The device you've been waiting for! — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:01[music]
2. 0:09[music]
3. 0:14[music]
4. 0:19[music]
5. 0:31>> Welcome back to the channel, guys. Hope
6. 0:33everybody is doing well. It's been a
7. 0:35minute since the last video because I've
8. 0:37been working on this pretty much
9. 0:39full-time over the last couple of
10. 0:41months. Here, guys, is probably a
11. 0:44world's first, actually. This is a
12. 0:46standalone Meshtastic device running on
13. 0:48ESP32 P4. So, this is the new high-power
14. 0:52CPU from Espressif. So, you know, we've
15. 0:56been using ESP32 for quite a long time,
16. 0:59and it's always had kind of some issues
17. 1:00with performance for like graphical
18. 1:02displays, but as you can see now, this
19. 1:04is completely game-changing. This is an
20. 1:06actually properly usable device which
21. 1:10you can just, you know, literally just
22. 1:11use literally like it's a smartphone.
23. 1:14It's pretty crazy. So, so just to
24. 1:15clarify, this is not an Android device
25. 1:18connected to another node. This is
26. 1:20actually a pure standalone lower device
27. 1:23with its own software and own firmware
28. 1:25running on this device here. So, you can
29. 1:27see here we've got notifications. We've
30. 1:29got all the apps which I'm going to run
31. 1:30through and show you what these are
32. 1:32about. This is very early days stuff,
33. 1:35but it all works. And I'm using this as
34. 1:37my daily driver at the moment. A few of
35. 1:38you will have seen this pop up, this
36. 1:40device,
37. 1:41um, and they kind of wonder what it is,
38. 1:42but this is basically what I've been
39. 1:44using, um, for the last sort of couple
40. 1:46of weeks as I've got this firmware kind
41. 1:48of up and running. So, this is actually
42. 1:49a LilyGo T-Display P4. Um, it's a new
43. 1:54kind of model they've they've brought
44. 1:55out which is very much like a sort of
45. 1:57development board kind of oriented thing
46. 1:59that just happens to obviously have the
47. 2:01display on the front. So, it's not
48. 2:02inherently designed as a as like a sort
49. 2:04of smartphone device. I think that is
50. 2:06something that is going to be coming
51. 2:07later.
52. 2:08Um, however, it is a an amazing platform
53. 2:11for kind of, you know, working on this,
54. 2:14um, with an idea that, you know,
55. 2:15eventually we're going to have a device
56. 2:17that's that's more, um, smartphone kind
57. 2:20of oriented. So, you know, there is a
58. 2:22built-in battery in here. Um, it's kind
59. 2:24of got this, uh, like rubber back.
60. 2:25There's even a camera on the back as
61. 2:27well. You can see, obviously there was a
62. 2:28camera. There's a camera app down there,
63. 2:31um, as well. But, what I really like
64. 2:33about this is the fact that it's got a
65. 2:35an amazing OLED display. So, this is
66. 2:38like it's very phone-like, and just it
67. 2:42everything just looks absolutely lovely
68. 2:43on this. It's like it's just like using
69. 2:46a sort of miniature version of a modern
70. 2:48smartphone, really. Um, but, however, we
71. 2:51can we can do loads of clever stuff with
72. 2:53this that, obviously, um, you can't do
73. 2:56with a smartphone necessarily because
74. 2:58everything is actually kind of embedded
75. 3:00in here, and you haven't got Google, you
76. 3:02haven't got all the rubbish on here,
77. 3:03um, you know, running other
78. 3:05notifications and, you know, potentially
79. 3:07AIS watching what you're doing and
80. 3:09everything else. So, this is this is
81. 3:11something where I see, you know, things
82. 3:14going in terms of, you know, some
83. 3:16hardware for kind of people that want,
84. 3:18um, very specific kind of device usage
85. 3:21like having a mesh, um, based radio
86. 3:24system,
87. 3:25uh, running on these little handsets.
88. 3:27And, you know, the potential for kind of
89. 3:29having this in lots of different form
90. 3:31factors, including like rugged and kind
91. 3:35of, you know, intrinsically safe sort of
92. 3:36stuff as well, you know, you're going to
93. 3:38be able to do some really cool stuff
94. 3:40with this. So, the idea is I've kind of
95. 3:43come up with this, um, this idea that
96. 3:45basically what we will have is we'll
97. 3:47have,
98. 3:48uh, a thing called MeshOS,
99. 3:50and I'm just going to reset this now to
100. 3:52show you what I mean. So, basically,
101. 3:55it will just start up as a mesh device
102. 3:59that can be used for lots of different
103. 4:01things, and this software could be
104. 4:02customized for various different use
105. 4:04cases. Um, this is kind of more of the
106. 4:07like consumer-end,
107. 4:09uh, facing one where, basically, Mesh
108. 4:11Core we have a Mesh Core app built in.
109. 4:14Um, you see we've got
110. 4:15Nismo is well on it today. Um, I've I've
111. 4:18built a Mesh Core app on top of this,
112. 4:21and basically at the moment what it does
113. 4:23is it allows you to kind of do, you
114. 4:25know, basic, um, channel messaging and
115. 4:28that sort of thing. So, you know, you
116. 4:30can actually change change the settings
117. 4:32up here as well. See, some parts of this
118. 4:34the screen's a little bit not quite as
119. 4:36sensitive as it could be.
120. 4:38Um, it's all kind of work in progress.
121. 4:39So, we've got like radio settings here.
122. 4:42This device actually has an RF switch in
123. 4:44it, which is quite interesting. So, at
124. 4:46the moment we're actually running on an
125. 4:48internal antenna, not that antenna that
126. 4:51I've just pulled off. And, obviously,
127. 4:54LilyGo have chosen to use MMCX
128. 4:56connectors for this particular device
129. 4:59rather than SMA. I suppose it's to keep
130. 5:01the size down. Um, but you can
131. 5:02potentially you can basically switch
132. 5:05between these two,
133. 5:06um, these two antenna outputs, which is
134. 5:08really cool. Now, RF1 I've got here is
135. 5:12actually ported to connected to an
136. 5:14internal antenna. So, you know, like we
137. 5:17had with the T-Deck, you can, you know,
138. 5:19many people kind of disconnect the
139. 5:21internal antenna of the T-Deck, and
140. 5:23then,
141. 5:24you know, connect an SMA. And, of
142. 5:26course, that is great, but it makes it
143. 5:29no not really any longer
144. 5:31So, this is really cool with the fact
145. 5:33you can switch between an internal and
146. 5:35an external antenna just in software.
147. 5:38So, you can see here I've got all the
148. 5:40other, um, radio settings here that have
149. 5:42just been set up for, um, UK narrow, and
150. 5:45I'm using the internal,
151. 5:47uh, internal antenna. So, I've made a
152. 5:49few menu options here. There's going to
153. 5:50be more coming. Um, and if we go back
154. 5:52out of here as well, you can do this
155. 5:54sort of side swipe, and then we can go
156. 5:56into our public channel, and you can see
157. 5:58here we've got Nismo's message there
158. 6:01showing. And, what I've done here is
159. 6:04I've just basically put on timestamp,
160. 6:06RSSI, and signal-to-noise ratio on the
161. 6:09bottom of here. So, how I've managed to
162. 6:10get Mesh Core running on this because
163. 6:12this device is actually, uh, it's not
164. 6:14compatible with the, um, Arduino sort of
165. 6:17framework. So, I've had to basically
166. 6:20restructure Mesh Core to work on this
167. 6:22particular device, but,
168. 6:25you know, the Mesh Core code is so well
169. 6:26written and so, um, easy to follow that
170. 6:29it's very easy to actually kind of, you
171. 6:31know, embed, uh, Mesh Core on anything.
172. 6:34That's the great thing about it. So,
173. 6:36we've got Mesh Core running on this, and
174. 6:38I'm sort of slowly kind of adding the
175. 6:40features in all the different features
176. 6:42in. We've got channel messaging, we've
177. 6:43got, um, you know, advert decoding and
178. 6:46all the various different types of, um,
179. 6:48packets that Mesh Core,
180. 6:50uh, can use we we're decoding. So, this
181. 6:54is the the basic chat app we've got
182. 6:56running, and you can go in here, you can
183. 6:58go in the keyboard, and you can just,
184. 7:00you know, tap. It's pretty responsive.
185. 7:01It could do with a little bit of a wider
186. 7:03screen here just to, you know, be able
187. 7:05to, um, you know, two-hand double finger
188. 7:08typing. That would be pretty good if if
189. 7:10LilyGo could come up with a,
190. 7:12um, a device, uh, have a bit of a wider
191. 7:14screen, that would be good. Um, I've
192. 7:16implemented emojis to this as well cuz
193. 7:18everybody loves an emoji, and that is
194. 7:20one of the biggest bugbears with any of
195. 7:22the standalone stuff. You can't do
196. 7:23emojis.
197. 7:25So, I've put emojis in there. That was
198. 7:27That was actually one of the hardest
199. 7:28things to to get working, believe it or
200. 7:30not. The emoji side of things is it's
201. 7:32crazy. But, anyway, you can do like, um,
202. 7:35replies, just single-tap replies like
203. 7:37that.
204. 7:38And, um, yeah, you can you can just
205. 7:40reply and and do all sorts of things.
206. 7:42So, we've got the channel, um, the
207. 7:43channel list here as well. So, you can
208. 7:45add new channels, um, remove them from
209. 7:48there. So, we've got all of our
210. 7:49channels. All the notification badges,
211. 7:51you know, just all all work seamlessly.
212. 7:54There's also badges on the front screen
213. 7:57as well, so the home screen. So, when
214. 7:58messages come in, I think we probably
215. 8:00saw that at the beginning of the video.
216. 8:01When messages come in, you get a little
217. 8:03badge on the top there that shows that a
218. 8:05new message has come in like that there.
219. 8:07We've got notification pop-ups, which
220. 8:09are done throughout. So, this is kind of
221. 8:12a free RTOS
222. 8:15system where everything's running as its
223. 8:17own task. So, it's kind of fully
224. 8:19multitasking, and it allows you to, um,
225. 8:22you know, use multiple apps at the same
226. 8:24time. So, if we look at the terminal app
227. 8:27here I've got set up, this You see that
228. 8:30that There was a slight delay there
229. 8:31because we've got quite a bit of quite a
230. 8:33bit of history going on. Um, you know,
231. 8:35I'm still refining how this all works,
232. 8:37but basically, that's super smooth.
233. 8:40Um, and it looks really cool in all the
234. 8:42different colors there. So, you can see
235. 8:43all of the packets coming in, and this
236. 8:45is raw, like as raw as it gets. You'll
237. 8:48see adverts multiple times on here as
238. 8:51they get repeated through your repeater.
239. 8:53So, you can really see what's going on,
240. 8:55and you can even use this as like, uh,
241. 8:58as you check to see, you know, what's
242. 9:00what's heard. And, it's
243. 9:01I actually quite like having
244. 9:03[clears throat] a full-blown terminal
245. 9:04output just in the background so that
246. 9:06you can really see what's going on, um,
247. 9:09and, you know, so that is that. The
248. 9:10ability to run commands in the terminal
249. 9:12is something I'm going to add as well to
250. 9:14this cuz I have got that working on the
251. 9:16on a T-Deck, which I'm going to show you
252. 9:18at some point as well.
253. 9:19Um, you know, proper management over a
254. 9:21terminal using the T-Deck is is really
255. 9:23cool. So, that's the terminal side of
256. 9:25things.
257. 9:27And, um, you might have noticed we've
258. 9:28got like signal bars at the top here as
259. 9:30well. So, this is like mesh mesh signal.
260. 9:33Um, so, what it will do is it will just
261. 9:34any packet, whatever packet it is, it
262. 9:37will just listen to that, and then it
263. 9:39will create, uh,
264. 9:40you know, it will give you signal bars
265. 9:42based on that SNR that it's just
266. 9:44received. But, this is working really
267. 9:46well, and I find it really useful just
268. 9:47to have a glance down, you know, you
269. 9:49just fire the device up and just see,
270. 9:51"Am I in range? Yeah. Okay, I've got
271. 9:52some signal there." Of course, it
272. 9:54doesn't necessarily mean that you're
273. 9:55going to be able to get into the mesh,
274. 9:56but, you know, so the other thing I've
275. 9:58been working on here, a little applet,
276. 9:59which is map. This one is getting a lot
277. 10:01of air time in this video. So, we've got
278. 10:03map as well. If you tap on the map, I've
279. 10:05basically got this kind of like full
280. 10:07size UK map at the moment, which I quite
281. 10:10like. Um it's it kind of shows all the
282. 10:12nodes that it's received in green there,
283. 10:15and it just dots up. So, you leave this
284. 10:17running a little while. Obviously, we've
285. 10:19just rebooted. So, you see like loads of
286. 10:21green dots up the country, which is
287. 10:23super cool. So, this is the start of the
288. 10:25map that I'm going to be going for, and
289. 10:27then we'll have obviously some tiles to
290. 10:28get closer in and stuff like that. But,
291. 10:30to be honest, you know, I just like to
292. 10:32see at a glance where people are. I'm
293. 10:34not bothered about seeing what road road
294. 10:37they're in or anything else. Um despite
295. 10:39what some of you might think that I
296. 10:40stalk people and like drive around and
297. 10:42find nodes, but I think those days are
298. 10:44gone actually cuz we've got so many
299. 10:45users now. It's not not so exciting when
300. 10:47a new one pops up. No, I'm only kidding.
301. 10:49Now, the other thing we've got is the
302. 10:51discover list, and that opens up, and
303. 10:53you can see here we've got, you know, a
304. 10:55few repeaters that have been picked up
305. 10:57so far. Um we've actually got I What
306. 11:00I've done here is I've got the ID of the
307. 11:02repeater there. You can see all the
308. 11:04first byte ID, but I've also got a
309. 11:06little via um on there as well. So, that
310. 11:09will show you if you hear it from more
311. 11:11than one source,
312. 11:12um you can actually kind of you'll get a
313. 11:14list of of nodes. So, if you're in a
314. 11:16higher place or if you connect this to a
315. 11:18big area outside or something like that,
316. 11:20you'll see via, you know, all the
317. 11:22repeaters that have you've actually
318. 11:24picked that up from, which is quite
319. 11:25cool. Cuz when you're out and about, you
320. 11:28it's interesting to know what repeaters
321. 11:30could be around, and you can do that by
322. 11:32seeing um See like there's DA there.
323. 11:34Another one's been picked up via DA.
324. 11:37So, that is the discover list. So,
325. 11:39obviously, I mentioned the camera as
326. 11:41well. So, we've got a camera app, which
327. 11:42I've kind of just just built out. It's
328. 11:44not bad. Um it would actually be
329. 11:45probably okay for um scanning QR codes.
330. 11:49Um and then I've kind of built on this
331. 11:51like this shutter system here. It will
332. 11:53save the um the the image to the SD
333. 11:56card. Um potentially, we could send that
334. 11:58over Laura if if you we if we put it on
335. 12:01a not over the mesh, of course, but um
336. 12:04put it over um a very high speed mode or
337. 12:06something just like zero hop. So, if
338. 12:08you've got another one of these devices,
339. 12:09you could send pictures maybe back and
340. 12:11forth, but it's probably not really fast
341. 12:14enough um Laura for that. Of course,
342. 12:16though, this is an SX1262 in here, and
343. 12:19my radio manager that I've built for
344. 12:21this uh can support all the other modes,
345. 12:24not just Laura. So, you can do lots of
346. 12:26different things. Uh it's exactly like
347. 12:27what radio lib does, but you could
348. 12:29switch to a lot a real high speed FSK
349. 12:32mode to send um pictures from one person
350. 12:35to another, obviously, at short range.
351. 12:37Um it or use the ESP now, maybe. That
352. 12:39That's another way of doing it. So, you
353. 12:41know, there's lots of possibilities with
354. 12:43this um this device. Um we've got like a
355. 12:46system sitting here, which is based on
356. 12:48LilyGo's stock system, which they've got
357. 12:51um you know, for
358. 12:53uh
359. 12:54testing the various things. You've If
360. 12:55you've ever installed one of their
361. 12:57factory firmwares, um you'll see
362. 13:00um you'll see that there. But,
363. 13:02obviously, the ESP32, if we go into you
364. 13:06know, go back out of that. If we go into
365. 13:08battery health,
366. 13:09um we can see here anyone wondering
367. 13:12about power consumption, um the highest
368. 13:15power consumption with this with this
369. 13:16screen
370. 13:17um running is 362 milliamps. So, it's
371. 13:21quite a lot. Um the lowest at the moment
372. 13:24is 202 milliamps. I've seen that down to
373. 13:26about 170, um and I've I've added this
374. 13:29little graph here to track, but we're
375. 13:31not really doing any power saving stuff
376. 13:32on this at the moment. I'm just getting
377. 13:34things running, um and then power saving
378. 13:36will come later. And I reckon we'll be
379. 13:38able to get this down very low with um
380. 13:40with the sort of like light sleep. Um
381. 13:42so, it will still be sleeping in the
382. 13:44backgrounds, but you know, lower packets
383. 13:46will be able to wake this up. It does
384. 13:48have um the Laura. I don't think the
385. 13:50SX1262 is connected directly to the the
386. 13:53CPU in this. It's It goes via um another
387. 13:57like sort of bus, but
388. 13:59it's not a problem. You You can still
389. 14:00kind of work around that. This does have
390. 14:02sound as well. It's headphone sockets,
391. 14:03so you could make a little MP3 player
392. 14:05out of this as well or have an app that
393. 14:07can do that. There's also a speaker here
394. 14:09in the bottom. So, notification sounds,
395. 14:11no problem. That works. Obviously,
396. 14:13you've got an SD card in there as well,
397. 14:14so you can store um sound files on there
398. 14:17as well. Proper hardware on-off switch
399. 14:19on the side as well. So, that's really
400. 14:21nice. And then, you know, you've got
401. 14:22user buttons up there two user buttons
402. 14:25there, up and down. Then you've got a
403. 14:27reset button and a um the boot button,
404. 14:30which currently is doing my kind of
405. 14:31power off and saving. I've actually got
406. 14:34this kind of all all day or always-on
407. 14:37display thing. So, if you go to the home
408. 14:39screen, um and we go back out of that,
409. 14:42and then you just hold this button down
410. 14:44to take it down to one step. That just
411. 14:46saves a lot of energy, but you can
412. 14:47actually have your clock on. So, it's
413. 14:48quite nice when it's on charge at night.
414. 14:50You can just have that sitting there,
415. 14:52and then it acts as a little kind of
416. 14:53always-on display, just a bit like your
417. 14:55phone does. All modern phones with OLED
418. 14:58displays do that. So, yeah, been super
419. 15:00busy with this. Absolutely loving
420. 15:02getting back into the embedded computer
421. 15:05stuff um a bit more. Now I've had a bit
422. 15:07more time to sort of do it and
423. 15:09everything else. But, yeah, Mesh Com is
424. 15:11going from strength to strength. Of
425. 15:12course, in the background, we just kind
426. 15:13of sailed past like 10,000 users on the
427. 15:15map. And obviously, there's there's
428. 15:16probably more because not everybody adds
429. 15:19themselves to the map. I love these
430. 15:20notifications, the way they just kind of
431. 15:22ping in. It's just It's so cool.
432. 15:24[laughter]
433. 15:24I don't know why I get so excited about
434. 15:26it cuz it's just what a phone does, but
435. 15:27it's something cool about having your
436. 15:29own um your own device that's kind of,
437. 15:32you know, you know what it's doing
438. 15:33behind the scenes. There's nothing
439. 15:34nothing going on in the background that
440. 15:36you don't know about, which is kind of
441. 15:38cool. So, yeah, been super excited to
442. 15:39tell you about Mesh OS. Um it's been
443. 15:42This video I've just been meaning to do
444. 15:44this video for for quite a long time.
445. 15:46Um and yeah, I've just been kept
446. 15:48tinkering away with this. And if you
447. 15:50know what it's like, if you get involved
448. 15:51in this stuff, you can just you can just
449. 15:53lose days, weeks, months.
450. 15:55>> [laughter]
451. 15:56>> So, um yeah, it's been great to finally
452. 15:58kind of tell you about this stuff and
453. 16:00and kind of let you know about, you
454. 16:01know, where my little corner of this
455. 16:04kind of project is is kind of is going,
456. 16:06at least. So, yeah, guys. Um hope you've
457. 16:09all been enjoying Mesh Com. I've seen,
458. 16:11you know, the the messages in this area
459. 16:13sort of like pretty much continuous. So,
460. 16:15it's hard to keep up sometimes, but
461. 16:17yeah, I I I think everybody's um kind of
462. 16:19enjoying it and having a lot of fun. And
463. 16:22I've seen quite a few new users pop up
464. 16:24recently as well. So, shout out to you
465. 16:26guys. Don't forget to join the Discord
466. 16:28if you haven't already, and subscribe
467. 16:29and like this channel, so the Mesh Com
468. 16:31channel. Anyway, guys, I hope you've
469. 16:33enjoyed this one, and um yeah.
470. 16:36The future's bright.
471. 16:37>> [snorts]
472. 16:37>> It's not orange.
473. 16:39It's Mesh Com.