Everything nRF52840
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@monte said in Everything nRF52840:
maybe they will initially upgrade to 52840, I don't think it will be that hard, if they haven't produce large batch of this revision.
well, imho switching to nrf52840 won't be a direct upgrade for them. 52840 has more pins, usb etc so not same pcb for sure, then software support (waiting after community for dev too ??). it will certainly be a new watch I think (if they are the designers of the pcb, no idea).
Still, it is cheap for playing with nrf52832 so that's a good point.regarding the banglejs watch, yes it's too bad they chose a square display (this wastes some space).
I don't have one of these yet, but considering to play with banglejs ecosystem at some point (for watch I would prefer, but that's my preference, to use BLE for more interactions with phone etc).
In that case I will buy one at least (once it's back in stock) for supporting creator and his team.I have my opinion on hype and long term reality. Both pinetime and banglejs/nodewatch are opensource. You could for example use banglejs framework on any nrf52832 device/watch, with some coding of course (regarding pins mapping, sensors and peripherals), but that didn't look that hard when I looked at the code.
I would prefer a better looking and more compact smartwatch, but for tinkering and playing they both seem fun.
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It turns out that the very first solar powered watch, made by Seiko in 1969, had a side read display:
Though it gives up valuable display real estate, maybe that style would be easier to DIY in a form that wouldn't be too large to wear without embarrassment. I kinda like it myself: in theory I could check the time without having to turn my wrist. -
It turns out that the very first solar powered watch, made by Seiko in 1969, had a side read display:
Though it gives up valuable display real estate, maybe that style would be easier to DIY in a form that wouldn't be too large to wear without embarrassment. I kinda like it myself: in theory I could check the time without having to turn my wrist. -
This guy had an interesting idea that could probably be improved upon:
To make the watch thinner he spread the parts over different links in the wristband.
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:718989 -
@NeverDie here is an alternative that uses TEG for power https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/smartwatch-powered-by-you-matrix-powerwatch-2
@mfalkvidd Dave Jones reviewed that very watch and was fairly negative about it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4OeOQtiW0wEven so, it looks as though they raised over two million dollars!
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@mfalkvidd Dave Jones reviewed that very watch and was fairly negative about it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4OeOQtiW0wEven so, it looks as though they raised over two million dollars!
@NeverDie I watched a vlog (unfortunately in Swedish) about it about a week ago. The owner had used it for two months without charging it and was very enthusiastic about it. He said he used it for getting notifications, so he must be using the bluetooth feature.
Dave does have a point though that swapping the battery every 2-3 years isn't that cumbersome.
On the other hand, the charging capabilities of the Toyota Prius might have been considered a gimmick when it was introduced in 1997, and today we have electric cars with fairly long range. Technology gets better, and must start somewhere.
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@NeverDie I watched a vlog (unfortunately in Swedish) about it about a week ago. The owner had used it for two months without charging it and was very enthusiastic about it. He said he used it for getting notifications, so he must be using the bluetooth feature.
Dave does have a point though that swapping the battery every 2-3 years isn't that cumbersome.
On the other hand, the charging capabilities of the Toyota Prius might have been considered a gimmick when it was introduced in 1997, and today we have electric cars with fairly long range. Technology gets better, and must start somewhere.
@mfalkvidd I'm impressed that they've pre-sold over ten thousand of them.
Changing a watch battery isn't particularly easy, especially on a waterproof watch, because AFAIK doing so generally ruins the waterproofing seals. Dave Jones may have underestimated the hassle factor.
Also, there's a watch that was made by the authors of "The art of electronics" that the authors say consumes just 1 microamp, and that was more than a decade ago.
So, bluetooth aside, a TEG should generate more than enough to run a watch like that. I don't doubt that at least some amount of bluetooth or ANT or some other kind of radio communications could be supported. Maybe not a lot, but at least something.It's easy to forget that the original consumer LED watches would light up only when you pressed a button, and yet they sold anyway. If you did it that way, then it should be easy, and it would leave more of a budget for the radio communications.
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@mfalkvidd I'm impressed that they've pre-sold over ten thousand of them.
Changing a watch battery isn't particularly easy, especially on a waterproof watch, because AFAIK doing so generally ruins the waterproofing seals. Dave Jones may have underestimated the hassle factor.
Also, there's a watch that was made by the authors of "The art of electronics" that the authors say consumes just 1 microamp, and that was more than a decade ago.
So, bluetooth aside, a TEG should generate more than enough to run a watch like that. I don't doubt that at least some amount of bluetooth or ANT or some other kind of radio communications could be supported. Maybe not a lot, but at least something.It's easy to forget that the original consumer LED watches would light up only when you pressed a button, and yet they sold anyway. If you did it that way, then it should be easy, and it would leave more of a budget for the radio communications.
@NeverDie I think you are missing the point about the battery. Dave Jones was right as the energy produced by the watch over several years was similar to the one from a coin cell. And before those years pass we all know what happens to electronic devices: they get replaced. So the problem of battery change they pretended to fix was not a real "problem" as the product life is shorter than the battery life. It had very limited functionality and only manual synchronization with the smartphone, and a very basic app.
It's probably a similar thing with the new version, solar panel increases the available power but it's still in the uA range and functionalities are very limited, the "full color" lcd has no backlight, GPS use must be limited to a few mins per day, same for heart rate monitoring etc. So in the end a watch with similar functions and a li-ion battery would be smaller, half the price and only need a charge every 6 months. 2h of charge twice a year is far from a constraint... In addition the battery powered watch would allow you to run constant heart rate monitoring, have long GPS sessions like 2 hours of running etc etc if you accept to charge more often.
It's not as bad as before but it still feels like they made the watch because they needed a product to use the technology, and cut down the functionalities until power consumption was low enough to fit the technology. While it should be the opposite, technology should have been improved until it was able to power a smartwatch with "normal" functionalities.
I'm pretty sure many users of the new version will end up removing the watch from their wrist to expose it to the sun, and that it will last way longer than the charging time of a typical smartwatch :D
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@NeverDie I think you are missing the point about the battery. Dave Jones was right as the energy produced by the watch over several years was similar to the one from a coin cell. And before those years pass we all know what happens to electronic devices: they get replaced. So the problem of battery change they pretended to fix was not a real "problem" as the product life is shorter than the battery life. It had very limited functionality and only manual synchronization with the smartphone, and a very basic app.
It's probably a similar thing with the new version, solar panel increases the available power but it's still in the uA range and functionalities are very limited, the "full color" lcd has no backlight, GPS use must be limited to a few mins per day, same for heart rate monitoring etc. So in the end a watch with similar functions and a li-ion battery would be smaller, half the price and only need a charge every 6 months. 2h of charge twice a year is far from a constraint... In addition the battery powered watch would allow you to run constant heart rate monitoring, have long GPS sessions like 2 hours of running etc etc if you accept to charge more often.
It's not as bad as before but it still feels like they made the watch because they needed a product to use the technology, and cut down the functionalities until power consumption was low enough to fit the technology. While it should be the opposite, technology should have been improved until it was able to power a smartwatch with "normal" functionalities.
I'm pretty sure many users of the new version will end up removing the watch from their wrist to expose it to the sun, and that it will last way longer than the charging time of a typical smartwatch :D
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For those who haven't yet tried it, platformio has an "arduino" mode where it can program an nRF52840 very much along the lines that you would an arduino. Since it supports the nRF52840, I'd say it's a natural upgrade from the Sandeep Mistry library, which you don't really need to use anymore if you don't want to (though maybe it's still relevant for mySensor's compatability). At least to me, platformio seems much easier to use and much less of a learning curve than Segger Embedded Systems, Eclipse, or MBed. For anyone used to Arduino, it will seem very familiar.
I have read this thread, have bought a few E73-2G4M08S1C modules for experimenting, downloaded platformio and tried to flash it. I recognized I am not able to do it with my STM32 link V2 programmer in platformio. Could somebody summarize what are the current options to flash NRF52840? Is there a way how to use STM32 link V2 or we just need to IDE from Arduino to Platformio and invest into new programmer (DK/BMP)?
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I have read this thread, have bought a few E73-2G4M08S1C modules for experimenting, downloaded platformio and tried to flash it. I recognized I am not able to do it with my STM32 link V2 programmer in platformio. Could somebody summarize what are the current options to flash NRF52840? Is there a way how to use STM32 link V2 or we just need to IDE from Arduino to Platformio and invest into new programmer (DK/BMP)?
@xmonika I like the nRF52840 SDK. It includes an official j-link and can also be used to burn software to any attached nRF52840 by simply dropping the hex file onto the j-link virtual drive. Of all the options, I find it the easiest, but that's me. Other people use and seem to like the st-link or or black magic probe or dodgy copies of the j-link or clones of black magic probe. Different people seem to like/prefer different things. I read that Particle now has a programming tool as well for its Xenon device, which is basically their version of the nRF52840, and I think I may have read that it works with non-Particle nRF52840's as well.
There's also BLIP, which is new and sounds kinda interesting: https://www.crowdsupply.com/electronut-labs/blip
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@NeverDie I think you need to hold it, but it looks there is "coded" holes/slots for helping and correct positioning.
@monte
@monte said in Everything nRF52840:haven't you noticed that mysensors' community which is represented mostly by this forum has become more than just an arduino library?
Hmm, I haven't.. so what's more? Has MySensors been forked to another platform?
@monte said in Everything nRF52840:
People share on this forum many projects that has only mediate connection to mysensors, if any. And many of users of the library in it's current form have outgrowing some of it's limitations, so naturally they will try to find a solution to overcome them and then share with others on this forum.
I'm not the last on bleeding edge, but I didn't notice many mediate connections..Which limitations have been hacked? maybe on the forum, not same on git I think. Thx to PR contributors. But apart from mysensors team, especially one very active contributor that we can thx ;) it's rather rare.
@monte said in Everything nRF52840:
I don't see nothing wrong for mysensors platform to evolve and adopt modern standards and/or protocols. And even if 15.4 is not suitable or just a replacement of mysensors protocol
Not in scope and not supported by mysensors team to switch to a standard, as mysensors is still about its own stack. It's like if you wanted to mix zigbee&mysensors logics (doesn't make sense). So 15.4 is a replacement. Maybe read about it. I'm telling this because I played and playing with 15.4+another mcu, and comparing stacks.. whether switching stack or not. If not, what could be improved, logics to add to mysensors etc.
@monte said in Everything nRF52840:
I think there are people here that will find it useful to read about it. Correct me if I'm wrong but there is no rule against discussing other protocols than mysensors on this forum.
you're right. no rule on this, free to talk. But I preferred to be precise for newcomers who may get confused when reading about nrf52840 in mysensors, that there is no support from team for others stacks, and non-arduino.
Lot of "noobs" don't know what means a rf stack exactly, what logics inside etc, they simply want to use MySensors because it's easy to use, especially when non former dev. That's what would expect someone discovering nrf52840 is supported in MySensors. So this gets completely confusing, external toolchains and using others rf stacks etc.. might end in hundreds of posts with just a few mysensors relevant infos (good luck for newcomers)wasting my time, I won't disturbe your experiments anymore ;)
Good luck and feel free to improve MySensors of course! -
@NeverDie This is a bit of a side-question but to what degree could Arduino's Bluetooth support fulfill the role MySensors plays?
In theory it seems Bluetooth could be a useful smart home communications platform:
- Just like MySensors, Zigbee, Z-wave, it avoids using the IP stack, and generates a separate network for smart devices. This lowers risk to user's home network.
- Lower energy than WiFi. Lower energy than NRF24 too?
- The killer app: it's built into smartphones, tablets and Raspberry Pi's already. No need for an extra dongle.
What I don't know is
- To what extent Bluetooth has useful smart home profiles
- To what extent Arduino devices could present themselves as smart home devices using those profiles.
- To what extent older Bluetooth chips can work with newer device profiles (it would seem a software upgrade should be enough?)
Maybe this should be a separate post :-)
@alowhum said in Everything nRF52840:
To what extent Bluetooth has useful smart home profiles
To what extent Arduino devices could present themselves as smart home devices using those profiles.Well, the BLE has a lot in common with REST. You have to have one or more central devices (clients) which will query peripherals with sensors and actuators (servers). Communication is P2P, but broadcasting is also supported to some extent (various beacons are well known examples).
If thinking about it like a RESTful sevice, there is a number of API which were standardized. They call it profile, like in, for example, the Heart Rate Profile. The standard just assures that any heart rate monitoring device will talk the same protocol as any other one - that's it. I don't think there is many standard profiles for smart home devices (if any). At the same time, there is the Project Connected Home IP.
Of course, there is nothing which may prevent somebody to implement his own interface. If it will be successful enough, it will be later possible to contact the SIG group and promote it to a standard.
Please also note, that for serious boradcasting there is the Mesh. In a nutshell it works similarly to Ethernet switches. Interesting side effect is that it's possible to build a Mesh network physically wide thus delivering packets over long distances. Of course, if you want to go global, the IPv6 will be the right choice to go. It will require a standalone BLE enable router though - it will connect the devices to the Internet.
To what extent older Bluetooth chips can work with newer device profiles (it would seem a software upgrade should be enough?)
As long as they support Bluetooth Low Energy - i.e. version 4.2 or above.
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@monte said in Everything nRF52840:
Found this repo: https://github.com/xriss/nrfx
Gone already ...
@NeverDie said in Everything nRF52840:
@monte Is PineTime the best of the currently available nRF52 watch options? If so, since it's offered at $24.99, I think I may want to order one.
A very interesting project, too bad they are using NRF52832 and not NRF52840, the max SPI speed on ...32 is too low (8MHz) and I'm afraid the LCD refresh will be annoyingly slow :(
@Nca78 said in Everything nRF52840:
A very interesting project, too bad they are using NRF52832 and not NRF52840, the max SPI speed on ...32 is too low (8MHz) and I'm afraid the LCD refresh will be annoyingly slow
It might be also interesting to employ the Sharp LS012B7DD06 which is a round 240x240 6-bit color memory display consuming 11 µW in static mode. It will be far away of the PineTime's $25, but with the CryptoCell, NFC and other stuff it might worth it.
Shall we create a repo? ;-)
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@scalz said in Everything nRF52840:
@NeverDie I think you need to hold it, but it looks there is "coded" holes/slots for helping and correct positioning.
You may want to use TC clip for long-time debugging or odd boards like this:
The idea I settled on is using a micro-usb connector to make my programming connections. It's cheap and the footprint is small.
I've posted about it previously, but it got a lot of pushback over the concern that people will think it's a functional usb and plug it into a charger. However, I won't be forgetting, so it hasn't been a problem for me. I suppose that if I were to hand a device over to a layman, I'd probably plug the connector with a drop of superglue (either that or simply de-solder it), since a layman wouldn't be programming it anyway.
That said, micro-usb connectors aren't super-easy to solder, so I'd like to find something equally tiny that is.
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The idea I settled on is using a micro-usb connector to make my programming connections. It's cheap and the footprint is small.
I've posted about it previously, but it got a lot of pushback over the concern that people will think it's a functional usb and plug it into a charger. However, I won't be forgetting, so it hasn't been a problem for me. I suppose that if I were to hand a device over to a layman, I'd probably plug the connector with a drop of superglue (either that or simply de-solder it), since a layman wouldn't be programming it anyway.
That said, micro-usb connectors aren't super-easy to solder, so I'd like to find something equally tiny that is.
@NeverDie For something which is very generic I'd vote for the Cortex 10 pin debug connector. It is as small as Micro USB, very cheap (you may also do not install the connector itself and left that for other users), versatile (may be angled or straight) and - what's very important - it is standard. And, while in this topic, the bonus: it's compatible out of the box with the nRF52 devkits.
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@NeverDie For something which is very generic I'd vote for the Cortex 10 pin debug connector. It is as small as Micro USB, very cheap (you may also do not install the connector itself and left that for other users), versatile (may be angled or straight) and - what's very important - it is standard. And, while in this topic, the bonus: it's compatible out of the box with the nRF52 devkits.
@Mishka said in Everything nRF52840:
I'd vote for the Cortex 10 pin debug connector
You mean like the connector on this?
https://www.openhardware.io/view/510/Multi-Sensor-TempHumidityPIR-LeakMagnetLightAccelThat's what I started with. But I really only need 5 pins: SWD, SWO, Tx, Rx, and GND, so 5 of the 10 pins are wasted.
I went with the boxed connector, which is huge, to prevent plugging it in wrong. I probably should have gone with the non-boxed connector. Even so, it's still huge.
I could probably get by with just 4 pins by dropping the Rx pin. Thinking back on it now, I don't think I ever actually used the Rx connection. I've definitely used the Tx though for serial print debugging.
I think the easiest/best idea might be just using 4 castellated pads and pressing up against those with a side connector, similar to what TC's edge connector does or what an esp8266 burner does (but ideally with closer spacing):
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@Mishka said in Everything nRF52840:
I'd vote for the Cortex 10 pin debug connector
You mean like the connector on this?
https://www.openhardware.io/view/510/Multi-Sensor-TempHumidityPIR-LeakMagnetLightAccelThat's what I started with. But I really only need 5 pins: SWD, SWO, Tx, Rx, and GND, so 5 of the 10 pins are wasted.
I went with the boxed connector, which is huge, to prevent plugging it in wrong. I probably should have gone with the non-boxed connector. Even so, it's still huge.
I could probably get by with just 4 pins by dropping the Rx pin. Thinking back on it now, I don't think I ever actually used the Rx connection. I've definitely used the Tx though for serial print debugging.
I think the easiest/best idea might be just using 4 castellated pads and pressing up against those with a side connector, similar to what TC's edge connector does or what an esp8266 burner does (but ideally with closer spacing):
)@NeverDie That's right. You may want to use open version which is much smaller indeed.
Also, for nRF52 only three pins are required: SWDIO, SWDCLK, and VTref. All the three are very conveniently located in close proximity on pins 2, 4 and 1:
Such, for a tiny custom board a 2x2 pin header, 1.27 pitch can be used w/o breaking compatibility.
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@NeverDie That's right. You may want to use open version which is much smaller indeed.
Also, for nRF52 only three pins are required: SWDIO, SWDCLK, and VTref. All the three are very conveniently located in close proximity on pins 2, 4 and 1:
Such, for a tiny custom board a 2x2 pin header, 1.27 pitch can be used w/o breaking compatibility.
@Mishka How about this?
https://www.amazon.com/CQRobot-Programmer-Testing-Support-Programmer/dp/B07BWFJL31Either 4 pads on one side or 2 pads on each side of the PCB. Very inexpensive. Not sure if they make a 4 pin clip, but if so, that would be ideal.
Maybe if instead of pads you went for 4 through-holes it would even self-align?
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This is quite clever:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgLEhTSYqL4If you simply stagger the through-holes then a regular block of header pins will fit through and hold itself in place. No pogo pins required.
