You might recall some time ago I wrote about using Python on the Orange Pi Zero etc to run the little SSD1306-based displays. Despite that being successful I did have a nagging doubt about the LUMA library because later on – when doing some apt-get upgrades I got a segmentation…
NanoPi Neo PLUS2
No, I’d not heard of this one either until a couple of weeks ago. With a small form factor, 2 USB sockets and a $25 price tag it has to be worth a second glance. I’ve used the NEO and this is definitely an improvement – H5 processor, the Ethernet…
The Script Step By Step
I thought it might be useful for beginners to go through the installation of Raspberry Pi 2 Jessie (July 2017) and “the script” – so here goes… I’m also doing this to help a friend who had issues installing the script on a Pi late last night, most likely due…
Simple Scope
You may have noticed that I’ve been working on my ESP8266 home control software (see the updates elsewhere along with new diagram), specifically upgrading and adding to the number of OLED and LCD displays I can handle, either by I2c or SPI. I’ve been doing a lot of optimising and…
Icons
In case you were wondering – no, I’ve not gone off the boil, I’ve been quietly beavering away on my ESP8266 code since deciding to abandon the old ESP-01 and adding fonts for displays. Right now I’m focussing on the QD-Tech boards – 120×160 but I’ll eventually migrate the use…
The Sonoff 4CH Pro
The 4-channel Sonoff 4CH Pro is a new product from ITEAD, available from them directly or from Amazon in the UK– though you might reasonably question why the UK Amazon price is higher in pounds than the original is in dollars. Essentially the unit is a development of their earlier…
NanoPi M3
This is a July 2017 update to the blog entry about the FriendlyArm NanoPi M3 board. Smaller than a Raspberry Pi but with a boat-load of facilities, the board includes: A3 Octa-Core processor (handy for multimedia) S5P6818 1GB Ram 3.5mm audio jack 1GBPS Ethernet port WIFI Bluetooth MicroUSB for power…
OTA
Please note, my ROMS site is now deleted as of April 2026. It seems like a lifetime since I developed my own firmware for the ESP8266 – today I mainly use Tasmota and ESP-Home – both excellent. I’ve kept this page simply for sentimental reasons and rather than having dead…
Today’s Mailbag
I have to say, it felt a little like Christmas today when the Correos post-lady turned up with a plastic container full of packages from China for me. Among the many items in today’s post were the two you see above – a WEMOS board (i.e. ESP-12 + power supply)…
Node-Red BigTimer Example
I am constantly asked about using Bigtimer (node-red-contrib-bigtimer) and so here’s an example of how I am using it in conjunction with both Amazon’s Alexa (voice control) – and the Node-Red Dashboard.
Saturday Node-Red Sermon
I just learned something new! ONLY of interest if you are using Node-Red and will lead to a description of the new node-red-contrib-diode node. If you are into Node-Red – you really want to see this one…
What a Week
What a week this has been. Firstly apologies to everyone seeing 404 errors yesterday. It turns out it was an issue with settings on the LightSpeed servers the provider is using… I’ve had no end of issues with them… but hopefully this is now resolved. Meanwhile I’ve been doing a…
Challenge for the Day
The issue of running out of FLASH space on the ESP8266 is now resolved – if you are interested in how FLASH memory on the ESP8266 works – especially using the Unofficial Development Environment with the official SDK and RBOOT works – you may find this useful. I now have…
Fonts Galore
In recent previous articles I’ve been working with various displays and various processors – and one thing that comes to the fore is the importance of fonts. TTF fonts are pretty useless for small microprocessor projects as the processing overhead can be significant – and though there are many standards…
SSD1306 on ESP8266
I recently completed some work on the 240*320 ILI-based boards on my kitchen-sink ESP8266 code which is designed to work with the home control system but basically is an ESP8266 board that responds to MQTT commands. I’m very pleased with the display code but it came to my attention that…
Silence of the Lambs
I’ve spent WAY too many hours working on ILI9340 display updates for my ESP8266 kitchen sink C code but at least now I’m getting somewhere – that is – fast, easy serial or MQTT access to the display with multiple fonts. Note – that initial tests indicate this also applies…
ESP8266 Home Control Update
Another defunct page – kept just for anyone interested in past history. The ROMS site is now deleted (April 2026). As the blog entry on using my home control code ROMS for ESP8266 is filling up and of course as much of the information is now dating I thought I’d…
SSD1306 with Python
Following on from earlier articles – this is as much a collection of notes than anything else – and there’s a demo video in here of the SD1306 using the Luma library on the Orange Pi Zero. After months of thinking the only SBC I’d get working with I2c was…
Mongoose OS
Mongoose OS is an open source Operating System for the IOT, supporting ESP32, ESP8266, STM32, TI CC3200 (Amazon AWS IoT integrated). Code in C or JavaScript. Time to give it a go! Updated (gutted) June 02, 2017. Some time ago I tested Mongoose OS, early days and I had a…
microPython and the ESP
Flush with success at writing trivial code on NEO platform to control lights and displays, in Python, I thought I’d have a go at microPython on the ESP8266 and the ESP32. Getting this working on the ESP8266 was trivial as the binary files start at zero – so really you…