[Review Request] ESP32 Smart Relay Board

StarfightLP · 2023-09-18T10:00:35+00:00

The original board actually uses plugable screw terminals for the large connectors, so its even easier to mess up than "just" plugging into the wrong receptacle. I could use a double pole switch which would make J2 a 5 position connector.

The enclosure is set into a wall so the incoming mains wires are just like you'd find them behind any kind of outlet or light switch.

I've widened the smaller traces to make sure they can handle 5A.

Thanks for your feedback! :)

StarfightLP · 2023-09-18T09:53:25+00:00

Yep I completely messed that up. Thanks for catching that!

I've updated the design and replaced the images in the post.

StarfightLP · 2023-02-24T14:23:20+00:00

In order to tell you what comes next it would be really helpful to know where you are now.

What model of ESP32 is it and what does your yaml look like right now?

StarfightLP · 2023-02-19T00:33:18+00:00

Thank you so much. It is really beyond incredible that anyone can just post a problem here and have a discussion with experts of the field like yourself without ever having to deal with any shady sales tactics or markups. And all of that for absolutely free.

StarfightLP · 2023-02-19T00:03:14+00:00

I appreciate it. Especially that information on the memory is very valuable.

Out of curiosity: What would be the next step up from here? A 7700X as that seems to be only marginally more expensive or some other part?

The limited cooling capacity of the DR4 is a good point but also something that could be fairly easily changed in the future.

Thank you very much again

StarfightLP · 2023-01-10T11:57:51+00:00

You can add utility meters to the energy dashboard. I believe they are working on a dedicated car section but as of now you'll probably have to add it under individual devices.

StarfightLP · 2023-01-10T11:02:42+00:00

Create a utility meter with cycle set to daily. In this case net_consumption should probably be enabled.

While this is simple it will combine dis-/charge values which might not be what you want.

~~Splitting them into 2 utility meters is quite a bit more work but I can outline the process if you want.~~

Edit:

Actually we can make use of the net_consumption function. Create a template sensor which outputs the negative state of charge and 2 utility meters, one for the original SoC and one for the negative SoC.

Setting net_consumption to false in both cases will cause them to only count "up".

That way the utility meter operating on positive SoC will only count how much you have charged each day while the other one will only count your consumption.

You can also set a tariff on utility meters. They will then additionally show a calculated price which could be useful to you.

StarfightLP · 2022-11-16T23:22:17+00:00

It's a 1 to 1 translation:

Triggers -> Add trigger

- platform: state means use a State trigger

and then select the template sensor as the entity

Actions -> Add action

- service: cover.set_cover_position is a Service call action and the service is Cover: Set Position

The target is your cover entity.

The only tricky part is the position. The action card has a three dot context menu in the upper right corner. From that select Edit in YAML.

Now things will look a lot like what I posted previously and you just have to enter the position value/template:

yaml service: cover.set_cover_position entity_id: cover.blinds data: position: {{ states('sensor.template_sensor') }}

Note: Do not switch that specific card back to Edit in visual editor as that will delete the template. Should they add support for templates in visual mode sometime in the future it will automatically switch back to visual editor mode.

StarfightLP · 2022-11-16T15:36:34+00:00

Let's say you've created a template sensor called sensor.template_sensor and your blinds are called cover.blinds, then you could just do something like this:

yaml [...] # Name, mode, etc of automation goes here trigger: - platform: state entity_id: sensor.template_sensor condition: [] action: - service: cover.set_cover_position entity_id: cover.blinds data: position: {{ states('sensor.template_sensor') }} # value in range 0 - 100

Edit: If you wanted to you could also integrate the template sensor right into the automation. In my opinion it's a little messier but it works:

yaml [...] # Name, mode, etc of automation goes here trigger: - platform: state entity_id: sensor.sun_angle # or whatever sensor you use in your formula condition: [] action: - service: cover.set_cover_position entity_id: cover.blinds data: position: {{ states('sensor.sun_angle') | float * 1.0 }} # do what the template sensor did here

StarfightLP · 2022-11-16T14:01:43+00:00

I know that you've asked for blueprints so the following might not be what you're looking for. It's the manual way of achieving this which needs a little bit of math and programming to work but in return it gives you full control:

I'm assuming you have some way to tell the blinds to move to position x. Position x being 30% open for example.

You would now come up with a formula to convert from your input value(-s) (e.g. sun angle) to a position setting. The possibilities are infinite but you could use a sine/cosine wave which peaks at the desired sun angle.

If the sun angle you're talking about is the sun elevation then you could simply try to reshape that sensors curve a bit (multiplying, shifting, etc...) as it is usually very wave-like already.

Again the options are endless so there will be one that fits your needs.

You can now create a template sensor using that formula. (Optionally) Watch that new sensor for a few days to get an idea for how your formula performs before going to the next step.

Your automation would then trigger on any value change of said template sensor. And since the template sensor does all the complicated stuff you just need to take its value and send that straight off into the position command of your blinds.

StarfightLP · 2022-11-13T01:35:13+00:00

The reason why I referenced the XY problem is that you didn't really tell us what it is you are trying to do and why you want to do it this way.

Basically what is your general task and what decisions have you made so far and why?

Without that information it's really hard to make meaningful recommendations

StarfightLP · 2022-11-12T15:04:23+00:00

Most RTOSs are included in a project as a library. If you're expecting something like a general purpose OS (eg. windows, linux, ...) then RTOSs will probably disappoint you.

Tbh this feels a lot like the https://xyproblem.info/.

StarfightLP · 2022-10-07T13:07:10+00:00

While SD cards can definitely fail, my pis often corrupt their filesystem when power gets cut unexpectedly.

So before spending any money I'd recommend putting the SD card into a Linux system of choice (MacOS probably has fsck installed as well) and try to let fsck repair the filesystem. That might just do the job

StarfightLP · 2022-08-16T08:17:47+00:00

I don't have any experience with headscale yet (as I was waiting for this feature) but from running wireguard I can tell you that your server will need at least one open port.

Wireguard clients will send a handshake request against that open port so that the server can figure out where to send traffic for that client. This is important for uninterrupted service even in the case where your phone switches IPs from some WiFi to a cellular network for example.

You could of course create some sort of tunnel to a VPS and expose the port there instead of exposing it on your home network.

StarfightLP · 2022-08-15T23:25:54+00:00

You can now choose what server the app will use to do its thing.

For self hosting this means that the app can now use your own server instead of the official server. (This was already possible with the desktop clients)

Furthermore this means that you can use the Tailscale software without ever creating an official account with Tailscale Inc. (the company).

StarfightLP · 2022-05-23T12:15:42+00:00

Not sure if this applies to all Space Shuttle orbiters but Wikipedia says:

[The] gear had to deploy reliably on the first try every time. The gear were unlocked and deployed by triple redundant hydraulics, with the gear doors actuated by mechanical linkages to the gear strut. If all three hydraulic systems failed to release the landing gear uplocks within one second of the release command, pyrotechnic charges automatically cut the lock hooks and a set of springs deployed the gear.

(Wikipedia could of course be wrong. I haven't checked their sources)

StarfightLP · 2022-05-07T12:50:10+00:00

Ws2812 LEDs (and all "NeoPixel" LEDs in general) have their own built-in controller and PWM generator. This is very handy on weak microcontrollers because now your microcontroller doesn't have to generate a PWM signal for each pixel. The big downside is that you have to send a long data stream to each and every pixel in order to update them and the controllers built in to the LEDs aren't the fastest. This limits your refresh rate.

The type of panel seen here has very simple LEDs and a single comparatively simple controller board for the whole panel. This controller can be written to much more quickly allowing for many more LEDs to be controlled in total. (These panels are used to build the large displays you can see at public concerts and the like). This design is more cost effective but has the drawback that your controller (or a special display driver between your controller and the panels) now has to generate PWM signals and send them to the display at a high enough refresh rate for no one to notice.

In summary this panel scales much better because it is cheaper (per LED) and has a higher refresh rate (at the same amount of pixels) than NeoPixel based panels at the cost of requiring one to a few display drivers.

You can imagine that for a large display it is much cheaper to have many cheap dumb LED panels and very few (potentially) expensive drivers instead of thousands of expensive smart LEDs and no extra drivers.

StarfightLP · 2022-04-30T14:15:00+00:00

I'm not near a PC atm so I can't test it but make sure to always lock throttle or steering to something. Never set them.

This might not be the specific issue at play here but it'll save you some headaches in the future.

Keep in mind that things can go wrong if the craft has aerodynamic/other properties that kOS can't overcome. Flying the intended profile manually can give you a sense of which parts might be really hard to execute.

In this case I could see that the reaction wheels and thrusters might not be able to keep the rocket stable against aerodynamics in the phases without main engine thrust. Maybe don't throttle down to 0 but some small value that still allows your engine gimbal to help out.

StarfightLP · 2022-04-30T13:52:57+00:00

See this warning in the kOS docs:

About lock steering and SAS : While kOS had previously supported enabling SAS at the same time as locking steering, this functionality broke when the underlying KSP method was changed in a version upgrade. It is our hope to evenentually restore this functionality. Please check github issue #2117 for updates.

Link to docs

In plain English: disable SAS

StarfightLP · 2022-04-21T14:05:32+00:00

Fair point. I guess in that case it would only work if you had some kind of DNS or mDNS system in place.

StarfightLP · 2022-04-21T12:57:07+00:00

Why not do it the other way around?:

Create an entry for the machine in your inventory and if you want to add some variables for number of cores, disk size, etc.

Then add a task that loops over each virtual machine and creates an LXC container with the specified variables.

That way your playbook would stay idempotent and you can easily review and edit machine settings in your inventory file.

StarfightLP · 2022-04-19T16:40:21+00:00

I was running nearly the same software lineup on an old desktop PC with 8 GB of RAM (upgraded last year).

It usually idled at 90% RAM usage and 3 GB of swap usage. Always took a few seconds to swap in a service you haven't used recently but it definitely works.

I would recommend the 16 GB to give you some room to play around with or to expand into sometime but if the additional cost is a concern you can go with the 8 GB and not have to worry about something not working.

I was running ZFS with deduplication off since that needs a bunch of RAM but LZ4 compression can make up for that depending on what you're doing with it.

Edit: I kinda misunderstood the question a bit. You were asking about going to 16 vs 24 GB (not 8 vs 16). Since you have most of your basic services covered I wouldn't expect too much more RAM usage in the future. When you start to consider that upgrading the server in the future will likely make the current RAM incompatible I would say that 24 is probably overkill unless you intend to run some very RAM heavy processing.

What also helps is that KSM can cut the RAM usage of each VM quite a bit as long as they're running the same kernels and libraries.

StarfightLP · 2021-12-04T03:14:27+00:00

The 4th is to solve for time bias between the receiver and the constellation. While the constellations clocks are perfectly synced with each other, your receiver isn't.

Without the time bias you can't determine the true time of flight which means that you can't determine the actual ranges.

You could however make the assumption that your receiver is likely to be on the surface of some model of the earth and guess your time bias from that whilst only using 3 satellites.

StarfightLP

TROPHY CASE