Posts made by Happy Hippo

I bought a lot of M5Stack stuff probably around 2019 or so. I have sensors, sticks, cameras, cars, cables, etc. It dawned on me today, as I was charging my regular LiPo batteries, that some of the M5Stack things had batteries in it too. I opened up the bin that had my stuff in it and I think most of the batteries are very low. I am charging some (in a metal ammunition can, because I don't trust charging low LiPo batteries). I also don't trust LiPo batteries that have been recharged after being low. I see over the years, that a lot of people have asked about replacement batteries but I don't see anyone from M5 answering it. I feel that probably it would cost me just as much to replace batteries as buying new M5 stuff. And I'm not sure where to get replacements that fit. Am I right on this? I probably will just throw the stuff back in the bin and work on the other ESP32 boards I have. Take care everyone. P.S, One thing that did work without recharging was my blue M5 camera. I recharged that a little too, but go figure. P.S.S. What's the best way, without writing a program, to measure the battery voltage? Are the plus and minus wires in the Grove connector equal to the battery voltage when it is turned off? I am measuring 3.8 V on the camera on those pins, so it seems like it could be the battery voltage.

I just received M5StickC Puppy. My concerns about lack of battery charging instructions is true for this product as well. I ran the Arduino example program. What I discovered was that one of the servos does not work. Three of the servers spin freely but the one malfunctioning one is frozen in place. When I hook another servo to it, that one is working correctly. So the problem is just with the servo. Can M5Stack company send me a new servo with a short lead so that I don't have to cut the wires on my own servos and crimp pins on them? Quite frankly, my expectations for quality is not met by most of the products I received.

Please don't take my issue #4 as a criticism of your efforts. You are quite active in your participation in this community and your help is greatly appreciated. Are you a M5Stack employee or are you taking on the documentation independently? It seems like the company should have more personnel assigned to the documentation. The products are not as fun to use if you don't know how to use them.

Just got the M5StickC Yun. Ran the example Arduino code (tweaked to change temperature to Fahrenheit). Looks like someone made the magnets strong enough to actually hold (I like strong magnets). This unit has the same issue that the ENV hat has. The temperature is about 5 deg too high. Presumably, it is picking up heat from the M5StickC. The relative humidity is off by about 5%. And the pressure is about 4000 Pascals too low. This unit should probably have had a motion sensor with it so that the LEDs are not unnecessarily on.

I should be able to modify the Arduino example to connect to the national time website and display time too, right? Also, maybe if I push the button, it can connect to national weather service and get outside temperature for where I live. Is that hard to do? I did the time thing already on a separate esp32 chip.

The other unexpected advantage of this is that I can use it to prove to my wife that the temperature is hot enough and I don't have to turn up the thermostat :).

Just received M5StickC Beetle C. I was able to run the Arduino example and use the wifi page to control it. Here are few observations: 1) Wheels are attached very loosely and easily fall off. Are they supposed to be glued on? 2) Seems like there should be a guide or some feature to keep the M5StickC on the Beetle C better. Seems to be able to wiggle loose, especially if you are pressing buttons. 3) Having to slide the switch to the left to turn on the BeetleC seems non-standard. Maybe it would be nice if a small LED was lit when the unit it turned on. 4) There are no instructions on how to charge the battery. I have to assume that if I have the M5StickC plugged into it and the USB cable plugged in, the Beetle's battery is charging as well as the M5StickC battery. When the M5StickC battery charge is full does the battery charge on the Beetle stop? Do I have to have the Beetle turned on? 3) Documentation for how to use the device is missing, outside of running the Arduino example. One can glean a lot of control syntax from the Arduino example but are there any other features to make use of? One nice one would be to be able to see what the Beetle's battery voltage is. At any rate, it'd be nice if there was good documentation. That issue is common to alot of the M5Stack products. 5) The control app is nice but having to control both wheels separately seems awkward. Probably be better if there was just a simple speed, straight,backward,left,right,spin left, spin right interface. None of these issues are enough to say the product is no good but they detract from how good the product could be. Probably the most irritating issue is that two of the wheels fall off very easily. I think I need to get the super glue out. The second most irritating issue to me is in regard to the unknown care and feeding of the Beetle's battery.

@vogonjelc The Arudino libraries are quite easy to find. https://github.com/m5stack/M5StickC

There are alot of examples on it.

Here's a site with some projects:

https://github.com/eggfly/M5StickCProjects

@kris I don't have this module but I thought you would send a number, N, up to 4095 and the output voltage would be 3.3 V * N/4096. So I don't understand why you are sending a value in units of percent. Maybe I'm taking your comment too literally.

Also, another thing that confuses me is that the voltage being fed into the DAC from the Grove port is supposedly 5 V, so wouldn't the output of the DAC be 0 to 5V, not 0 to 3.3 V?

I'm a chemical engineer, not an electrical engineer, but in the schematic it looks like there is nothing that is regulating the voltage from 5 V to 3.3 V. The LM321MFX looks like a unity gain buffer. Hopefully, someone with more knowledge will enlighten me.

Anyone figure out how to stream the M5Camera to the M5Go? I can easily stream the M5Camera to my Iphone or Android tablet. I only found one Arduino based project that did it, but I couldn't get it to work. On the same site, https://www.instructables.com/id/M5Cam-X-M5Stack/, he does a project using esp-idf. On that one, I couldn't get past the problem that the idf.py program is in Python 2 and I have Python 3. I would prefer to either use UIFlow or Arduino, and not to add yet another tool in the mix.

On the Arduino program I tried, it stops at
M5Stack initializing...OK

I just bought a TOF unit sensor. I ran the test example on it. I see the distance value jumping around. It says on the M5Stack.com TOF site, that if the performance of the TOF is unreliable, one needs to bypass the two MOSFETs. I opened up mine and see that mine has not been modified. However, in the TOF site, it has I cannot use 5V on the Grove port. I assume it is saying this because the MOSFETs would not be there. How do I get 3.3 V to this unit I'm using a M5Go.

I have a noobie question. I just got the M5Go kit. So I attached the Grove HUB that it came with to PortB. To the HUB, I attached the PIR sensor unit (using pin 36) and the RGB unit (using pin 26). I modified the example PIR.ino code to make a beep sound when motion is detected and to also light the RGB LED. It works great.

But now I'm wondering what else I could hook up to the HUB? There is another empty socket. Since there are only 2 pins in Port B, I really can't hook up anything else (unless I wanted to hook up a duplicate sensor unit that reacted the same way), right?

I got it from Banggood. They are telling me I need pictures of the packaging, which I don't have anymore. So I will be really mad if I have to lose money on this.

What is the shop? Where I purchased the unit?

@m5stack No green lights are lighting no matter what I try.

@lukasmaximus Thanks, but I tried that already. No Power. My original question is what does the solid red LED on the base mean when it is plugged in? Charging? Finished charging? Charging problem? When I charge the Fire by itself, it blinks while charging. I've had the base plugged in for many hours but the LED is solid red. I took apart the base to see if anything was disconnected. There is not anything obvious wrong. The battery is very sticky though. Is it supposed to be?

How do I get a replacement? As this is not usable.

@happy-hippo didn't load this picture in the last post for some reason:

@m5stack I thought the unit was preloaded with a program. When I turn on the Fire part, it looks like it is trying to start a program.

I looks like it can't do anything because it is not receiving any data from the base unit. The base unit is not powering up (no green leds).

![0_1573526893942_M5Stack-bala-bottom.jpg](/assets/uploads/files/1573526896639-m5stack-bala-bottom-resized.j

@m5stack I don't think it is working correctly. When I push the button on the base, as indicated by the arrow on the picture, nothing happens. When I have the base plugged into USB, the red light is steady on. The top of the base feels very warm.

I notice that when I put the M5Stack Fire on top of the balance car base, I can see a substantial gap. Is that supposed to be that way? (see picture). Also, I have the same problem with the charging cable with pogo pins on it. The charging cable does not stay connected. Seems like the pogo pins are stronger than the magnets. Is there some trick to using that charging cable?!

The documentation on this M5Stack Balance car is terrible. I tried the quickstart directions (turn on M5Stack Fire then turn on base). The Fire powers up, but the base does not. There is supposed to be green LEDs lighting up on the bottom? I don't see anything written where you even have to charge the battery in the base! Do you charge it by itself? Do you charge it with the Fire on top of it? How do you know it's charging?

I assume you can charge the battery in the base by itself. So I plugged it into a USB supply. There is a sold red LED light on the right. The left LED (I think that might be an LED) is off. Since the right LED is solid and not blinking, does that mean the battery is fully charged? Can you power the base by itself (without the Fire on top)? When I press the base power button, nothing happens. Can you power the base on while it is charging? I do feel the top of the base getting very warm as I have it plugged in.

In my ENV Hat, the i2C address for the BMP280 is 0x76. So you can address it there. I found for the ENV hat (for the M5StickC) the temperature is too high because the device itself is hotter than the room. I believe that also affects the humidity. The humidity sensor is very sensitive, so it's hard to tell. Breathing on it will raise the reading by alot (rightly so). The accuracy of the pressure sensor is supposed to be 12 Pa, but I found it to be more like 275 Pa off. When I tested the sensor without being attached to the M5StickC, I found the temperature to be accurate. The BMP also has a temperature sensor on it, which when deattached from the device is also accurate. All these findings were done on the Arduino IDE, not Micropython.