Merge pull request #110 from DefangLabs/linda-hardware-blog

Hardware Blog

Author: commit111

blog/2024-11-12-hard-lessons-from-hardware.md

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+---
+slug: hard-lessons-from-hardware
+title: "Hard Lessons From Hardware"
+tags: [Cloud, NoDevOps, Embedded Systems, Hardware, Wifi, Arduino, Defang]
+author: Linda Lee
+---
+
+*About the author: Linda Lee is an intern at Defang Software Labs who enjoys learning about computer-related things. She wrote this blog post after having fun with hardware at work.* 
+
+## My Story of Embedded Systems With Defang
+
+Have you ever looked at a touch screen fridge and wondered how it works? Back in my day (not very long ago), a fridge was just a fridge. No fancy built-in interface, no images displayed, and no wifi. But times have changed, and I’ve learned a lot about embedded systems, thanks to Defang! 
+
+![smart_fridge](/img/hardware-story/smart_fridge.png)
+
+From my background, I was more into the web development and software side of things. Buffer flushing? Serial monitors? ESP32-S3? These were unheard of. Then one day at Defang, I was suggested to work on a project with a [SenseCAP Indicator](https://wiki.seeedstudio.com/Sensor/SenseCAP/SenseCAP_Indicator/Get_started_with_SenseCAP_Indicator/), a small programmable touch screen device. Everyone wished me good luck when I started. That’s how I knew it wasn’t going to be an easy ride. But here I am, and I’m glad I did it. 
+
+What is embedded systems/programming? It’s combining hardware with software to perform a function, such as interacting with the physical world or accessing cloud services. A common starting point for beginners is an Arduino board, which is what the SenseCAP Indicator has for its hardware. My goal was to make a UI display for this device, and then send its input to a computer, and get that data into the cloud.
+
+![hand_typing](/img/hardware-story/hand_typing.png)
+
+## The Beginning
+
+My journey kicked off with installing the [Arduino IDE](https://www.arduino.cc/en/software) on my computer. It took me two hours—far longer than I expected—because the software versions I kept trying were not the right ones. Little did I know that I would encounter this issue many times later, such as when downloading [ESP-IDF](https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-idf/en/stable/esp32/get-started/index.html), a tool for firmware flashing. Figuring out what not to install had become a highly coveted skill. 
+
+The next part was writing software to display images and text. This was slightly less of a problem thanks to forums of users who had done the exact same thing several years ago. One tool I used was [Squareline Studio](https://squareline.io/), a UX/UI design tool for embedded devices. With a bit of trial and error, I got a simple static program displayed onto the device. Not half bad looking either. Here’s what it looked like:
+
+![ui_static](/img/hardware-story/ui_static.png)
+
+## The Middle
+
+Now came the networking part. Over wifi, I set up a Flask (Python) server on my computer to receive network pings from the SenseCAP Indicator. I used a library called [ArduinoHTTPClient](https://github.com/arduino-libraries/ArduinoHttpClient). At first, I wanted to ping the server each time a user touched the screen. Then came driver problems, platform incompatibilities, deprecated libraries…
+
+… After weeks of limited progress due to resurfacing issues, I decided to adjust my goal to send pings on a schedule of every 5 seconds, rather than relying on user input. I changed the UI to be more colorful, and for good reason. Now, each network ping appears with a message on the screen. Can you look closely to see what it says? 
+
+![ui_wifi](/img/hardware-story/ui_wifi.png)
+
+This is what the Flask server looked like on my computer as it got pinged:
+
+![local_server](/img/hardware-story/local_server.png)
+
+Hooray! Once everything was working, It was time to deploy my Flask code as a cloud service so I could access it from any computer, not just my own. Deployment usually takes several hours due to configuring a ton of cloud provider settings. But I ain’t got time for that. Instead, I used Defang to deploy it within minutes, which took care of all that for me. Saved me a lot of time and tears.
+
+Here’s the Flask deployment on Defang’s portal view: 
+
+![portal_view](/img/hardware-story/portal_view.png)
+
+Here’s the Flask server on the cloud, accessed with a deployment link:
+
+![deployed_server](/img/hardware-story/deployed_server.png)
+
+## The End
+
+After two whole months, I finally completed my journey from [start](https://github.com/commit111/defang-arduino-static) to [finish](https://github.com/commit111/defang-arduino-wifi)! This project was an insightful dive into the world of embedded systems, internet networking, and cloud deployment. 
+
+Before I let you go, here are the hard lessons from hardware, from yours truly:
+1. Learning what not to do can be equally as important.
+2. Some problems are not as unique as you think. 
+3. One way to achieve a goal is by modifying it. 
+4. Choose the simpler way if it is offered.
+5. That’s where Defang comes in.
+
+Want to try deploying to the cloud yourself? You can try it out [here](https://defang.io/#samples). Keep on composing up! 💪