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• Step 6: Enclosure

  h4rdc0der • 03/19/2024 at 14:25 • 0 comments

  The 3D-printed enclosure has recently arrived. Unfortunately, I made a mistake and the mounting holes are on the reverse side. 

  The housing consists of two parts. The larger part can be seen in the photo and the other part is the sliding cover. The printed circuit board is attached to the housing with two screws.
  

• Step 5: Minor improvements

  h4rdc0der • 03/06/2024 at 22:42 • 0 comments

  There's still some work remaining in the firmware, before the device can be mounted on the wall.

  Some latest improvements include:
  

  • Implemented playlist support in Audio component. Now TTS can be mixed together with flash-hosted files. Example usage - alarm jingle followed by TTS audio description.
  • Implemented proper GPIO cleanup on Audio component destruction.
  • Implemented proper GPIO cleanup on Temp Sensor destruction.
  • General stability improvements, including audio decoding library updates.
  • Improvements in ksIotFrameworkLib targeting Device Portal (device info, input data types) and device config storage.

• Step 4 - Code cleanup and more

  h4rdc0der • 02/22/2024 at 21:04 • 0 comments

  Recently I have been mainly involved in firmware development.

  I've introduced few smart tricks:

  • CPU is set to 240 MHz only when decoding audio stream and then goes back to 80 MHz when no more data is in the buffer.
  • New LED driving mode - using pullup/pulldown to significantly decrease the amount of emitted light.
  • Automatic baud rate detection, which means the device is able to talk at 57600 and 115200 and will doscover the speed automatically.

  I have also improved some things in the framework.

  The other thing I managed to achieve is OTA Zigbee Gateway Firmware update, which turned out to be simple to integrate into the Elelabs Flasher (added raw mode for flash and serial over LAN).

   Now the firmware update is really simple:
  

  1. The user starts the device portal.
  2. After logging in, zb-bootloader command is issues by the user on the terminal tab.
  3. The user starts python script to flash the .gbl file via xmodem protocol (uart over network)
  4. The module is restarted using zb-reboot terminal command.

  I have also managed to properly setup MFG tokens, so the device is properly displayed on HA subpage.

• Step 3 - Running up the stack

  h4rdc0der • 02/09/2024 at 15:45 • 0 comments

  Looks like I'm on a good streak!

  After many hours of debugging all the stuff, I managed to fix audio issue in external library (https://github.com/schreibfaul1/ESP32-audioI2S/issues/626). Now the audio startup noise is gone.

  I've also ordered smart bulb, which paired flawlessly. Check this out!

• Step 2 - Forming it all up

  h4rdc0der • 02/08/2024 at 22:35 • 0 comments

  The application skeleton for ESP32 (main CPU) was built on my ksIotFrameworkLib, which provides some fancy stuff like device configuration portal, MQTT support, LED management etc.

  Then the E-180 module has been studied in relation to firmware update. The idea was to use ESP32S3 as a proxy to flash the module. It was challenging since there are a plethora of possible solutions.

  After some trial and error, the module was flashed with the help of esp32-blackmagic, which supports the SWD protocol in addition to being primarily used for remote on-chip debugging. It was necessary to change settings to match PCB design IO numbers for SWD IO and CLK lines.

  Here's the link for EFR32 firmware blobs:
  https://github.com/cziter15/EZSP-Firmware

• Step 1 - Solder and verify

  h4rdc0der • 02/08/2024 at 21:42 • 0 comments

  The board has been assembled to test the circuit's functionality. Zigbee module was mounted on the board right after DAC verification.

  The most challenging part was soldering the DAC chip and then, a bit easier was USB-C soldering.

  Quick examination confirmed correct voltage generation, DAC functioning, but noise during playback startup.

  Here's a little demo:

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