Video Games Meet Amateur Radio?

 

I always talk about "convergence" between other interests and amateur radio.  There are many hobbies that I personally find more enjoyment or motivation from by including some form of wireless communication with other things, like hiking or just finding ways to be prepared for adventures.

But what about going the opposite direction? As a long time gamer,  I made a short video to showcase the interesting form factor of the Icom IC-705 radio that may help shed an image that "ham radio" is still just about old vacuum tubes, elderly people and late nights spent in a basement tapping out Morse Code to someone around the world. Please, do not shoot your in-game missiles at me for saying that dear reader.

What is Pip Boy?

This was a fictional device featured in the very popular video game series called "Fallout". It was a wrist worn  "Personal Information Processor", manufactured by RobCo Industries.

As part of a promotional effort, many video games spawn many different real life products to engage with fans. The Pip Boy 2000 Mk VI is one example and there are even other versions that let you put a smartphone inside to offer real functionality, but in an interesting wrist mounted enclosure.   

This product even came in a special storage case when not using PipBoy. This storage case is what inspired this article and video actually.

Is is possible to put the 2 pound (1.1 kilogram) Icom IC-705 on my wrist like a PipBoy?  I guess if I got tired of my Samsung Gear watch, that could be handy to have HF and above communications while walking around. My wrist would get awfully sore though. I can keep my Icom IC-705 safe inside of a really cool case though as you will see.

A better option for wrist based communications might be KK4VCZ Travis Goodspeed's "GoodWatch" project, which I have some PCB's ready to populate with SMD components I have yet to order. 

It was easy to make the PCB's by sending the files to OSHpark and let them make the circuit boards for a few dollars. Eventually I will get around to making my own GoodWatch....

For those that may remember, Travis is the guy behind what we owe a lot to for making DMR a popular digital voice mode in amateur radio thanks to his "hacks" on the popular TYT MD-380 radio that improved its functionality greatly in such a cheap radio.  

And, the also super famous AC2SN Limor Fried who founded Adafruit has also spent time making use of Travis's interesting work made DMR super popular too. 

You could even receive signals from your Pi-Star Hotspot using the GoodWatch since Pi-Star also supports POCSAG, an open paging standard which DAPNET brought to amateur radio.

Could the Icom IC-705 with its Wi-Fi,  Bluetooth, GPS, color touch display and all mode 1.8 to 450 MHz 10 W transceiver be the next big thing that "hackers" start to experiment with?   Could it even find its way into a cosplay scenario at the next big Comicon? Maybe even getting some of the #DEFCON crowd interested too! 

And now without further ado, I present my video that most video game fans may appreciate......

HASviolet: Here's a Story about a Lovely Project

In the beginning . . .

It all started with a member of HVDN sharing the following idea with Steve, K2GOG and I

"I've been wanting to do a "communicator" for a while. Something that someone could use over relatively short distances to send text messages back and forth. I have been looking for others to work on a project with too!"

After some investigation LoRa was something to consider since it "should play well with the hacker/maker crowd and possibility the IoT/computer science area." From this point we thought it was a good idea to take forward and started developing a concept around it.

Yet another LoRa project?

We sifted through a number of existing published LoRa projects using Raspberry Pi and various microcontrollers. GitHub sites with code, libraries, and recommended hardware but most of them were just "proof of concepts" with no demonstrations of use cases are sharing of lessons learned whether as a "lone eagle" or part of a team.

Since there were going to be a number of skills we were going to develop along the way including building new skillsets our differentiator with this project would be sharing the journey through articles, videos, and (hopefully) good documentation.

Our Story and Hope

There were skill gaps to overcome but we were driven by the same desire.

• Do an open source RF project that bridges the maker/hacker and Amateur Radio communities
• Learn new or build existing skills along the way
• Inspire others to do the same

Inspiring others is not about contributing to this project (though it is welcome) it is about inspiring people to take big steps in making your ideas real and not be intimidated by any skills gap you or your compatriots have. Lot's of discussion and breaking progress down in small steps or sprints is what will keep the learning feel organic.

By emphasizing the project journey through a series of blog posts here, we hope to inspire you to chase your passion and through caution to the wind in developing skills you think are hard to build. You just need to find something you have a passion for and other like minds.

Finally, we would like to thank Joe N1JTA for the initial idea and taking time out of his busy schedule for early testing.

All the best,

- Joe, NE2Z

HASviolet: What color is your spectrum?

The entire United States amateur radio community are relative late comers to using or even understanding what LoRa is.

However, the "maker" community in the United States and elsewhere has embraced this weak signal spread spectrum technology much quicker and has been doing some interesting things with it.

This article will highlight where both communities of hobbyists can learn from each other and inspire some really nice projects enabled by LoRa technology thanks to HVDN's HASviolet project.

Black & White: What is LoRa?

Amateur radio or "ham" radio people usually love to talk about history and sometimes forget to look forward.

LoRa actually has some roots going back to the German radio company Telefunken and the underlying thinking of LoRa as a general concept was even described in part of a 1903 US patent by Nikola Tesla.

During World War II,  both the Axis and Allied powers experimented with "frequency hopping spread spectrum".

The smart minds of the day such as Leonard Danilewicz, Willem Broertjes and actress Hedy Lamarr being just a few to read about to learn the history of spread spectrum communication to help level up when it comes to learning about LoRa and technology like it.

While frequency hopping spread spectrum or FCSS can be useful for both data or voice transmissions,  only "chirp spread spectrum" or CSS is useful for sending short bursts of data over multiple frequencies.

This is one reason why the "maker" community has adopted LoRa because they generally care more about actionable use cases versus "talking for the sake of talking", which is what a lot of "ham radio" people enjoy most.

LoRa is not meant for voice transmission and it even requires some fancy manipulation to get it functioning for basic "chat" sort of communication.

The good news is that the HVDN team and our HASviolet project went a few more steps where others gave up when it comes to use case exploration.

The lack of voice communication via LoRa does not matter much for non-amateur radio users as other electronics hobbyists are more interested in using LoRa to relay sensor data or control the status of different devices, like a gate, mailbox or even as a fault indicator for a 3-D printer. But, not all amateur radio people use voice to communicate so this is ok.

The "Continuous Wave" or CW mode for short involves Morse Code and is still highly practiced within the amateur ranks today.

Even much newer modes  like WSPR, JT-65, JS-8CALL and PSK31 are some other choices with different use cases, but all really only focus on chat functions and not anything more use case driven beyond that. This now starts to make some amateur radio and maker people not very different from each other, aside possibly from age.

How to send LoRa:  Straight key optional

CSS also not only helps obscure messages as Hedy Lamarr exploited in her work more than 70 years ago with torpedoes and the US Navy, but also helps increase transmission range and control of torpedoes.

While encryption on amateur radio spectrum is not permitted, LoRa is easily demystified once you know how to look for the signals and decode them.  This makes LoRa and CW not really that far different from one another.

An amateur radio person may known Morse Code and a maker will not. Conversely, a maker may know how to probe packets and reassemble messages where someone who lives only in the ham radio world will not.

Perhaps the shared merit of LoRa and CW as  "DX" or "Long Distance" communication capabilities is worth exploring within amateur radio, but with value added use cases for a change beyond making contact for the sake of it.

This is where both communities can share and learn different skill sets and what HASviolet is all about.

LoRa implements CSS mostly in a default configuration which takes up about 250 kHz of spectrum,
but can be easily modified by changing the spread and bandwidth settings, which may be advantageous for certain applications.

This may sound crazy compared to sub 2 kHz wide CW signals, but LoRa can offer so much more.

What makes LoRa unique compared to other "spread spectrum" methods of transmission is that it is focused on relative narrow band use cases and thus better suited for sub-GHz spectrum use.

Comparatively, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are also spread spectrum based, but use much wider bandwidth and would be troublesome to be used at frequencies such as 433 and 868 MHz as well as 900 to 928 MHz.   Since Bluetooth and Wi-Fi live at 2.4 GHz and above, this is a non issue since the higher you go in frequency, the shorter they travel when not including "Line Of Sight" communications.

The HASviolet project's goal is to utilize LoRa in the 900 to 928 MHz band also known as 33cm and to take advantage of the different characteristics this unique mode offers.

And because how well LoRa works very far into the "noise floor"  the communication distance when thought about as a function of transmit power, range and antenna size becomes pretty interesting.

There are ways to shrink the bandwidth which LoRa uses for single channel communication and will also be explored via the HASviolet project too at a sub 6 kHz levels and possibly even further with correct precision timing.

LoRa: Made better with fruit?

One major challenge with LoRa is that it uses proprietary modulation offered by Semtech and is not considered an "open source" mode like what NB IoT uses, which is a competing wireless standard along with SIGFOX as popular "Internet of Things" type of applications that commercial and maker enthusiasts are using.

A company started in 2005 by Lady Ada (Limor Fried) called Adafruit Industries helps the educational "STEM" and maker communities through open source development of fully functional and semi-complete products which incorporate components made by company like Semtech.

The modern electronic hobbyist or "maker" can easily purchase what Limor and her team creates and use them in any number of projects, just like our HVDN HASviolet project.

And there is one thing that the "ham radio" community really loves, and it is anything that involves "low cost".   LoRa easily becomes a low cost way to experiment with something very fun.

A side benefit beyond cost is that it makes a perfect platform to start the "ham radio" crowd to essentially start to "level up" on some areas of interest that the maker crowd has already zoomed far ahead on. Some of these include things to do with "Raspberry Pi",  "ESP32", "MicroPython", "IoT"

Full integrated Semtech LoRa chips such as the SX1276, SX1272 and SX1261 can all be generally had on preconfigured breakout boards for under $10 USD, so lets dive into what each community can learn from each other in upcoming articles.

So what is HASviolet?

When the HVDN HASviolet team came up with an idea to make something which the maker and amateur radio community could use together,  they started thinking about how to highlight underused spectrum where licensed and unlicensed users may overlap.

Originally, the amateur 50-54 MHz "6m" band and its nearby unlicensed 49 MHz spectrum was thought to be a good starting point due to the ability to easily design something that could use the popular Raspberry Pi with an add on RF filter board.

This proved pretty quickly even after discussion with other amateur radio enthusiasts as far away as Arizona and Germany to not be a path to start down first as others have done it, but failed to get a lot of interest.

Instead, it became clear  that going much higher in frequency would still offer what the HVDN team was looking for.

We would like to introduce you to the HVDN backed HASviolet project, our journey and lots of great documentation to inspire others to come along for the ride using violet shared spectrum.

If you want to learn something cool involving hardware, antenna or software, we think you will like what you are about to find.

HASviolet Team

• Joe Apuzzo N1JTA - General Do'er & HASviolet HW Certification Guy

• Steve Bossert K2GOG - Antenna & RF Design Lead & UI/UX Hamster

• Joe Cupano NE2Z - Core Software Developer & Git Hub Jedi Master

HASviolet General Details

• General Information -  https://hvdn.org/violet 

• Git Hub Repository - https://github.com/hudsonvalleydigitalnetwork/

HASviolet: Pi Power Considerations

To help celebrate International Pi Day,  the HVDN team would like to share a tiny preview related to our HASviolet project we were expecting to release at the WOPR Summit later this month.

Unfortunately, the blasted COVID-19 virus forced the event to be rescheduled for September 18th to 20th, but we are keeping our project goals on track for release since we have even bigger plans for HASviolet for the rest of the year!

What is HASviolet?

Our project goal was to create an educational platform involving (H)ardware selection, (A)ntenna theory and (S)oftware involving LoRa communications as well as other FSK, GFSK, MSK, GMSK and OOK modulation method applications in the future.

The letters in the word "HAS" may make more sense now, but the color "violet" needs a little more explanation.

We want to promote the use of  900 MHz and above spectrum for both amateur radio and "IoT" hobbyist use so we chose the frequency of 911.250 MHz as our initial project center frequency and namesake.

The HEX value of 911250 is a nice shade of purple and hence, how we came up with the second word in our project name - violet!

Our hopes are that this frequency can become the epicenter for amateur radio experimentation involving LoRa in the United States.

Hardware needs power! 

Releasing this article "just after"  March 14th (AKA "Pi Day") should make our readers guess that our HASviolet project involves the popular Raspberry Pi embedded computer and indeed it does!

You need to have reliable and stable power  for all Raspberry Pi projects and that is what this article will talk about, but just in the context of the Raspberry Pi Zero Wireless device since that is what we are using as part of  the HASviolet project.


Plug in the wall options

The "current" requirements for a Raspberry Pi tend to be at least 2 amps of power and it is advised to use a mains power supply rated at least for 2.5 amps.

Reliable sellers such as Adafruit, SparkFun, MicroCenter, Fry's and even Best Buy or Barnes & Noble in the United States have already ensured what they sell will provide the best user experience.

                      

However, it is a good idea to be cautious when making a purchase online via websites like Amazon or E-Bay since sometimes it is harder to know what you are buying from online sellers.  The best price does not always guarantee the best product!

Here is a list of HVDN approved AC mains 2.5+ amp power supplies from select sellers who sell both online as well as through traditional stores you can visit:

• Adafruit 5V USB Micro Power Supplies 

• SparkFun 5V USB Micro Power Supplies

• Micro Center 5V USB Micro Power Supplies 

• Argon ONE  5.25V 3.0 Amp via Amazon.com 

• CanaKit 5V USB w/switch via Amazon.com 

USB power bank options

A USB power bank is probably one of the best options to power your Raspberry Pi project since you can charge them for portable use by using your plug in the wall adapter or even charge them from any USB port such as one found on any computer.

• You do need to be sure that your power bank is capable of outputting over 2.0 amps of current on at least one of the USB output ports.

• Some USB power banks will indicate this clearly, so be careful about what you purchase.

• A minimum 10,000 mAh capacity power bank is recommended, but 20,000mAh is better.

Higher battery capacity means longer run times. If you plan to travel by air, there is a limit on how large of a power bank you can take with you. Please check airline or local government regulations for details.

In the United States, the FAA sets the appropriate restrictions which the TSA is responsible for enforcing.

In order to match your Raspberry Pi, you will also want one with the USB micro connector rather then the newer USB-C connector so you can use your existing wall mains supply to run your Raspberry Pi directly or to charge your power bank.

Here are three common options to consider purchasing:


HVDN Recommended Option 1: INIU 20000 mAh with  3.0 A output plus USB micro and USB-C input via Amazon.com

HVDN Recommended Option 2: USB Battery Pack for Raspberry Pi - 10000 mAh plus dual high current USB

HVDN Recommended Option 3: Baseus PPDMNA USD PowerBank - After extensive research by one member of the HVDN team, this power bank has proven a good value for the money and comes in different colors. This power bank is also very thin. It can also be shipped from different countries for no extra cost.

This power bank offers true USB-C standard for both charging or output.  A micro USB connector for charging is included alongside the standard USB connector to power external devices.

 

HVDN USB Power Bank Recommendation

There are far too many power bank options available today and we are only sharing three options.

Our recommendation is option 3 based on price and feature set plus you can even get it in pink or blue aside from the usual black or white colors.

Option 1 is great if you need higher capacity and fancy display plus two USB outputs.

Option 2 is is worthwhile if you are looking to add items to your Adafruit shopping cart, who is one of the main suppliers of components found in the HASviolet project you will be able to learn about later this month (Spoiler: Saturday March 28th at 9:11 AM)

pHat Power Options

Modular boards that have the same foot print and 40 pin connector that matches the Raspberry Pi are often referred to as a hat or pHat. A pHat can go under or on top of a Raspberry Pi when using the correct 40 pin connector.

Example of a pHat by pimoroni.com and sold by Adafruit.com.
The EnviroPhat is a collection of sensors with more detail found here

There are many pHat's available for different tasks, but only a few made that can provide a reliable portable power supply.

Here are some options with commentary on ones designed to work with a Raspberry Pi Zero.

pHat Power Option 1:  PiZ-UpTime 2.0 - Not to be confused with the original PiZ-UpTime which only ran on a single 14500 LiPo battery.

The new 2.0 version offers no such restriction and also adds better external on/off control, power in and power out connections along with a fuel gauge to safely power down your RPi when the battery reaches a low amount.

Further details here. The second picture is the first generation PiZ-UpTime for comparison and is not recommended.

Genuine PiZ-UpTime 2.0 

Here is the original PiZ-UpTime for comparison and to show the genuine product compared to imitation copies mentioned later in this article.

pHat Power Option 2:  PiSugar Portable Power Platform - Some members of the HVDN HASviolet team like this product because it is open source as evidence by its Git Hub project page and its overall set of features.

There are two different side batteries available that are the same size of the board and RPi Zero.  A nice feature is a built in visual battery capacity meter via 4 blue LED and the use of the power pads on the bottom of the Raspberry Pi Zero. The PiSugar can also function as a UPS.

3-D printer files are even available to help create different cases easily or to modify for your own use.

Both the 900 mAh and 1200 mAh versions can be purchased via Amazon.com.  The only only drawback of the PiSugar is the small size of its battery which will limit run time compared to a larger power bank.

One member of the HASviolet team has used the 1200 mAh version of this product and easily got 5 hours of continuous run time while running the "beacon" mode of our project with a transmit interval of once every 5 seconds.

pHat Power Option 3:  Generic UPS Power HAT  - There are many generic UPS power hats available for the Raspberry Pi Zero and we have only tested two.

The first one was a generic version of the PiZ-UpTime original product and was a waste of money.

A few years ago, a counterfeit version caused a fault with a Raspberry Pi Zero and was unable to be used for anything else ever again, including the RPi Zero! Please avoid purchasing this product!

The second generic UPS pHat worked much better but only lasted about an hour which was strange considering the PiSugar worked for much longer with a not much larger battery. This one also uses pins from the underside to power your Raspberry Pi.

What to expect from HASviolet?

We hope this brief article on power sources for the Raspberry Pi Zero has you curious on what are we building for the HASviolet project.

Our team thinks that people will want to use the HASviolet project both at home and while traveling, hence us starting to make sure power solutions are something you are already thinking about.

Between now and Saturday March 28th, we will release some additional articles focused on the antenna part of the project along with details relating to Git Hub and other basic necessities so that you can start putting aside some hard earned money to buy the needed hardware for HASviolet!

Be safe in the meantime if you are under self-quarantine or in areas overly affected by COVID-19.

Thanks!

HVDN HASviolet Team

(Joe Apuzzo N1JTA,  Steve Bossert K2GOG & Joe Cupano NE2Z)

FiPy > Raspberry Pi: Wireless Rumble

Imagine 5 networks in one perfectly-formed, same-small-foot-print development board that is MicroPython enabled. The Pycom FiPy board includes WiFi, Bluetooth, LoRa, Sigfox and dual LTE-M (CAT M1 and NBIoT)  In one product, the FiPy gives access to all the world’s LPWAN networks on one tiny board.

Processing Details

• Espressif ESP32 SoC

• Dual processor and WiFi radio system on chip

• Networking processor handles the WiFi connectivity and the IPv6 stack

• Main processor is entirely free to run the user application

• An extra ULP-coprocessor that can monitor GPIOs, the ADC channels and control most of the internal peripherals during deep-sleep mode while only consuming 25uA

• 2 x UART, 2 x SPI, I2C, micro SD card

• ANalog channels: 8_12 bit ADCs, 2_8 bit DAC

• Timers: 2_64 bit with PWM with up to 16 channels

• DMA on all peripherals and up to 22 GPIO

Physical Interface Details

Additional Details

There is far too many great specifications to list, so have a look a look below for details.

Ground Hog Day: Why does HVDN care?

If we think about the last 100 years of wireless technology and development, amateur radio has often been closely aligned with the latest innovations and finding ways to leverage them across our globally aligned licensed spectrum. 

Today,  far too many within the amateur radio ranks are complacent in only spending time with applications long since established and keep doing the same thing, over, and over, and over.

While there is still much innovation taking place within amateur radio that the general public is not aware of, our goal within Hudson Valley Digital Network (HVDN) is to focus on what is next and find ways to bridge that back into our hobby interests.

If we can share that with other communities such as those interested in programming, making and every possible convergence of hobbies ranging from agriculture to astronomy, that would be amazing

So now what?

Many of us involved in the formation of HVDN also work for a variety of well known technology organizations and somehow still find some time to unwind in our off hours in experimenting with new things. 

The upcoming Pycom New York event on September 9th 2019 seemed a perfect way to dive in even further, so expect good detailed review of this fascinating workshop. 

Spoiler alert

Timing wise, this was also perfect as we have been busy experimenting with ways to leverage LoRa technology within amateur radio and how to integrate it in to many well known amateur radio related practices.  

Be sure to watch this space closely as we transition much of our focus towards Micropython, IoT, LoRa and a few other related themes to keep up with the digital and innovation themes we have worked hard to build.  

Upcoming Event Notice

On October 24th 2019 at a soon to be determined location will be the first HVDN official involvement in "Open Source Hardware" month along with our good friends from "Squidwrench" where we collaborated on the oscilloscope build project earlier this year and HV Open, which offers great monthly presentations mostly around open source software.  

P.S:  Would be nice if we could somehow get Bill Murray to attend since he still appears to live nearby within the Hudson Valley, even though his house is for sale. Kegger at Bill's? :) 

HVDN [reset] = Is the "Feather" better?

Embedded computing and open hardware in the form of Raspberry Pi, Arduino and a few others have propelled creativity in the maker, electronics hobbyist, STEM education and amateur radio communities in recent years.

A new format standard called Feather has recently come to market and is very exciting, so lets find out why.

Embedded computing you say?

Since 2012, there have been over 19 million Raspberry Pi sold when combining all the different (and improved) versions sold over the years.

Perhaps the biggest competitor to the Raspberry Pi has been the genuine Arduino family of micro-controller boards with an estimated few million shipped.

Both "embedded computing" ecosystems have spawned various forked versions that illustrate the success these two standards have demonstrated both for hardware and software compatibility.

HVDN [reset] is a sub-series of content that compares
different enabling or disruptive innovations relevant to the
maker, electronics hobbyist and amateur radio community.

One reason that has made both devices popular for add-on device or "hat" accessory development has been standard sizes and pin or GPIO configurations.

This has helped developers create exciting applications quickly & reliably

A new standard called "Feather" has arrived recently and promoted by Adafruit and Sparkfun, both known for providing a range of original add-on products to build even better Raspberry Pi and Arduino based projects.

18 different Feather based products using standard sizing and connections

The [reset] moment

Thanks to Limor Fried and her team at Adafruit along with a number of different vendors like Particle, the new Feather and related terms such as "Feather Board" and "Feather Wing" are poised for a lot of success.

This HVDN [reset] article will explore the "Feather" open hardware ecosystem in  comparison to Raspberry Pi and how it simplified development of our latest project by standardizing on this new small form factor wireless enabled embedded computing standard.

Different sizes of Pi for all appetites

Let's look at how the size of the most well known and current Raspberry Pi offerings look next to each other.

• Raspberry Pi 3B  = 85mm X 56mm
• Raspberry Pi Zero = 65mm X 30mm
• Raspberry Pi Compute  =  67mm X 31mm
• Feather Classic = 51mm X 23mm

Pictured from top left clockwise are the Pi Compute 3 Module,
Raspberry Pi 3 and Raspberry Pi W Zero

Raspberry Pi has been chosen by HVDN to compare against the Feather format because they all offer wireless connectivity.

Arduino has too many variants to compare that have a similar size to Feather but do not offer wireless connectivity. ESP32 and ESP8266 boards have too many versions.

A major benefit with many of the smaller Feather based products
compared to the slightly larger Raspberry Pi Zero is built
in battery charging, power options and connectivity options.

Arduino versions such as the Nano, Micro, and Lilypad along with the Adafruit Trinket are left out of this review since they lack wireless connectivity.

Plucking Feathers

Specifications help drive standards and adoption, so Adafruit has everything documented on its website to make development easy for most everyone.

Standard dimensions of the Feather help
create easy product development and compatibility

Key Feather Physical Dimensions:

• The 'classic' Feather and Wing size is 0.9" x 2.0" with 0.1" holes at each corner.   

• There is one 16-pin breakout strip on the bottom side, centered 1.0" from the left edge.  

• There is one 12-pin breakout strip on the top side, 1.2" from the left side.  

• The spacing between the two strips is 0.8"  

• Don't change the GPIO spacing or location, or you will not maintain compatibility with Wings! 

Key Feather "In/Out" Specifications

Using the Particle.IO "Argon" product as the example, here are the connection details copied from the super helpful datasheet.  Many of the elements found in certain Particle products were even part of the attendee badge at this years Open Hardware Summit to show example of an embedded application in the real world.

So, what is the project?

In 2017  HVDN started to develop a modern field strength meter that has remote sense and analytic capability as featured in the Field Strength Meter Monday series.

After working out the actual sensor part of the project and offering for sale a limited run of stand-alone sensors, we then set to work to redesign the RF signal strength sensor unit to fit as a "hat" onto a popular embedded computing board.

The initial plan was to use the Arduino Nano because it was low cost and easy to program but was soon abandoned because certain versions of it used non-standard USB drivers to update or interface to the device.

A later version looked at standardizing around the STM32 based ESP32 and ESP8266 based embedded computing devices because they both offered integrated battery charging and wireless functionality. They also used the very flexible microPython programming language.

WEMOS ESP32 based Wi-Fi/BLE
4MB microPython IoT device

Quality and version control of these different ESP32 or ESP8266 based boards proved hard to develop easily replicated results around, but working prototypes showed the proof of concept was sound and could be improved upon.

Looking at Feather based options again seemed ideal due to a price drop and additional features. 

It was decided to build this project around the Particle Argon (Wi-Fi + Mesh)  and Xenon boards (BLE + Mesh), with potential support for the Boron (LTE + BLE + Mesh) board at a much later date.

Making projects simple with Feather

The Adafruit Feather based options helped simplify our project design and also allowed even more features to be added!

Future articles will cover microPython coding basics, computer-aided circuit design and fun applications for this exciting project.

Here is the HVDN-FS1....