Gareth's blog

Software defined radio (aka SDR), is a way of automating tuning into Audio/Digital radio receptions.

I am using a very simple (un-nervingly sensitive) USB dongle type RTL-SDR.COM

(cost inclusive antenna & mount was < £25).

Here is an early look at a system I am putting together to prewarm me of any special/unusual aircraft that will be flying in my locality.

The system uses a few different protocols via the OpenSkyNetwork.

Here is a test of a flexible P4 RGB LED 64x32 matrix screen.

My trusty "Conway's Life" program was used as the test culprit along with a variant of the

adafruits P3 matrix driver Library  (arduino/mega/etcetc)

ESP32 P3/P4 matrix driver Library

If you need to literally display things out of an ESP32 then well recommended is Bitluni's ESP32Lib library.

14-Bit colour Max Headroom is displayed with the ESP32's 3D Graphics Engine, STL file that has been Low_poly_ed to 5000 Triangles.

Here is just one implimentation of using the ESP32 as a WebServer.

The example uses an ESP32 as a Webserver to service a Webpage which contains a matrix of switch buttons. One GPIO of the ESP32 controls a string of 100 Neopixels arranged in a 10x10 matrix just like the Webpage.

By clicking the mouse on the Webpage matrix an event sends a HTML header back to the ESP32, this header contains the position of the button pressed, which in turn toggles the particular Neopixel in the string.

How to output a variable directly to GPIO pins ... i.e. in parallel.

This can be done using the ESP32's registers.

Here is the simplest way to get code running parallel with two separate cores on the ESP32.

My latest ESP32/Nextion touch screen Weather/bus/train times project required a realtime clock.... however it has taken me quite a few weeks to find a good solid solution.
Firstly :-
....if you want to stay sane then avoid epoch time (best thing that happened in 1970's was "punk Rock" not unix count my seconds since birth)....rant over.

Up till now I have been porting scans over the Serial wires and manually presenting the data.....

Now the Rig has its own Real-Time Debug TFT Display. (you might see it below the right wheel)

Above is just a 180° scan of this below :-

Wooden planks set at 90° and two DVD cases thrown in for measure.

I placed the Sensor rig into a cardboard box just to get a feeling for the data.

This is two passes of the probe, so you can see the slight variance in data.

Overlaying the raw data for 180°.... this was with GIMP so its just approximate

all looks kinda good except Hmmmm.... rounded corners cannot be explained...

another scan with DVD's :-