From a05c32cce0afc9d9c9e3cadade5f818458774ba4 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Brian Bulkowski Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2020 22:55:33 -0800 Subject: [PATCH] A better readme with some idea of the point of the project --- README.md | 47 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++- 1 file changed, 46 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/README.md b/README.md index 8407e05..140c2e8 100644 --- a/README.md +++ b/README.md @@ -1 +1,46 @@ -# FastLED-idf \ No newline at end of file +# FastLED-idf + +The ESP32 is a pretty great package. It has two +cores, 240Mhz speed, low power mode, wifi and bluetooth, +and can be had in pre-built modules at prices between $24 ( Adafruit, Sparkfun ), $10 (Espressif-manufactured boards through Mauser and Digikey), +or 'knock off' boards for $4 from AliExpress. + +If you're going to program this board, you might use Arduino. +Although I love the concept of Arduino - and the amazing amount +of libraries - the reality is the Arduino IDE is a mess, and the compile +environment is "funky", that is, it's not really C - about my first +minute in the IDE, I managed to write a perfectly valid C preprocessor +directive that's illegal in Arduino. + +Enter ESP-IDF, which is Espressif's RTOS. It's based on FreeRTOS, +but they had to fork it for multiple cores. It's based on FreeRTOS 9, +but has some of the work done later backported. + +There are a TON of useful modules included with ESP-IDF. Notably, +nghttp server, mdns, https servers, websockets, json, mqtt, etc etc. + +What I tend to do with embedded systems is blink LEDs! Sure, there's other +fun stuff, but blinking LEDs is pretty good. + +Thus, we need FastLED. + +# The other FastLED-idf + +It appears that set of code was an earlier version of FastLED, +and probably only still works with ESP-IDF 3.x. There was a major +update to ESP-IDF, a new build system, lots of submodule updates, +cleaned up headers and names, which seem to be all for the better - +but with lots of breaking changes. + +Thus, updating both, and using eskrab's version as a template, +I attempt to have a running version of FastLED with the ESP-IDF +4.0 development environment + +# ESP-IDF already has a LED library + +Yes, I saw it once, I'm having trouble finding it now. It does +really cool timing tricks, but it's not got all the fancy-fancy +of the FastLED library, which has a better designed and time tested +programming interface. I reached out on the Espressif forum to the +company and suggested they support FastLED ( why not? it's open source! ) +and they told me to get lost. \ No newline at end of file