Just received 2 MicroBit Carrier Boards from MakerFocus donated for the Visuino development!

Another week, and another nice surprise, this time from my new friend at MakerFocus!

• MakerFocus Piano Music Development Board for BBC Micro:bit Board with RGB Buzzer
• MakerFocus 1.8inch LCD Colorful Display 160x128 Pixels with SPI Interface for BBC Micro:bit

Here are some pictures from the modules:

And the packaging:

I am looking forward to adding support for the Carrier Boards in Visuino, and plan to post videos, and some tutorials on how to program them with Visuino.

Cheer,

  Boian

#Visuino #Arduino #MicroBit #MakerFocus

Just received 7 more modules and a M5StickC from my good friends at M5Stack for the Visuino development!

Today I received yet another great surprise!

My good friends at M5Stack sent me even more Grove System modules and a second M5StickC !
The package included:

• ESP32 based M5StickC 
• RGB LED Unit
• CardKB Mini Keyboard Unit
• Mini Heart Rate Unit
• 16-Key Capacitive Touch Unit
• Mini GPS/BDS Unit
• HEX RGB LED Board
• Extend Serial I/O Unit

Here are some pictures from the unboxing:

The Modules:

And the package:

I have already added in Visuino most of the modules that I received from M5Stack few weeks ago.

I have already started work on the newly arrived modules, adding support for them in Visuino, and plan to post videos of the controllers, and some tutorials on how to program them with Visuino.

Cheer,

  Boian

#Visuino #Arduino #ESP32 #M5Stack

The Visuino Kitchen surrounded by Wind, Fire, Power Outages, and DC-10 Air Tankers flyovers

     Hello friends,

For the last couple of weeks there have been very strong winds in our area, and there were a lot of fires. The power was cut of multiple times, and the last outage lasted over 34 H.
To keep us entertained while without power, we had quite a show... DC-10 tankers flying over the house, and dropping fire retardant couple of miles away :-)
At some point they were doing a drop every few minutes.
They finally succeeded to get it under control and the wind subsided late yesterday.
The power was restored around 8PM.

Special thanks to all the Firefighters, and the pilots of the Air Tankers.

They risk their lives every day to save us !!!

Here are few short videos combined from some of the DC-10 flyovers and drops:

And pictures from the fire:

On the positive side, the power outage gave me time to organize and clean the Visuino Kitchen, so it looks tidier than ever, although as you can see from the pictures, I am already working on the next batch of modules waiting to be supported, so it will not stay like that much longer  :-D :

Hopefully the fire season is very much over, so and there will not be any other power outages, so I can keep working on the Visuino development, as well as growing the Delphi Libraries :-)

Cheers,

    Boian

At the "Hackaday LA October Meetup" last week

Last week, I had chance to go to the "Hackaday LA Octobert Meetup" meetup at the Supplyframe DesignLab.

Here are some pictures I took at the event:

Me at the event with my Robots:

The crowd gathering around the food:

Visuino at the event:

And more Visuino:

The Robots catching some attention:

The Robots:

Whitley Porter opening the event:

JT Nelson presenting:

JT Nelson presenting:

I hope I will have chance to go to another event soon, as these events are always great!

Cheers,
  Boian

#Visuino #Arduino #Hackaday

Just received 8 cool modules from my good friends at M5Stack for the Visuino development!

Today I received another great surprise!

My good friends at M5Stack sent me some more Grove System modules and M5StickC Hats:

• Dual Button Module
• PIR Motion Sensor
• I2C Joystick Unit
• I/O Hub 1 to 6 Expansion Unit
• M5StickC ENV Hat
• M5StickC Yun Hat

All these great modules were donated for the Visuino development :-)

Here are some pictures from the unboxing:

All the modules in the box


The sensors:


And the M5StickC Yun Hat:

As you can see from the pictures the modules are of very fine quality, and I can assure you that they look really great!

I have already added in Visuino the modules that I received from M5Stack few weeks ago.

I have already started work on the newly arrived modules, adding support for them in Visuino, and plan to post videos of the controllers, and some tutorials on how to program them with Visuino.

Cheer,

  Boian

#Visuino #Arduino #ESP32 #M5Stack

Assemble the official version Elegoo Penguin-Bot Arduino Robot KIT Step 3: Assemble The Legs - Part 2

Few of weeks ago I received another Cool Penguin-Bot Arduino Robot KIT from Elegoo donated for the Visuino development :-).

This is the Final Production Version of the Robot. I already posted videos for the Preproduction version, and now here is the first assembly video of the production version.

I already posted:
Unboxing Video 
Step 1:  Assemble The Feet, and Install the Servos controlling them
Step 2: Assemble The Legs - Part 1

Here is the third Assembly Video - Assemble The Legs - Part2

I am preparing the rest of the Assembly videos and will post them in the following days. I have also mapped the Robot's functionality in Visuino, and plan even improved support in the future.
After that I will try to make some Visuino tutorials for the Robot.

Cheers,
  Boian

#Visuino #Arduino #Elegoo #Robot #PenguinBot

At the "Hackaday LA August Meetup" last week

Last week, I finally had a chance to go to the "Hackaday LA August Meetup" meetup at the Supplyframe DesignLab.
Unfortunately the traffic that day was awful, and it took me over 2 and a half hours to arrive :-( .
I missed the first speaker but had chance to be there for the Sarah Beshir's presentation.

Fortunately there are replays of the presentations and we all can watch them:

Sirina Nabhan - Apollo 11 Inspiration and Innovation

Sarah Beshir - The "What", "Why", and "How" of Model Based Systems Engineering

Here are some pictures I took from the event:

Robots and food at the event :-)

...and avdn Visuino :-)

Tim Trzepacz is making "70s style" wearable synthesizers :-)

Sarah Beshir presenting:

Sarah Beshir presenting:

The audience:

The audience:

Me and Sarah Beshir:

At the entrance they had "Hackaday Prize Boxes" available for the attendees :-)

Here is what was inside:

I hope I will have chance to go to another event, and will have a better luck with the traffic next time, as these events are always great!

Cheers,
  Boian

#Visuino #Arduino #Hackaday

Visuino support for the ESP32 based M5 Stack core - First Test

After few days of digging through code, schematics, and specifications, I finally have the Visuino support for the ESP32 Basic Core , and made the first test project:

Here is the programmed Core:

I also recorded a first look video and you can see it here:

I am working to add support for the rest of the modules, and will be posting the progress so stay tuned.
I also hope to have a new Visuino release later this week if all goes well... It will include the new modules, a lot of fixes, and new features that I added last week.

Cheer,

  Boian

#Visuino #Arduino #ESP32 #M5Stack

Assemble Pre-Production Elegoo Balancing Arduino Robot KIT Step 2: Assemble the Sensor and Motor Driver Breakout Board

After months of hard work on the new Visuino design, I finally have found time to post the second assembly video of the cool Pre-Production Balancing Arduino Robot KIT that the great people from Elegoo sent me last year.

I already posted :
Unboxing Video
Step 1: Install The Motors and Wheels

And here is the second assembly video: Assemble the Breakout Board - Install the Arduino, the MPU6050 Accelerometer Gyroscope, the Motor Driver, and the Bluetooth LE HC-08 module

I have already added support for the Robot in Visuino, and you can program it any way you want:

I am working to post the rest of the assembly videos and will try to make some Visuino video tutorials on self balancing robots, so stay tuned.

Cheers,
  Boian

#Visuino #Arduino #Elegoo #Robot

Just received 2 really cool ESP-32 based cores and sensors for them from my good friends at M5Stack for the Visuino development!

Today I received another great surprise!

My good friends at M5Stack sent me one ESP32 Basic Core IoT Development Kit, one M5StickC ESP32-PICO Mini IoT Development Kit, one ENV Unit with Temperature Humidity Pressure Sensor (DHT12+BMP280), one 3-Axis Digital Accelerometer Unit (ADXL345), one ADC I2C Unit (ADS1100), and one Color Sensor RGB Unit (TCS3472).

All these great modules were donated for the Visuino development :-)

Here are some pictures from the unboxing:

All the modules in the box

The ESP32 Basic Core IoT Development Kit

The M5StickC ESP32-PICO Mini IoT Development Kit

And the sensors:

As you can see from the pictures the modules are of very fine quality, and I can assure you that they look really great!

I am in the final stages of preparing Visuino for a release after months of work on the new design. There will be a lot of exciting announcements, and surprises in the coming few days, so stay tuned!

As soon as the release is out, I will start work on the newly arrived modules, adding support for them in Visuino, and plan to post videos of the controllers, and some tutorials on how to program them with Visuino.

Cheer,

  Boian

#Visuino #Arduino #ESP32 #M5Stack

Just released the latest Beta of the new completely redesigned Visuino with Raspberry Pi support!

For the last 6 months I have been working hard on a brand new, revolutionary Visuino design!
The goal was to make Visuino generate better optimized code than even very experienced developer can do after spending weeks of manual optimizations!

For this I had to invent a number of new advanced coding techniques. They are difficult to use when manually writing code, but are perfectly suitable for automatic code generation :-)

The work took long months of writing and rewriting, experimenting different approaches, testing results, and at the end completely rewriting (few times :-( ) all Visuino libraries from scratch, as well as practically all of the code generation algorithms.

As result for moths I was not able to make new posts, videos, tutorials, articles, answer many of my e-mails or social media contacts :-( . I was completely obsessed with the goal of completing this gigantic, and complex task...

The results however were astonishing! In some cases the generated code used more than 90% less RAM! The code size also shrank considerably and executes few times faster!

You can now join the MeWe Visuino group and try the new Beta for free! :-)

https://mewe.com/group/5bc7b647058ed309f3286589

But I did not stop here. I also significantly enhanced the Visuino graphics, adding many new features, including graphics elements specifically designed to allow you to easily display gauges and clocks. I also added support for Adafruit type proportional fonts.

Many new components were also added, and new features were added to existing components.

I also added support for packet communication of Complex data, Text, and Array.

Number of shields ware added, including PLC-LAB from PLC-Expert.

Finally to top it off, I added support for a number of new controllers, including:

• Peguino
• Arduino Nano Every
• MicroPLC from PLC-Expert
• ESPCopter
• A number of ESP32 boards with Displays from TTGO and others

Now the real surprize! In this version I also added experimental support for Raspberry Pi!
Yes from now on Visuino will support not only Arduino and other microcontrollers, but also Raspberry Pi!

Here is a screenshot of the new Raspberry Pi board mapping:

In addition to all this, quite some work went into making the IDE more stable, and easier to use.

The Visuino will continue to be in Beta for another 2 weeks or so and as soon as we all are happy with its quality, I will release the new version officially :-)

Happy Beta Testing everyone!

Cheers,
  Boian

#Visuino #Arduino #RaspberryPi4

Assemble the official version Elegoo Penguin-Bot Arduino Robot KIT Step 2: Assemble The Legs - Part 1

Few of weeks ago I received another Cool Penguin-Bot Arduino Robot KIT from Elegoo donated for the Visuino development :-).

This is the Final Production Version of the Robot. I already posted videos for the Preproduction version, and now here is the first assembly video of the production version.

I already posted:
Unboxing Video 
Step 1:  Assemble The Feet, and Install the Servos controlling them

Here is the second Assembly Video - Assemble The Legs - Part 1

I am preparing the rest of the Assembly videos and will post them in the following days. I have also mapped the Robot's functionality in Visuino, and plan even improved support in the future.
After that I will try to make some Visuino tutorials for the Robot.

Cheers,
  Boian

#Visuino #Arduino #Elegoo #Robot #PenguinBot

Assemble Macetech Arduino RGB NeoPixel Shades KIT Step 3: Putting it all Together

Last year I received a cool Macetech Arduino RGB Shades KIT from Jim McKeeth of Embarcadero donated for the Visuino development :-) .

I already posted:
Unboxing Video
Step 1: Assemble The Temples
Step 2: Assembly Video - Assemble The Front Panel

Here is the final assembly video: Putting it All Together

I am preparing the rest of the Assembly videos and will post them in the following days.
I have also already added the RGB Shades support in Visuino, and it is available in the current release :-)

Cheers,

  Boian

#Visuino  #Arduino #Delphi #Macetech

Received a cool Mars 3D UV Printer from Elegoo and posted Unboxing Video

Couple of weeks ago my good friends at Elegoo sent me a really cool Mars 3D UV Printer.

Here are the parts included in the set:

And the package:

Unfortunately I was in the middle of a lot of work adding large number of new features to Visuino, and I was not able to post unboxing video at that time.
Now with the latest Visuino release out, I finally had the chance to record, edit, and post the Unboxing Video:

I am brand new to 3D Printing, and now I am learning about it. As it turns out this is probably the very best printer for beginners, and seems to be very easy to setup and use. I plan to post my progress and show you my experience as a complete 3D newbie with this nice printer :-) .
Stay tuned for more videos of the printer and my struggles in the magical world of 3D printing :-)

Cheers,
  Boian

#Elegoo #3DPrinter