for the follow up. I'm a bit stumped right now, but will forward the email trail on to him and try to stop by in the next few days to help him out. He also has another Windows machine I'm going to ask him to try; I'm beginning to think there's something funny about his Windows 10 installation or updates.

• Espruino IDE on Windows 10?

  in Puck.js, Pixl.js and MDBT42 • 2 weeks, 6 days

  

  Thanks @Robin; it really is for a friend. I do quite a bit with espruino (ask @Gordon), but on my mac. Seriously. But then again, I might not admit it if it were me...

  I was trying to help him today: we had purchased a Plugable USB dongle since his PC didn't have Bluetooth and I've had excellent luck with the Plugable dongle in the past. We were able to run do the pairing in Bluetooth setup (what a bother, coming from the mac chrome IDE), and then when trying to connect with the native IDE, we kept experiencing hangs of that app. We tried removing the connection, rebooting, adding it again and couldn't make reliable connections. We also checked to see that the driver was updated for Bluetooth...

  The 'documentation' inconsistencies aren't that per-se, but more that when you google in frustration "Windows 10 espruino IDE" you'll find references to it not working, working, Chrome plugin working with Canary, and other vestigial anecdotal info.

  This is another reason I stick with the mac environment :-}

  Could it be that this dongle just isn't up to snuff?

  Thanks again!

• Espruino IDE on Windows 10?

  in Puck.js, Pixl.js and MDBT42 • 2 weeks, 6 days

  

  Asking for a friend (I'm a mac person): he's having a heck of a time trying to figure out how/which IDE and how to talk to the pixl I had him buy...

  What is the current strategy for Espruino programming on Windows 10? I find conflicting notes in this forum, and nothing we do seems to work reliably...

  I've tried to convert him to using his mac, but he prefers his Windows setup.

  Thanks in advance!

• Capsense

  @billsalt started

  • 4 comments
  • 85 views

  @Gordon replied
• Capsense

  in Puck.js, Pixl.js and MDBT42 • 2 weeks, 6 days

  

  Thanks @Gordon! I have a capacitive sensor which ranges around 40-60 pF. I used the straight capsense using two pins with a 1M resistor and the sensor between them in series and it worked, but I wanted to understand/control its thresholds and resolution (prescaler) since the documentation is relatively meager for using it for anything other that qualitative finger presence.

  This is my simple test code (I run it into Adafruit's Bluefruit for graphing):

  // capsense trial...  082218
  setInterval(function() {
  //  console.log(Puck.capSense(D28, D29));
    Bluetooth.println(Puck.capSense(D28, D29));
  }, 100);
  

  So when you say it counts up/down 100 times between logic 1 and 0, at what frequency? And from your description, it is using the definition of logic high and logic low for thresholds, correct?

  I'll take a look at the NRF52LL reference. If I were to have my perfect solution, I'd be able to set thresholds so that I'm measuring proper time constants (say 2T at 86.5% or something similar). I'd also want to set the measurement/counting frequency to match the required timing/resolution.

  Any thoughts or example snippets would be extremely useful as always.