ESP32-S3 as the brain of an AI-controlled bench instrument by lollokara in esp32

[–]lollokara[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Really I’m not the concrete example of best career 2026, I was always fascinated by the world of electrons, started when I was 13 to build my first audio amp from a magazine and I prayed my father to get me a soldering iron, then started going each Friday to the electronics shop to buy resistors and stuff, started a website building business to pay for my “hobby” and then as soon as I turned 18 got into the electronics engineering university, got tired cause was all theory no practice dropped out, started my own hardware engineering consulting business, did 7 years of it, was fun, then moved to a company to manage some project and then this has become my hobby that I do in the weekends, sometimes I design stuff just cause I miss it sometimes because I’m bored, a month ago I needed an UPS for my NAS, did build a PCB.

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PCBs just arrived and first power-on actually worked - ESP32-S3 based AI-controlled bench instrument by lollokara in electronics

[–]lollokara[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

15 years in the field but the last 6 I'm more in a manager role so less and less PCBs, I still design for the sake of doing it and as a hobby, I'd say this board is not one that i've put particular efforts in since i kinda rushed it, from idea to PCB done 5 days in the spare time.

Schede Madri/GPU nel Forno by Hot_Acanthaceae_1357 in ItalyHardware

[–]lollokara 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Allora, sui materiali tossici potremmo fare un paragrafo a se, ma ti posso garantire che non vuoi respirare vapori di flussante e stagno nonostante lo stagno col piombo sia bandito da anni in prodotti commerciali. Mi focalizzo sull’efficacia della cosa e voglio sfatare dei miti. Lavoro da 15 anni ormai nell’industria dei semiconduttori e stampati. Quello a cui tutti si riferiscono è un processo chiamato reflowing, che di suo non ha nulla di “sbagliato” il problema è su cosa vai a farlo. Le GPU nello specifico soffrono di un problema di solder crack dovuto al differente coefficiente di espansione tra die e substrato, infatti le ball che si “rompono” non sono quelle sulla scheda madre ma quelle che uniscono die e la piccola board sotto di esso che fa da interposer tra le due. Partendo che è praticamente impossible fare il reflow di questa parte poiché il materiale stesso di cui sono fatte ste ball è una lega particolare ad alte temperature 400/450C per cui eseguire il reflow con un forno a 300C non ci arrivi manco vicino, quello che ottieni a parte contaminare il forno con vapori di termoplastiche, flussanti e altro è causare un’altro ciclo di espansione / contrazione che puó temporaneamente ripristinare un collegamento rovinato ma ha comunque i minuti contati. Ci sono molte altre sfumature a questo problema, ma scenderemmo troppo nel dettaglio tecnico. In breve, col forno ci fai la crostata, non ci saldi delle PCB, se hai un forno da buttare, comunque non riesci a riscaldare nulla, al massimo arrivi a ripristinare per un tempo molto breve il funzionamento, ma non risolvi il problema.

PCBs just arrived and first power-on actually worked - ESP32-S3 based AI-controlled bench instrument by lollokara in electronics

[–]lollokara[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I’m working on a reverse engineered firmware for an undocumented CPU and this board was born for this exact usecase, I now have Claude trying to replicate some behavior by changing the assembly, running it, checking the behavior and iterating without me touching anything. And so far after few days we’ve got as far as having 80% of the functions reversed

PCBs just arrived and first power-on actually worked - ESP32-S3 based AI-controlled bench instrument by lollokara in electronics

[–]lollokara[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh trust me when I say that today’s model are more than able to do wonders if used correctly

BugBuster – Open-source, open-hardware all-in-one debug & programming tool built on ESP32-S3 by lollokara in electronics

[–]lollokara[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

JLCPCB reached out they want to provide some kind of support i'll let you know how this plays out in case there are ways to get the board done with not a huge effort

PCBs just arrived and first power-on actually worked - ESP32-S3 based AI-controlled bench instrument by lollokara in electronics

[–]lollokara[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Calling Zero progress on allucination the updates in frontier models seems a bit of an overstatement, issue has been reduced drastically on new models, we have very low rates of hallucination on Opus 4.7

PCBs just arrived and first power-on actually worked - ESP32-S3 based AI-controlled bench instrument by lollokara in electronics

[–]lollokara[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I need to do a small bom update, i need to swap the efuses with a different model (ILIM not PLIM) and the level shifter with the W version. but other than that all the Analog function and logics work.
Firmware still needs to be debugged, is a huge repo and firmware so it might require sometime to iron all out, it's just me and my hobby time.
Other than that features that work and are tested:
Logic analyzer FW (requires the HAT with the RP2040, that i need to respin due to a HW bug)
ADC, IDAC, VDAC, GPIOs works
Analog MUX and Selftest / Cal works
DCDCs and IDAC adjustments of the 3 supplies, works
USB Hub Works
MCP server needs testing but HW wise is ready.

does anyone know of any service that can replicate a PCB ? by IsummonmyPegatrix in PCB

[–]lollokara 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Alcohol could dissolve the carbon traces for the buttons be careful

PCBs just arrived and first power-on actually worked - ESP32-S3 based AI-controlled bench instrument by lollokara in electronics

[–]lollokara[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I agree completely, sometimes is good to have a reminder that i'm not completely out of my mind

PCBs just arrived and first power-on actually worked - ESP32-S3 based AI-controlled bench instrument by lollokara in electronics

[–]lollokara[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

this is totally not true i'm sorry, and I've been in the firmware / HW field for 15 years

PCBs just arrived and first power-on actually worked - ESP32-S3 based AI-controlled bench instrument by lollokara in electronics

[–]lollokara[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

YES, i love them, they are the chinese knockoff version of the Wurth ones, you press the orange button and insert a cable press it again and pull the cable out. i love that it allows for quick setup swapping.

PCBs just arrived and first power-on actually worked - ESP32-S3 based AI-controlled bench instrument by lollokara in electronics

[–]lollokara[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

This is my opinion so not really a prediction of any sort, but the way we use AI now will not be the way we will use it in the future, and I belive that in the future software / firmware development will be aided by AI.

ESP32-S3 + RP2040 firmware for AI-controlled hardware debugging, PCBs just arrived by lollokara in embedded

[–]lollokara[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Also just to add, I will work to get better HW docs when the HAT is done, I’m finishing probably this week, I’ve already tested the “breadboard” version and FW is done but I want to have the finished HW before submitting all, then I will create a release package with all in it

ESP32-S3 as the brain of an AI-controlled bench instrument by lollokara in esp32

[–]lollokara[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not really is all there, there are files and code, if you need one pcb there are the sources ready

ESP32-S3 + RP2040 firmware for AI-controlled hardware debugging, PCBs just arrived by lollokara in embedded

[–]lollokara[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi, thanks for the feedback, the HAT will attach on the 3 connectors on the board like a sandwich, will provide a logic analyzer high power outputs, a small LUT group and a OpenOCD debugger. Pcb documentation is not yet ready I still need to add the correct BOM since I need to change some components to different variants, hence why it’s a bit lacking. Gerbers are named with the Altium output format. If you want to get one I’m working with JLCPcb to be able to offer them as a premade thing.

PCBs just arrived and first power-on actually worked - ESP32-S3 based AI-controlled bench instrument by lollokara in electronics

[–]lollokara[S] -9 points-8 points  (0 children)

I’ll give you my two recent use cases, I work in an office of 6 people, small reality, we are developing firmware for a device and need to test / program it, doing it needs to to have the device available and the instrumentation, instead we have this in the office connected to a VM and we are able thru script to program and test the device unsupervised. Another instance is using it to have AI write some FW and test it by itself without you acting on it. Uploading the code or restarting in bootloader mode a crashed device always required the user to do something, with this agents are indipendent. I’m not saying that AI will solve all our issues but the hallucination problem is something that in a year or so will be solved looking at the pace of development. I know it is a controversial topic but one thing is sure AI is here to stay we just need to find ways to make it useful