Greg Davill's Projects

Daikin ESP32 WiFi controller

Sun, 13 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

An endeavour to add WiFi control to ducted air conditioner/heat pump system

d20: Panel Photos

Mon, 18 Jul 2022 22:00:00 +1030

Introduction

Shortly after completing the d20, I revised and fixed the panels so that they could be assembled without requiring the extensive rework to fix the swapped Gate/Source connections.

You can find the updated files here: https://github.com/gregdavill/d20-hardware/tree/main/pcb/led-panels/d20_tri_r0.3 I’ve also released a r1.0 version, which is the same layout, but I’ve updated the SKiDL source for the design so that it correctly produces a BOM, I’ve also added some alternatives to the BOM.

Allwinner S3 SoC: Accelerated h.264

Tue, 12 Jul 2022 21:00:00 +1030

Introduction

I’ve been using an Allwinner S3 SoC for experiments with the FLIR Boson. The description from the website sums the device up nicely:

S3 is a high cost-effective video encoding processor jointly developed by Zhuhai Allwinner Technology Co., Ltd. (“Allwinner”) and Sochip Technology Co., Ltd. (“Sochip”). Its built-in single-core ARM Cortex-A7 runs at 1.2GHz with 1Gbit DRAM (DDR3) , supporting numerous peripheral devices. The Chip package is 234 balls FBGA package, size 11mm x 11mm , suitable for various types of product development. — http://www.sochip.com.cn/s3/index.php?title=What_is_S3_%3F

MSP430 custom ezFET Lite

Tue, 08 Mar 2022 21:00:00 +1030

Summary

Texas Instruments has a range of 16 bit microcontrollers, the MSP430. To program these require what they call a Flash Emulation Tool (FET).

Thankfully all their affordable development kits contain a small stripped down FET, known as the ezFET Lite. TI has open sourced this design and provide both the firmware and the schematics. I was given a tag-connect cable as a giveaway through the 43oh, MSP430 community forum. I decided to create a custom PCB to connect directly to the tag-connect cable.

Dell XPS13 RAM Upgrade (7390)

Sat, 20 Nov 2021 21:59:39 +1030

I’d recently bought a new XPS13 7390 (non 2-in-1) laptop. I had bought the 8GB variant, how hard could it be to upgrade?

Boson Frame Grabber Part 6

Wed, 17 Nov 2021 17:56:32 +1030

Still alive? 🪦

Yes, it’s true this project did get dropped for awhile, it’s been about 3 years since the last blog post.

2,400 LED icosahedron (20 sided)

Sat, 09 Jan 2021 21:00:00 +1030

A tennis ball sized, 20 sided, LED clad, regular polyhedron

Introduction

The major challenge of making a smaller LED cube in my opinion is the LED panels. Commercially available panels are designed for video walls and typically made at 64x64 pixel as a minimum size. This seems to be a good trade off between cost/complexity/light efficiency. On my previous project mini-led-cube I had overcome one of the major hurdles of creating a smaller cube, because I had designed and built my own custom high density* LED panels.

Miniature 3,456x LED Cube

Sat, 13 Jun 2020 21:00:00 +1030

Background

Having seen a few projects creating LED cubes from panels used for LED video-walls I knew I had to try to build one myself. If you haven’t seen these before here are some examples I’ve seen. along with some notable people involved in their creation: @zzaurak, @1HappyTeddybear, @esden, @kernlbob.

These cubes are all built using COTS video wall panels. The mains ones I’ve seen used are in the 64x64 pixel size and either 2.5mm (P2.5) or 2mm (P2) pixel pitch. These panels feature a low cost multiplexing system on the back of the PCB, and a dense array of LEDs on the front. Surprisingly these panels are made surprisingly cheap, with panels from China costing $20-$40 range, which for 4096 RGB LEDs is very cheap!

Boson Frame Grabber Part 5

Sat, 03 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Details about the SoC architecture in the Boson Frame Grabber

Boson Frame Grabber Part 4

Sun, 09 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The new hardware for the Boson Frame Grabber will be based around the Lattice ECP5 family. Lattice make available a free IDE for this FPGA assuming you are not using a model with embedded SERDES. Since we are not, it’s perfect for our application.

Boson Frame Grabber Part 3

Fri, 22 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

In this part I want to talk about the firmware, or code, this device will need in order to operate as I want.

Boson Frame Grabber Part 2

Mon, 04 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

In part 1, I discussed the version 1 prototype I had built. Just after ordering the PCBs for that project I decided to start thinking about miniaturizing the hardware.

Boson Frame Grabber Part 1

Sun, 03 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Designing a thermal camera with the boson