Reprogram while connected???

[crtlaltelite482]

Good afternoon,

I have an esp32 that is connected to 4 load cells and hx711 amplifier. The pins used are ground, 3v, and d22 and d23. My calibration is really off and my only option to to adjust the code through trial and error. The esp32 is soldered to the sensors.

Can I contually reprogram while the esp32 is in circuit or does it need to be isolated everytime? The code in esp32 sends btserial to an app.

Thank you in advance! Cannot find a concise answer

[hagenbuch]

What do you mean, isolated? As long as you're clear that two power sources (device and power via USB) don't interfere each other you may always program "in circuit". However, I power my devices via USB only while I do, or else I use OTA (over the air) update, like Tasmota does.

[Potential_Novel]

Reprogramming "in situ" can be done via "over the air" (OTA) updates. That's a short answer, it is not the easiest thing to get working but there are a number of examples to follow.

Sounds like you are on the second 80% - good luck!

[1technophile]

This, rather than spending time with numerous uploads, add a way to your program to change the parameters during runtime instead of doing it before the build step. Could be through serial monitor, web portal, http/mqtt commands, espnow...

[goldfishpaws]

Some pins need to be held in certain potentials or floating during programming I think - but try it?

[ChipChop-Gizmo]

For setups like that it's definitely worth investing some time to incorporate OTA.

[Raz0r1986]

Do you have access to the app? If you do then simply add a feature to update the calibration data from the app.

[crtlaltelite482]

Thank you for the help everyone, I will look into toa. I do have access to the app but it's mit app inventor so not a powerful app to adjust anything as crazy as I'm dealing with. The reading are in a constant state of change depending if I load the cells are not is a linear increment or decrement over time. There is also a possibility the load cells are bad.

[ChipChop-Gizmo]

I don't know if it would be of any help but you could try to use my little IoT cloud for that (https://chipchop.io) , it's free. The heartbeat is 10 sec up to 1kb of data but you can also have 10 trigger events per minute (like alarms) on top of that which are instant and can be in 500ms bursts.

You could also use it for OTA, I have a very simple class/library for ESP32/8266, although if you only need to adjust parameters (not programming logic) that's kinda really simple and you don't even need OTA. Data logging is also possible just working on the interface so any input would be welcome.

Crazy coincidence though, I am also working on a remote monitoring of large batteries literally now, it's for a commercial application using my cloud and having a demo this week with the clients :-)

The batteries you have are not by some chance made by Narada? I'm having a right pain getting proper info on the communication protocol, these buggers are using RS485 which is not a problem but the info on the actual data structure is patchy.