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User Projects / Code Examples / Re: Virtual Pet
« Last post by Ben Rose on January 28, 2019, 01:44:11 PM »Just to clarify, getting started would just require TinyScreen+, no TinyDuino needed since TinyScreen+ has a built in processor/USB 
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General Discussion / Re: Modification to power TinyZero with Alkaline batteries
« Last post by Ben Rose on January 28, 2019, 01:42:20 PM »Hi- yes, ignoring U2, operation is safe with 5V on the battery input, including R8(1M resistor will pull up to the internal protection diode on AD4). With U2 in place, you should not have problems(it's above 4.2V, so it will not try to charge, but below 6V so it shouldn't cause damage), but the datasheet does not specify operation for this condition(5v on VBAT) so it would be safest to remove it.
Thanks,
Ben
Thanks,
Ben
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Tiny Arcade / Re: Cabinet Art Template
« Last post by Ben Rose on January 28, 2019, 01:04:33 PM »Sorry! Missed this. Attached the latest cut and graphics outline files. The first file is offset 0.1mm for laser cutting(assuming 0.2mm beam), the second is not. The graphics file can be imported to most vinyl cutter design software etc.
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General Discussion / Modification to power TinyZero with Alkaline batteries
« Last post by buchankn on January 24, 2019, 03:50:45 PM »I'm planning a project that will use an alkaline battery (I can't use a lipo battery for this use-case) with a 5v step up converter to power a TinyZero processor.
Looking at the schematic, it looks like if I remove U2 (MCP73831) from the TinyZero board, that I should be able to plug in the 5V from the step-up converter into the board, and everything should work. It looks like Q1 would protect the battery from power coming from USB.
Is this correct? What about VBATT coming in through R8 to AD4? Is it ok to have 5~5.5V here?
Thanks!
Looking at the schematic, it looks like if I remove U2 (MCP73831) from the TinyZero board, that I should be able to plug in the 5V from the step-up converter into the board, and everything should work. It looks like Q1 would protect the battery from power coming from USB.
Is this correct? What about VBATT coming in through R8 to AD4? Is it ok to have 5~5.5V here?
Thanks!
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User Projects / Code Examples / Re: Virtual Pet
« Last post by mjculross on January 20, 2019, 04:33:46 PM »You should consider using the TinyDuino (processor...get the LiPo battery version for onboard battery management) with the TinyScreen+ (96x64 pixel full-color display) as a minimum, which could be combined with the prototyping board for buttons/speaker/rumble/etc. For future BT connectivity, the BTLE module could also be added to the stack. Personally, I have found the TinyDuino/TinyScreen+ combo to be very easy to program. Look for the excellent tutorials to get you started & good luck !! Mark J Culross KD5RXT
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User Projects / Code Examples / Virtual Pet
« Last post by CoCoHimself on January 20, 2019, 01:10:36 AM »I did some searching and didn't find much on creating a virtual pet. With the products TC(or another) has available what should I get to make a Tamagotchi like game. Just need 3 buttons. This a big project for me from the hardware side and programming side. Any extra ideas would be nice, maybe some kinds of "rumble" vibration feature would be cool. BT connectivity to a possible 2nd unit. I'd like to keep it as small as possible.
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TinyDuino / TinyZero BLE Codebender
« Last post by vpete on January 19, 2019, 08:26:43 PM »Hi, hoping to get some confirmation on whether this code is valid for the TinyZero - https://codebender.cc/sketch:91073#TinyShield_NRF8001_BLE_Example.ino
It notes that it 'Now supports TinyScreen+/SAMD21 boards'. When selecting the board in codebender, I am using TinyDuino, since TinyZero is not an option, and getting an error 'Out of sync'.
Thank you!
It notes that it 'Now supports TinyScreen+/SAMD21 boards'. When selecting the board in codebender, I am using TinyDuino, since TinyZero is not an option, and getting an error 'Out of sync'.
Thank you!
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Tiny Arcade / Re: Need help setting up Tiny Arcade as a video player
« Last post by djb_rh on January 14, 2019, 02:14:52 PM »EDIT: Nevermind, I found the instructions w. the external boards manager link
Hi Laveréna, thank you for the reply
I think I'll attempt the Menu approach, to also have some games on the "TV"... I have a small challenge in that I can't seem to figure out how to get the tiny screen to show up as a target board in the Arduino IDE... The Blink example that I initially wrote to it was using the "Arduino pro or pro mini" setting... I tried looking in the boards manager, but can't find anything related to the Tinycircuits board (sorry, my aruino skills are pretty non existant, so its all pretty new to me).
The tutorial you still need is this one:
https://tinycircuits.com/blogs/learn/158833543-tinyscreen-setup
It can be annoying to find somehow, but this is the one that shows you how to setup the Arduino IDE to find the boards you need it to find. Note you need to install TWO boards *and* one Library. I did it yesterday after much digging and got my TinyArcade playing a video off an SD card.
Note that for some reason, the define doesn't seem to work to set it in "arcade" mode. I simply commented out the ifdef's specific to the arcade mode, which turn the screen flip back off (my videos were upside down with a straight compile). Also, by default the code puts a tiny little menu up over your video for a bit (basically letting you know you can cycle through the videos with the left/right joystick, I think) even if you only have one video. I was too lazy to code this to not happen when there's only one video, and simply commented out the "printNicely" statements and it disappeared.
--Donnie
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TinyDuino / Re: Bluetooth BLE ST shield sketch loop locks up
« Last post by jakehenry41kc on January 13, 2019, 04:32:36 AM »I ran another test just now using the BLEServoExample.ino project that was recently added to the blogs section of TinyCircuits website. I got the same problem when running that example code as well as with JUST the UARTPassthrough example.
An important thing to note is that the main sketch loop continues to run but the call to aciloop() is either throwing a non-catchable error is not detecting input if Bluetooth is sent too fast. For examples sake I am sending a max of a 4 byte integer every 16ms for a total max of 240 bytes per second in the worst case scenario. The BLE code will run for a short (random) time period but eventually stop detecting input.
So basically:
My suspicion is that there is some kind of error occurring deep inside the UART.ino portion of the project that does not cause the main loop to stop, but causes all future RX_Characteristic writes from an external bluetooth server to be ignored. I am not really sure where to go from here.
An important thing to note is that the main sketch loop continues to run but the call to aciloop() is either throwing a non-catchable error is not detecting input if Bluetooth is sent too fast. For examples sake I am sending a max of a 4 byte integer every 16ms for a total max of 240 bytes per second in the worst case scenario. The BLE code will run for a short (random) time period but eventually stop detecting input.
So basically:
- the main loop is running verfied via a SerialPrint on every loop after the error state occurs
- call to aciloop is not changing the value of ble_rx_buffer_length variable to non-zero
- most likely not filling the ble_rx_buffer either
My suspicion is that there is some kind of error occurring deep inside the UART.ino portion of the project that does not cause the main loop to stop, but causes all future RX_Characteristic writes from an external bluetooth server to be ignored. I am not really sure where to go from here.
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TinyDuino / Re: Bluetooth BLE ST shield sketch loop locks up
« Last post by jakehenry41kc on January 11, 2019, 01:24:00 AM »Hi Ben,
Thanks for the support on the issues I've been having I really appreciate it.
I removed the delay and the problem did not go away.
Even if I remove the call to moveAllServos from within the loop() the sketch freezes if I send bluetooth too fast. I also tried without loading the servo drivers in the code as well.
The sketch freezes even if I merely read the bluetooth data and print it to SerialMonitorInterface with no servo operation whatsoever. This is a turning out to be a pretty large hurdle for the project I am on. I tried batching multiple pulse values into a single string message, sending at a lower freq, and parsing them out in sequence on the Arduino side in hopes that I could do it that way, but to no avail. I can't seem to get around the need for high frequency so that I can get smooth servo movement at mid-to-low speeds. As it stands sending at a rate higher than 50ms results in rather jittery servo operation.
Do you have any other suggestions? The problem appears to be isolated to Bluetooth comms with the BLE ST shield. There is no correlation to anything regarding when the comms drop out. Its intermittent and occurs at random periods of time. I am supplying a steady 5.2V of current to the shield stack at all times even under load from the servos.
I am not sure if you have a test setup at TinyCircuits or not but this problem is pretty easily reproducible, atleast on my set of shields, if you want to observe for yourself.
Look forward to hearing from you.
Thanks,
Jake
Thanks for the support on the issues I've been having I really appreciate it.
I removed the delay and the problem did not go away.
Even if I remove the call to moveAllServos from within the loop() the sketch freezes if I send bluetooth too fast. I also tried without loading the servo drivers in the code as well.
The sketch freezes even if I merely read the bluetooth data and print it to SerialMonitorInterface with no servo operation whatsoever. This is a turning out to be a pretty large hurdle for the project I am on. I tried batching multiple pulse values into a single string message, sending at a lower freq, and parsing them out in sequence on the Arduino side in hopes that I could do it that way, but to no avail. I can't seem to get around the need for high frequency so that I can get smooth servo movement at mid-to-low speeds. As it stands sending at a rate higher than 50ms results in rather jittery servo operation.
Do you have any other suggestions? The problem appears to be isolated to Bluetooth comms with the BLE ST shield. There is no correlation to anything regarding when the comms drop out. Its intermittent and occurs at random periods of time. I am supplying a steady 5.2V of current to the shield stack at all times even under load from the servos.
I am not sure if you have a test setup at TinyCircuits or not but this problem is pretty easily reproducible, atleast on my set of shields, if you want to observe for yourself.
Look forward to hearing from you.
Thanks,
Jake