Close
0%
0%

Low Power ESP32 Handheld

Pocket sized ESP32 display board with 180µW Always On Display and Gyro Controls

Similar projects worth following
This handheld board is powered by an ESP32 and features a transflective Sharp memory LCD. Similar to my previous Chronio smartwatch the focus of this project is on low power consumption. Using the ESP32's ULP core the board can go into deep sleep with an active display. The software includes a menu interface with a simple RSS reader.

Some of the key features are:
- 400x240px 2.7" SHARP memory display
- MPU6050 for precise inputs (emulating mouse and keyboard)
- 350 mAh LiPo battery with USB charging
- Always On Display with 180 µW power consumption
- 4-way joystick and buttons
- Date and time using built in RTC with NTP sync
- RSS Feed / Website parser

Layout files and Code on GitHub: https://github.com/CoretechR/ESP32-Handheld

  • 1 × SHARP LS027B7DH01A
  • 1 × ESP32 Wroom
  • 1 × MPU6050 Inertial Motion Sensor
  • 1 × 350 mAh 3.7V LiPo

  • Receiving iOS Notifications via BLE

    Max.K07/12/2020 at 10:52 1 comment

    This latest software update adds support for iOS notifications. This way, the ESP32 handheld can be used as a notification display.

    Besides Wi-Fi the ESP32 has integrated Bluetooth and BLE. Similar to a smartwatch, this allows the ESP32 to receive notifications that are broadcast from your phone. On Apple Devices the Apple Notification Center Service (ANCS) makes this possible without the need for any third party software. The only thing left is a bit of code on the ESP32 to subscribe to these messages. Neil Kolban Is responsible for most of the groundwork on the ESP32 BLE libraries. I first became aware of the efforts to support ANCS though an Issue on GitHub. Now, two years later James Hudson (jhud) has released an easy-to-use library.

    Integrating the library into my existing code was simple. An incoming message is shown as a popup on top of the screen. Interactions like answering an incoming phone call are possible in theory but not implemented yet.

    Since Wi-Fi and Bluetooth share the same interface and antenna it's difficult to get them both to work simultaneously. Right now the BLE connection has to be stopped to enable Wi-Fi. I couldn't get rid of a problem where the ESP32 cannot reconnect after switching from Wi-Fi to BLE. Another thing to mention is power consumption. Although BLE should be low energy the ESP32 draws just as much power as when using Wi-Fi.  

    It's still a fun feature that might be helpful to some people.

  • Version 2 - Gyro Pointer!

    Max.K03/19/2020 at 20:38 4 comments

    How do you add keyboard and mouse inputs to a tiny device? With a Gyroscope!

    This new version brings some interesting new feature to the ESP32 handheld while also nearly doubling the standby battery life. 


    Gyro Pointer

    Since I started the project I always wondered how I could integrate some more precise controls like an analog stick. Because of size restrictions I had to settle for the 5-way SMT joystick. For the new revision of the device I first thought about adding a capacitive trackpad but I quickly abandoned the idea. There was just not going to be enough room on the PCB, even when moving the battery. A capacitive or resistive touchscreen is also not widely available for this screen size.
    The approach that I went with instead is a movement sensor for controlling the device. As it turns out a gyro sensor can quite easily be used to emulate a mouse, just be tilting the PCB. This actually is not a novel concept. Many mobile games use gyro sensors for precise aiming, most notably "Ocarina of Time" for the 3DS. To implement this I picked the MPU6050 which is still one of the cheapest (3€) and most commonly available motion sensor. It does not only contain a 3-axis gyro but also an accelerometer and a DMP motion processor that can fuse all 6 axes together. 

    In software making a mouse pointer move with the sensor is as simple as it gets. I just add the gyro value, which is the speed of rotation, to the pointer's x and y coordinates. This way the pointer moves with the device, regardless of its orientation. I added a button to the back of the device that can be used as a shoulder button to enable the gyro movement. When the button is released the device can be rotated without the pointer following, just like lifting up a computer mouse.
    Having a controllable pointer enables lots of cool functionalities. I already added a few "tech-demos" to the firmware:

    A simple drawing app lets you move the brush with the gyro and paint on the screen. I had to get creative with the actual pixel drawing to keep the frame rate high. With every frame the ESP32 saves the canvas area under the brush, then draws the brush and finally rewrites the cached area to the pixel buffer. This way, the entire canvas/pixel buffer doesn't have to be refreshed.


    The gyro pointer can also be used to press buttons on a virtual keyboard. This means that any text can be entered into the device without the need for a physical keyboad. There are lots of possible applications for this, e.g. command lines and writing code directly on the device.


    Better Standby Time

    At less than 100µA the current draw of the device was already acceptable. But it was still bugging me that the voltage regulator wasted almost half the standby power with its 55µA quiescent current. Good regulators are hard to find if you are looking for high current in on mode and low Iq in a package that can be soldered by hand. Thanks to Hackaday.io user Jose Baars suggestion, I switched to the XC6220B33 which has an excellent quiescent current of 8µA while still supplying up to 1A to the ESP32. 

    Power consumption:
    - MPU6050 8µA
    - ESP32 in Standby 10µA
    - LCD: 10µA
    - XC6220 Iq 8µA
    - voltage divider 3.7µA
    - Charge pump Iq 19µA 
    -------------------------
    theroretical total: 58.7µA
    actual total: 56.2µA

    With all parts combined and assembled the new version of the device draws around 56µA in standby. Even when considering that the display needs to be refreshed by the ULP core once per minute the standby time should exceed 200 days. There is still no accurate real time clock (I kind of forgot to add one), so synchronizing with NTP time every few hours costs precious power. The device should still run for more than two months easily.


    Other improvements

    Some minor changes include switching to a USB Type-C port. It is a bit more robust than Micro USB and a cable can be plugged in both ways. Because I didn't like...

    Read more »

  • Low Power Considerations

    Max.K12/24/2019 at 14:28 6 comments

    While the battery can power the handheld for only a few hours, I wanted to include a standby mode that utilizes the low power display. This way the device would be usable as a clock and calendar. There are a few things necessary to keep the display active and the battery life long. Although the memory display does not need constant refreshing over SPI, a >1Hz clock signal must be supplied to its EXTCOMM pin. Otherwise the screen shows burn-in. This means that part of the ESP32 needs to remain active during standby mode.


    At 70-200mA, the ESP32 can be power-hungry with its dual cores and WiFi modem. But not everyone knows that it has some nice power saving features. In sleep mode the ESP32's main cores are powered down, reducing the current to only 10µA. During this, the internal Real Time Clock controller is still active. The RTC itself can't do much, but it can wake the ESP32's third core, the ULP coprocessor. This Ultra Low Power processor can do basic tasks like checking sensors or reading and writing pin states while only needing ~150µA. Exactly what it need for the 1Hz signal. The ULP can be woken up periodically by the RTC using:

    ulp_set_wakeup_period(0, 1000 * 1000);

    For the 1Hz signal the ULP coprocessor has to be programmed in assembler. Luckily Espressif has an example for a blinking LED that does exactly what I wanted:

    https://github.com/espressif/esp-iot-solution/blob/master/examples/ulp_examples/ulp_rtc_gpio/main/ulp/rtcio.S

    The ESP32 can activated by different wakeup sources. For this project GPIO interrupts are needed as the device should wake up with the press of a button. The two external wakeups are ext0 and ext1. While ext0 can only be assigned to one pin, ext1 can be assigned to a map of different pins. There are a few things to consider when using the ULP core: Only the pins that can be accessed by the RTC can be used (RTC GPIO). Also I found that the internal pullup/pulldown setting are not reliable. I used hardware pulldowns for my design.

    // This wakes the ESP32 with buttons on GPIO32 & GPIO33
    #define BUTTON_PIN_BITMASK 0x300000000
    esp_sleep_enable_ext1_wakeup(BUTTON_PIN_BITMASK,ESP_EXT1_WAKEUP_ANY_HIGH);

    I want to update the time every full minute. This can't be done without waking the ESP32 for a short time:

    esp_sleep_enable_timer_wakeup((60-now.tm_sec) * 1000000);

    With the standby mode configured, the ES32 should only draw a few µA with short spikes when the ULP or the main cores are woken up. But there are other components on the board that need to be powered as well. The display itself draws another 10µA but also needs a 5V supply. As the LiPo battery is only at 3.7V a DC-DC converter is needed. After some searching around I found the MCP1640 from Microchip. It's a boost regulator with a quiescent current of just 19µA. The IC is small and only needs a couple of external parts. The 3.3V power supply for the ESP32 was a bigger problem. It turns out that it is hard to find a regulator with a high output current but small quiescent current, that can also be hand soldered. I ended up with the AP2112K, which can supply 600mA with a quiescent current of 55µA. 

    Once I had the actual PCB, testing the real power consumption was also tricky. The shunt resistance for the µA-range on most multimeters is too high to power up the ESP32. And constantly switching between ranges or swapping wires was to tedious. A user on stackexchange came up with a clever solution (https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/340330/measure-wide-range-of-current-800-%c2%b5a-1-5-a/340353#340353): 

    A diode in parallel to the multimeter will limit the voltage drop when the current is high. In sleep mode the diode barely lets current though. This way I was able to measure the power consumption in sleep mode conveniently with my 20$ multimeter. 

    With the ESP32 in sleep mode the current is at around 97µA. 59µA are caused by the 3.3V power...

    Read more »

  • Introduction

    Max.K12/24/2019 at 11:15 0 comments

    Earlier this year Panic, the software studio behind the Untitled Goose Game, introduced their Playdate console. It's a retro handheld device with a monochrome display and a crank as an input device: https://play.date/. I really liked the simplicity of it and decided to make something similar. It was also a chance to improve on my 2016 Chronio Smartwatch concept which features a similar display but only an ATmega328.

    The display board is using the same 2.7" Sharp memory display as the Playdate. These displays only consume a few µAs and because of their in-pixel-memory they don't need constant refreshing. They are also readably under direct sunlight with no need for backlighting.
    As its brains the board is using an ESP32. The dual core chip has enough processing power to drive the display while also featuring WiFi and Bluetooth. And it has a ULP co-processor for low power applications. I decided to include a small 5-way joystick and two buttons to enable simple games. As I wanted the device to work as a bare PCB without 3D-printed parts, a mechanical crank was out of the question.

    The size of the needed PCB is defined by the display and buttons. With the display on the front, the ESP32 and all other components fit nicely on the back of the device. A milled slot enables the display flex cable to go through the PCB and into its connector.

    I was able to reuse some of the parts and circuits from my ESP32 robot but it was challenging to keep the power consumption to a minimum. More on that in a separate project log.

View all 4 project logs

Enjoy this project?

Share

Discussions

litruv wrote 09/22/2022 at 17:39 point

Heyya, looking at making one of these and the only component I can't find is a MCP1640CT-I/CHY

Any suggestions? I'm mainly a Software developer + project looks fun af 

  Are you sure? yes | no

Max.K wrote 09/22/2022 at 19:11 point

Hi, it's crazy how rare these simple parts have become. I have also started desoldering components from older projects. It seems like Digikey has new parts arriving mid October. If you don't want to wait, this German shop has a few in stock:
https://www.reichelt.de/de/en/dc-dc-step-up-switching-regulator-adjustable-0-65-5-5-v-2-0-mcp-1640ct-i-chy-p109735.html I don't know if they support international shipping. The MCP16252T should also work, but it's out of stock anywhere as well.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Nazwa wrote 06/22/2022 at 21:59 point

please add knob similar in audio player (virtual cassete ;-) ) but for walking trought menu

and host usb for normal usb pendrive

and start Yours campaning

  Are you sure? yes | no

sup wrote 04/06/2022 at 11:47 point

this device will be sell in tinde? meybe second rev with aditional step up 0.5V-5V and 2 usb for fuzix

  Are you sure? yes | no

Darian Johnson wrote 09/12/2021 at 03:00 point

Not sure if you're still working on (or monitoring) this project, but just wanted to say "thanks"! I just finished putting together an ESP32-S2 powered IoT display (with a Sharp Memory Display). I use a low powered RTC for the 1HZ signal to the display, and I use cap touch pads instead of buttons. Would welcome any feedback: 

https://hackaday.io/project/178328-newt-always-on-low-power-digital-assistant 

  Are you sure? yes | no

kwapiszon wrote 05/21/2021 at 09:43 point

Palm OS on this will be great. https://pmig96.wordpress.com/2020/09/26/palmos-on-x86-api-porting/

https://github.com/meepingsnesroms/Mu or my favorite https://dmitry.gr/?r=05.Projects&proj=27.%20rePalm

  Are you sure? yes | no

jasmeet wrote 04/21/2021 at 04:20 point

Hi, it's a nice project and I am trying to build it at my home, currently buying all my gear from X-on Electronics since I live in Australia. 

https://www.x-on.com.au

  Are you sure? yes | no

marazm wrote 02/02/2021 at 11:47 point

nice project

(but this is abandomed?)

  Are you sure? yes | no

two2beamup wrote 12/22/2020 at 21:56 point

I wonder if it's possible to use other displays or accelerometers, as both these parts are quite expensive now, and the accelerometer has actually been discontinued by RS.

  Are you sure? yes | no

ee334 wrote 12/03/2020 at 18:10 point

Awesome!

  Are you sure? yes | no

trialexhill wrote 06/11/2020 at 01:02 point

Awesome. The form factor reminds me of my old Rex 5000 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REX_5000), but this would be infinitely more capable! Add me to the list of interested in a crowdsource campaign.

  Are you sure? yes | no

ee334 wrote 12/03/2020 at 18:10 point

and gcc ;-)

  Are you sure? yes | no

pewnosc wrote 06/03/2020 at 07:31 point

In my opinion this kind of software https://hp15c.com/ are a good idea on device.

and similar project https://hackaday.io/project/19909-scientific-calculator

  Are you sure? yes | no

Hunter Irving wrote 05/28/2020 at 21:35 point

The gyro cursor really wowed me - can't wait to see where this project goes!

  Are you sure? yes | no

Jose Baars wrote 01/08/2020 at 22:46 point

For a 3.3V LDO take a look at the XC6220. A few (20-60 mV depending on load) dropout and down to 8 uA when no power is required.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Jan wrote 01/09/2020 at 12:01 point

Nice part, it does automatically switch into low Iq mode under 1mA output load! With 0.2€/pc buying 10 it's not expensive too https://lcsc.com/product-detail/Low-Dropout-Regulators-LDO_Torex-Semicon-XC6220B331MR-G_C86534.html

  Are you sure? yes | no

ostropest wrote 01/10/2020 at 19:05 point

A co myślisz o panelu słonecznym? chodzi o to by cały czas jednak doładowywać. Trzeba by jakas elektronikę dorobic?

  Are you sure? yes | no

kwapiszon wrote 01/08/2020 at 17:04 point

nice

  Are you sure? yes | no

Anthony DiGirolamo wrote 01/07/2020 at 19:54 point

This is amazing, thank you for sharing! I wasn't aware the esp32 had an ULP core. Any interest in making a v2 with a keyboard? I have a prototype board that uses the http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/tca8418.pdf See the project logs here: https://hackaday.io/project/162281-teensy-thumb-keyboard/ 

  Are you sure? yes | no

Max.K wrote 01/07/2020 at 20:38 point

Thank you! I was considering using something like the blackberry keyboard at first. But it would have ended in a much larger device. Maybe I'll be able to include one in  a second version.

  Are you sure? yes | no

ostropest wrote 01/04/2020 at 23:21 point

You are planing create kickstarter/ indeigogo campainin in future?

  Are you sure? yes | no

Max.K wrote 01/07/2020 at 20:29 point

I'm not planning to do that.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Elliot Williams wrote 01/04/2020 at 19:31 point

That is sexy!  The ULP is one of the coolest parts of the ESP32, IMO.  You make great use of it here.  

  Are you sure? yes | no

ostropest wrote 12/24/2019 at 13:50 point

Is possible to add solar panel, for power for screen and meybe for other system.

meybe in bottom (other side than main screen) , small hole for carry on rope.

Please think about more memory for mruby.org it need 400KiB memory and of course more buttons /key ;) 

This is very simmilar idea xircom Rexx [56]000. This is very good idea! http://www.reviewsonline.com/articles/976862308.htm on network are still exist some developers on this machine similar Newton machine.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Max.K wrote 01/03/2020 at 12:29 point

Hi, sorry for not answering earlier. 

A solar panel on the backside would be cool, not sure if this is practical.

Including a hole for a strap is a really good idea for a second version.

I don't know what the requirements for mruby are. 400KB of what - flash or SRAM?

  Are you sure? yes | no

ostropest wrote 01/04/2020 at 23:20 point

Meybe this will be more clarify

https://github.com/kyab/mruby-arduino

https://github.com/mruby-esp32/mruby-esp32

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXvDKb2LTYM

Solar panel on bottom have sense. Make a test this are good start https://blog.voltaicsystems.com/powering-a-raspberry-pi-from-solar-power/ today solar panel are very good in small light

  Are you sure? yes | no

Similar Projects

Does this project spark your interest?

Become a member to follow this project and never miss any updates