3 ms·

Just stay booted and use a lower power microcontroller … 105mA … that’s not the right order of magnitude

by jtrueb 2y ago

award_ 2y ago
I don't understand what this means exactly, could you please elaborate?
- jtrueb 2y ago
  I’m sure there are others, but as mentioned elsewhere in this thread ESP32 or NRF70 could take care of this for a lot less (off of bare metal or RTOS if you just need WiFi and Camera.)
  - m00x 2y ago
    A good reason would be the lack of support for MIPI for the camera.
declan_roberts 2y ago
Every single person is reading this with a voice in their head asking "why not use an esp32 et al?" But of course the article is good enough because it's interesting, even if it's not the right tool for the job.
- nextlevelwizard 2y ago
  Answer is simple: speed of development. I am (sort of) in a same boat as the author. I have a silly little project that takes pictures that I PoC/mock-ed with RPi Zero. It does use battery, but I am not overly concerned with battery life - however boot time is killer. It takes loooong time to boot and be ready. However I wrote all the code in an afternoon and it just worked. I could use a higher level language (Python) to clue in all the C libraries that are used to talk with my camera, screen, and wifi stack. I know that I could achieve way better battery life and boot time by switching to ESP32, which is why I ordered one the day of after I got my PoC working. The parts have sat 9 months in my projects bin. I did write the basics of getting the image bytes off of the camera, but after that I couldn't find the motivation to continue. I already have a working version of the thing I wanted to make. It does everything I want already. Why spend bunch of time figuring out the way more esoteric libraries and actually try to implement everything (again) in C just to get a bit better battery life and boot time? Of course in a "production" system it would be very weird and suboptimal to continue using RPi after this point, but for a small one off or even low run project any extra development effort feels like a waste. I should dig up my project and see if I could flip some config bits and get the boot time lower, I'd be extremely happy with anything sub 10 seconds and then I could completely burry the EPS32 idea as redundant.
  - raihansaputra 2y ago
    OTOH if you do want to use the ESP32, I find using AI assistance is great to help translate codebases/programs/apps across languages/usecases (or outright generate it).
    - nextlevelwizard 2y ago
      While I am sure nothing is more optimized and battery conserving than C code hallucinated by an LLM, I really prefer writing my code my self when I work with my personal projects

Just stay booted and use a lower power microcontroller … 105mA … that’s not the right order of magnitude

by jtrueb 2y ago

Just stay booted and use a lower power microcontroller … 105mA … that’s not the right order of magnitude

award_ 2y ago

I don't understand what this means exactly, could you please elaborate?

jtrueb 2y ago
I’m sure there are others, but as mentioned elsewhere in this thread ESP32 or NRF70 could take care of this for a lot less (off of bare metal or RTOS if you just need WiFi and Camera.)
- m00x 2y ago
  A good reason would be the lack of support for MIPI for the camera.

declan_roberts 2y ago

Every single person is reading this with a voice in their head asking "why not use an esp32 et al?" But of course the article is good enough because it's interesting, even if it's not the right tool for the job.

nextlevelwizard 2y ago
Answer is simple: speed of development. I am (sort of) in a same boat as the author. I have a silly little project that takes pictures that I PoC/mock-ed with RPi Zero. It does use battery, but I am not overly concerned with battery life - however boot time is killer. It takes loooong time to boot and be ready. However I wrote all the code in an afternoon and it just worked. I could use a higher level language (Python) to clue in all the C libraries that are used to talk with my camera, screen, and wifi stack. I know that I could achieve way better battery life and boot time by switching to ESP32, which is why I ordered one the day of after I got my PoC working. The parts have sat 9 months in my projects bin. I did write the basics of getting the image bytes off of the camera, but after that I couldn't find the motivation to continue. I already have a working version of the thing I wanted to make. It does everything I want already. Why spend bunch of time figuring out the way more esoteric libraries and actually try to implement everything (again) in C just to get a bit better battery life and boot time? Of course in a "production" system it would be very weird and suboptimal to continue using RPi after this point, but for a small one off or even low run project any extra development effort feels like a waste. I should dig up my project and see if I could flip some config bits and get the boot time lower, I'd be extremely happy with anything sub 10 seconds and then I could completely burry the EPS32 idea as redundant.
- raihansaputra 2y ago
  OTOH if you do want to use the ESP32, I find using AI assistance is great to help translate codebases/programs/apps across languages/usecases (or outright generate it).
  - nextlevelwizard 2y ago
    While I am sure nothing is more optimized and battery conserving than C code hallucinated by an LLM, I really prefer writing my code my self when I work with my personal projects