One of my friends told me about the Guiton capacity touch display with GT911 and an integrated ESP32. And it did not cost that much. The Guiton ESPHome config made it easy to get it working in Home Assistant
Hi-Link manufactures a number of different sensor modules with millimeter wavelength radars which are great to detect humans with.
Some time ago I read about these and they were did not cost much. I bought these from AliExpress. So I ordered some different ones. Recently I found some time to experiment with one of them, the LD2450 (The AliExpress item I bought). On the product page there is a link to a Google drive with documents and software for this module.
I had previously tried one of the others briefly but unsuccessfully. So this time I took a bit different path.
I read that several (maybe all?) of these has built in Bluetooth so I downloaded the HLKRadarTool (iOS or Android) to my phone and powered up the module and connected the phone to it. It worked directly and it was easy to evaluate how the device performed.
Once I know it worked well it was time to connect it to an ESP32. The manual made it easy to understand what pins to use on the radar module. I had some ESP32-C3 modules at home so I decided to use it. The model I had was Tenstar Robot Super Mini and the pinout made it easy to figure out how to connect RX and TX on the sensor to TX and RX on the ESP32.
I then used ESPHome device builder in Home Assistant and the information on the ESPHome LD2450 page to create and install a configuration for the sensor. And soon it appeared in Home Assistant.
After that I looked for a case and found a nice simple case that could easily be pointed in different directions but was not too bulky.
I have an ESP32-CAM unit I wanted to try to connect to Home Assistant. This is how I managed to add it.
First I Googled and found the esp32_camera component for ESPHome so it was a natural start since I already have several other ESPHome devices.
After a while I found that the esp32_camera component came with a number of configuration examples. After a little investigation among checking the https://github.com/raphaelbs/esp32-cam-ai-thinker project I realized that I should be able to use the Ai-Thinker Camera-example.
I also wanted to be able to control the LEDs on the board, both the status LED and the Flash and added those as well.
This was my final yaml configuration which I added to the rest of the ESP yaml in the ESP Builder
esp32_camera:
name: ESP32 camera
external_clock:
pin: GPIO0
frequency: 20MHz
i2c_pins:
sda: GPIO26
scl: GPIO27
data_pins: [GPIO5, GPIO18, GPIO19, GPIO21, GPIO36, GPIO39, GPIO34, GPIO35]
vsync_pin: GPIO25
href_pin: GPIO23
pixel_clock_pin: GPIO22
power_down_pin: GPIO32
resolution: 1600x1200 # Native resolutions CIF 400x296, SVGA 800x600, UXGA 1600x1200
jpeg_quality: 10
vertical_flip: false
horizontal_mirror: false
output:
- platform: gpio
id: camera_flash_led
pin: GPIO04
light:
- platform: status_led
name: "Camera status LED"
pin:
number: GPIO33
inverted: true
- platform: binary
name: "Camera Flash LED"
output: camera_flash_ledSome documentation of my wiring to the MakerX VESC since I am about to connect a BRemote instead of the Maytech one.
| VESC | First cable | Second | Third | Fourth | Maytech Rx | BRemote Rx V1.3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PPM | ||||||
| Sig | Yellow | Orange | Yellow | Orange | PWM | SRV |
| 5V | Red | NC | ||||
| GND | Black | NC | ||||
| COMM | ||||||
| AUX | Brown | NC | ||||
| MISO_ADC_EXT2 | Orange | NC | ||||
| TX_SDA_NSS | White | Purple | Pink | Purple | RXD | TX2 |
| RX_SCL_MOSI | Blue | Grey | Grey | Grey | TXD | RX2 |
| SCK_ADC_EXT1 | Green | NC | ||||
| GND | Black | Black | Blue | Black | GND | GND |
| 3.3V | Yellow | NC | ||||
| 5V | Red | Red | Red | Red | 5V | 5V |
| Other | ||||||
| Battery + | Green | Green | Brown | Grey | BAT | BMS+ |
| Motor phase | Blue | Blue | White | White | MOT |
Building the tow boogie I am using the Maytech MTSKR1905WF Remote and the MakerX Hi200/75V VESC together with the Flipsky 65161 motor. Here are som some quick notes about the settings I have used to get things to work as I want.
There is a circuits diagram on the Maytech page which makes it easy to connect the remote receiver and the VESC together using the pinout picture on the MakerX page.
VESC App settings:
VESC Motor Settings:
Here are some screen dumps to better explain the settings
Started flying FPV in October 2020 but have since then blown a couple of ESC. And each time I’m going to setup the new ones I ran into problems so this time I write down some notes to not have that happen again…
The most common problem I run into is that I turn on Bi-directional DShot in BetaFlight but then I get RPM_FILTER Disarm disabled flag turned on!! And cannot figure out why??
The answer and solution is quite simple. The default ESC firmware does not support bidirectional DShot! And this article describes how to get it. The ESCs I have one need to use BLHeli_S firmware. On my Nazgul 5 2 HD the ESC has the G H 30 configuration and currently I’m using version 16.73. So I download the G_H_30_REV16_73.HEX firmware and use BLHeli Configuration to flash it. Other versions can be downloaded from https://github.com/JazzMaverick/BLHeli/tree/JazzMaverick-patch-1/BLHeli_S%20SiLabs
