Dance radio project with ESP32-ADF 2.8″ LCD display with touchscreen and RGB LEDs disco lights!

ESP32-ADF is a ESP32 development board created for Espressif Audio Framework. It has an audio amplifier, stereo microphones and a build-in programmer.

We created an internet radio project and uploaded on GitHub.

To complete the project you need:

• ESP32-ADF
• USB-CABLE-A-MICRO-1.8M
• LED-STRIPE-8
• MOD-LCD2.8RTP
• UEXTx5

Here is the radio in action:

Unfortunately, it has weak bass sound since the speakers are not mounted in a box.

 

ESP32-ADF Internet Radio example now uses LoBo with 2.8″ TFT LCD and touch screen

 

The Internet Radio demo for ESP32-ADF now includes MOD-LCD2.8RTP and LoBo for UI. Updated version is uploaded on GitHub.

Google assistant, Google DialogFlow, Amazon Alexa and internet radio demo code for ESP32-ADF are uploaded on GitHub

Some demo codes for ESP32-ADF are now uploaded on the GitHub.

Google Assistant demo will allow you to build your very own Google Assistant speaker, display and to integrate these services in your future product.

Internet Radio is preliminary and we still work on the UI to be uploaded later this week.

Amazon Alexa is the GA competitor and you can embed it with your Home assistant and automate your home.

Google Dialogflow is easy way to use Google AI in your products and make them voice controllable. It builds voice to text service and you will receive plain text delivered from the voice the device listen to. This way you can add voice control to every of your products. All you need is internet connection.

The SIP phone demo is also to be uploaded later this week.

Are you ready to play with Do-It-Yourself Alexa Speaker, WiFi SIP phone, WiFi walkie-talkie, Internet Radio player and broadcasting? Then the Open Source hardware ESP32-ADF is the right board to start with!

With ESP32-WROOM-B module with 8MB RAM and 4MB of Flash, two microphones, two 3W speakers, codec, amplifier, Lipo charger, USB with programming, Audio 3.5mm jack, ESP32-ADF board offers everything you need to start playing with Espressif Audio Development Framework.

Today we made our first Alexa prototype:

and we spoke with ESP32-ADF running WiFi SIP phone, you do not need PC to make free calls all around the world to other people with VoIP phones!

Surprisingly there was no any lag caused by the WiFi and it works as good as the commercial wired SIP VoIP phones.

We add now MOD-LCD2.8RTP with touch screen on ESP32-ADF UEXT connector and write some nice graphical UI then will upload the VoIP phone demo code next week.

We do same for the Internet Radio player demo – nice graphical UI, so user can select which radio station to connect to.

 

Participate in our Weekend Brainstorm Discussion and you have chance to win Pioneer-FreedomBox-HSK!

This week we started the sales of Pioneer-FreedomBox-Home-Server-Kits, and got lot of exposure in the social networks. Immediately people start to send us ideas of how to improve and make the product even better.

This is the beauty of the Open Source – everything is open, everyone can check and review the sources and advice what and how can be done better.

Even regular users who has no great knowledge of Software and Hardware contribute with ideas and tips what they miss as features.

We are already thinking for design special hardware which to have four SATA interfaces and allow 2 or 4 HDDs to work in RAID, thus improving the data storage capacity and reliability.

Another direction we think is how to release lower cost version with only SD card, no battery UPS backup and slower Ethernet interface which to get closer to Mr. Moglen (FreedomBox Foundation founder) dream for $29 plug server.

Many people asked why FreedomBox software does not included private e-mail server, but only client. The major problem to implement it is how to keep such service clean, as spammers may compromise your ISP by infecting computers to send emails and your ISP IP addresses to be blacklisted, so you can loose your ability to send e-mails for reasons behind your control. We would love to hear your ideas about this.

We got interesting tip to add possibility two or more Pioneer-FreedomBox-HSK to work in-sync and backup/mirror the data, being physically separated by long distance. The idea is to keep your information safe even if one of the server is stolen, broken or bombed 🙂 This would be easy to do with rsync.

Our challenge for you this weekend is to provoke discussion about what would be useful new feature, which you want to see in Pioneer-FreedomBox-HSK software or  hardware improvement.

You can discuss here on our blog, in Twitter, Facebook or Mastodon.

One Pioneer-FreedomBox-HSK will be given away in Monday to random participant.

Have a nice weekend!

UPDATE-2019-04-30: sorry Monday was part Easter Holidays so we couldn’t update the recap for the Weekend Discussion, but here is summary of your feedback:

About the Software:

1. Number of people requested PiHole to be included. What is PiHole? It’s DNS sinkhole that protects your devices from unwanted content, without installing any client-side software. It’s Network level ad and spyware blocker.
2. Many requested  NextCloud to be add in FreedomBox. It duplicated some of the existing software in FreedomBox.
3. Some requested home Git server to be included, but if you want to work on Open Source project hiding your code in private Home Git may be not best approach.
4. LibreSSL as alternative to OpenSSL.
5. Diaspora pod may be good but I have no idea how much resources it needs.
6. WireGuard as alternative to OpenVPN.
7. IPFS we admit we never hear before for it but it look cool.
8. Snips  this looks like nice open source alternative to Alexa and Google assistant.
9. Btrfs
10. FreshRSS
11. Matrix/Riot
12. HomeAssistant not sure how this relates to FreedomBox targets for distributed Internet and Privacy, but well related to Home server.
13. Bitwarden
14. Federation i.e. two FreedomBoxes to may replicate/backup each others data without having access to each others data.
15. Containerized services (not sure how fast will work virtualization on our current processor and memory).
16. encrypted email server

About the Hardware:

1. RAID.
2. Kill switch to wipe encryption key.
3. Low cost model just SD-card and Ethernet.
4. Dual Ethernet.
5. Option for more RAM.
6. WiFi/Ble this may be a conflict with Debian as they do not allow binary blobs firmware.
7. mSATA / M.2
8. miniPCIe.
9. USB 3.0.
10. Microphone, Speaker.
11. UFS cards support.
12. solar panel power supply support.

Wow a lot to consider 🙂 Thanks for your incredible feedback!

Random.org selected @Benjaminlj@mastodon.social as our winner!

New UART to WIFI chipset will unleash low cost Internet of Things

WiFi infrastructure is everywhere which makes easier to make network of devices connected to WiFi.
There is also great range of WIFI routers with different space coverage and speeds, and as they are mass produced product the prices are at the rock bottom if we have to compare to Zigbee or Bluetooth.
WiFi stack require resources though and not quite good for smallish 8bit populary hobby processors, this is why UART-to-WIFI solutions were made and become popular.
Texas Instruments released CC3000 which cost about $20-25 in single quantities and $10 in volume.
It took no longer and Chinese company Espressif released their ESP8266 highly integrated UART-WIFI bridge IC, it requires just quartz crystal and balun to make WIFI module, their reference design is with just 11 x 12 mm board space!
And of course this comes at Chinese prices: you can buy ESP8266 module in single quantity from Seedstudio for $6.95 or from Alibaba for $5!
On top of this you can easy connect devices to Internet and send and receive data through UART!
This will definitely wipe out the $50-60 Arduino WIFI shields and even Microchip’s MRF24WB0MA etc modules.

We are going definitely to release MOD-ESP8266 which to connect to all our boards with UEXT and give possibility to connect to Internet with simple AT commands!
With MOD-IO2+MOD-ESP8266 for instance anyone could make WIFI enabled relay and Inputs and monitor through web page the inputs and drive relays for extremly low cost!