New user needs direction



  • Hello, I have some LED strip visualizations projects i built in the Arduino IDE for Ardiono Nano boards that I recently ported over to ESP32. I bought a M5Stack to play with because i thought the graphical interface would be nice to control modes for the LED visualizations and sequences. So, can anyone point me in the right direction for creating a simple interface on the M5stack to integrate with my existing code? Or, would it make sent to try and port over to micropython/FlowUI? I would worry that the code wouldn't run fast enough on micropython for some of my visualizations.

    Any advice would be appreciated.



  • @lanman1 said in New user needs direction:

    Hello, I have some LED strip visualizations projects i built in the Arduino IDE for Ardiono Nano boards that I recently ported over to ESP32. I bought a M5Stack to play with because i thought the graphical interface would be nice to control modes for the LED visualizations and sequences. So, can anyone point me in the right direction for creating a simple interface on the M5stack to integrate with my existing code? Or, would it make sent to try and port over to micropython/FlowUI? I would worry that the code wouldn't run fast enough on micropython for some of my visualizations.

    Any advice would be appreciated.

    I am not a user of micropython/FlowUI and I do not want to make comment on that. However, I am using Arduino IDE for almost all of my projects. And when I ported my application from Ardunio Nano to ESP8266 or ES32 based M5Stack cores the natural option is to stick with the C++ of Arduino IDE. In your particular application, I think you have to modify the pin address, etc. Good luck.



  • @lanman1 said in New user needs direction:

    Hello, I have some LED strip visualizations projects i built in the Arduino IDE for Ardiono Nano boards that I recently ported over to ESP32. I bought a M5Stack to play with because i thought the graphical interface would be nice to control modes for the LED visualizations and sequences. So, can anyone point me in the right direction for creating a simple interface on the M5stack to integrate with my existing code? Or, would it make sent to try and port over to micropython/FlowUI? I would worry that the code wouldn't run fast enough on micropython for some of my visualizations.

    Any advice would be appreciated.

    My book is still work in progress but I have got the RGB/neopixel functions in UIFlow finished.
    http://ajbryant.co.uk/UIFLOW/quickblockref.pdf



  • Thanks all for the insight. I've looked at the flowUI and at making an interface in the Arduino IDE. The flowUI is really easy with great looking results but I really doubt I can get the frame rates where I'd like them in an interpreted language. I also think that writing an interface natively in the Arduino IDE would have a big impact on the frame rates as well. I may have to look at some co-processor arrangement where flowUI Handles the higher level functions and issues commands to a procesessor handling the IO.



  • @lanman1 I suggest you to use PlatformIO IDE -- it is more sophisticated to develop and quickly when you rebuild (because have a nice cache system).



  • @lanman1 said in New user needs direction:

    Thanks all for the insight. I've looked at the flowUI and at making an interface in the Arduino IDE. The flowUI is really easy with great looking results but I really doubt I can get the frame rates where I'd like them in an interpreted language. I also think that writing an interface natively in the Arduino IDE would have a big impact on the frame rates as well. I may have to look at some co-processor arrangement where flowUI Handles the higher level functions and issues commands to a procesessor handling the IO.

    You would be correct with processing as the arduino allows access to all 3 of the esp32's cores where as micropython code runs on one core, the interpreter runs on the other and the 3rd, the ULP core is inaccessible.



  • PlatformIO, is that the one that uses Visual Studio? Do you know if its compiled or interpreted?

    **Nevermind, I looked it up, I'm not sure what this gets me over the Arduino IDE that helps with making a menu/control interface.



  • @ajb2k3 said in New user needs direction:

    @lanman1 said in New user needs direction:

    Thanks all for the insight. I've looked at the flowUI and at making an interface in the Arduino IDE. The flowUI is really easy with great looking results but I really doubt I can get the frame rates where I'd like them in an interpreted language. I also think that writing an interface natively in the Arduino IDE would have a big impact on the frame rates as well. I may have to look at some co-processor arrangement where flowUI Handles the higher level functions and issues commands to a procesessor handling the IO.

    You would be correct with processing as the arduino allows access to all 3 of the esp32's cores where as micropython code runs on one core, the interpreter runs on the other and the 3rd, the ULP core is inaccessible.

    Thanks again for your time and insight. I'm really impresses with the M5Stack, I have a lot of learning to do.