Motivation Radio ESP32 Wifi/BLE platform

[Neutron7]

This is a design from Rich Heslip (not a muffs member) and I created the module layout and board. it will be entirely open source.

It is an ESP32 devkitC board, with BLE and WiFi, MIDI, 4 channels of external ADC and DAC

The idea is to have sketches running on the module in a similar way to Ornament and Crime, but controlled via touchosc, lemur, DAW, or other networked device/software.

There is no "official code" yet, he is testing out various different connectivity with apps and ways it can be used.

The ESP32 is reportedly faster than a teensy 3.2 and can be programmed with the arduino IDE. (this is his module, im waiting for my boards, so cant test it quite yet)

with network connectivity, besides more normal performace methods, I suppose someone could set up things like make your twitter likes trigger drums or the wind speed in Antarctica control a CV.

more info when i have it!

[toneburst]

This looks exciting!

I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this one.

One issue that worries me slightly is power-consumption. I have a suspicion this might be a hungry little beast. I'd be happy to be proved wrong, though.

Please keep us informed of developments!

[batch]

Any update on this? Looks awesome and would certainly buy one if you have one to sell. If so - PM me

[SphericalSound]

Pusherman has PCBs. I could build you one if you dont have the skills/time.

In fact it´s a lovely module with plenty of possibilities. It´s a shame that it has almost no software nor people tweaking it...

[jmsiener]

Anyone out there with a motivation radio built that’s collecting dust? I’ve been fooling with mine a lot. Have the WiFiOSC script going and then parts of the whole picture. Just curious if anyone else out there was tinkering with it.

[SphericalSound]

This has the potential of been the o_C killer. I cant understand why there´s no more people using it.

Yea, it needs some apps to start the snowball.

Also, anyone knows the power consumption?

[jmsiener]

From what I’ve seen/read the ESP32 alone will draw ~40mA without being connected to anything (just your code), ~25 mA while flashing, but with WiFi going it’s more like ~125mA with 300-400mA spikes/pulses.

I’ve been having fun getting this module rolling and Rich provided a solid foundation but it’s still super complicated. Things that make the ESP32 pretty cool are also frustrating to implement. It’s super cool that any pin can be an interrupt but then you start learning that interrupts are just a pain on the ESP32 and can cause your code to fall apart in a heartbeat. The potential is awesome but compared to AVR or STM the resources just aren’t as developed.

Doesn’t mean I plan on giving up on it, just means it’ll be challenging.

[StickyC]

I bought one of these kits, I'm going to see if I can craft up some code to interface a bluetooth piano keyboard (https://xkeyair.com/xkey-air/) as a voltage/midi controller of some sort. Assuming I don't let the magic smoke out while assembling it - bit of a n00b to SMD work.

[heretogo]

Would anybody in Canada be able to build this for hire?

[heretogo]

Is there a build guide for this? I see the BOM in the jakplugg repo (https://github.com/jakplugg/motivation_radio_hardware) but no build instructions.

A bit ambitious but I'm ordering parts and I've decided to build it myself. A bit of help would be appreciated.

[jmsiener]

Yeah, I doubt there will be any build guide. It’s as simple as looking at the BOM and putting components where they belong. It’s a pretty simple build really - there aren’t any tricks; SMD on one side, jacks/encoder on the other. I believe the larger problem you’ll run into is getting a firmware on there to test since most of what Rich posted has changed. I tried building his code from the same version of Arduino/Esp32 he wrote it at but all of the other libraries have changed so I haven’t been able to get it all working. I could share what I got working with you if you do end up building a motivation radio.

[heretogo]

Thanks jmsiener. I will DM you once I have all the parts and I start my build.

[jmsiener]

Figured I'd share this here. I had lots of problems with getting Rich's examples to work (100% some error with the encoder libs, haven't tried again since this time last year but it always through an error when compiling) except for the WiFiOSC sketch he included. I elaborated on his idea (plus out of all the sketches included it would compile) so now it both SENDS and receives OSC. It's pretty rough at the moment and haven't done extensive testing but I did have Grids triggering some drums in Pure Data over the airways. Sends CV on gate on/off which is definitely the simplest method and plus I think a stream of CV data would eat up what little bandwidth is left.

My thoughts so far on what needs fixing is that it's sending a different data type than what it expects to receive. Motivational Radio CV responds to a float between 0-1 and currently I'm sending a 12bit int (0-4096). It would make sense to make them the same but by the same token there isn't really a right and wrong way with OSC; you could easily convert that data on the machine with far more horsepower In any event, it works at the moment. Next thing is to experiment with is router location and see how much of a difference that makes with latency. I've been testing with both the module and machine I'm working at a solid 15ft+through several walls away from the router - surely that could yield better performance! Also, thinking about implementing Ableton Link but that would need some sort menu to change a setting as well as changing what a gate output did using link.

[emmaker]

What's the lag time between doing something on a 'controller' and it coming out the other end?

Thanks
Jay S.

[jmsiener]

I have no scientific measurement for knowing the latency between say a button press on TouchOSC to the physical gate output but it's pretty responsive overall. I'll try and make a video or something in next couple of days to show it off. I've been putting it off because like I mentioned in the prior post I haven't gotten around to seeing if I could improve latency just by shortening the distance. I've got an old router that I can set up back in my studio for testing but I want to see the response with the router in the same room, both machines with WiFi, and then with motivation radio WiFi with the other machine by ethernet. Maybe I can shoot a phone video then of a "best case scenario." Protokol has a little latency tracker when monitoring incoming messages and it reports anywhere from 2-40ms but I'm not really sure what that latency measurement is representing tbh.

[emmaker]

I have no scientific measurement for knowing the latency between say a button press on TouchOSC to the physical gate output but it's pretty responsive overall. I'll try and make a video or something in next couple of days to show it off. I've been putting it off because like I mentioned in the prior post I haven't gotten around to seeing if I could improve latency just by shortening the distance. I've got an old router that I can set up back in my studio for testing but I want to see the response with the router in the same room, both machines with WiFi, and then with motivation radio WiFi with the other machine by ethernet. Maybe I can shoot a phone video then of a "best case scenario." Protokol has a little latency tracker when monitoring incoming messages and it reports anywhere from 2-40ms but I'm not really sure what that latency measurement is representing tbh.

Thanks.

Just trying to figure out if it's good enough for real time performing. I've played with some different wireless stuff and it was pretty useless.

Jay S.

[jmsiener]

Here's a link to a quick video I made showing it off. This is with the WiFi set literally on the other side of my 1 story house. Maybe WiFi performance will be better with a closer router? I'll find out soon!

[emmaker]

It seems fairly responsive. Better than what I was fiddling with about 5-6 years ago.

Thanks again.
Jay S.

[jmsiener]

Thanks for checking it out