[Feature Request]: Simple send and receive platformIO sketch for the esp32s3

[hpssjellis]

Platform

ESP32

Description

A new very affordable $9.90 USD esp32s3 with sx1262 LoRa module is out.

https://wiki.seeedstudio.com/wio_sx1262_with_xiao_esp32s3_kit/

This kit comes with Meshtastic pre-installed but could also be very useful for education. I have a working LoRa P2P on it, https://forum.seeedstudio.com/t/xiao-esp32s3-wio-sx1262-arduino-ide-lora-error/284419/15 but really feel that an Arduino IDE maintained sketch would really increase the number of Meshtastic users. The sketch(s) would just need send and receive.

The present concept of connecting two Arduinos, one for Meshtastic and one for sensor/actuator is just not feasible and it is a bit sketchy that no-one has looked into the Arduino-IDE for Meshtastic. (Historically other startups keep things locked up so that they can eventually charge a monthly fee once the user-base is large enough "I have had my education code deprecated this way several times over the last 35 years").

I have got the platformio firmware installing on my esp32s3-sx1262 kit but it frankly is too complex. I don't need all the WiFi and BlE capabilities. To develop teachable machine learning with Meshtastic all I need is a receive code and a send code preferably in two separate sketches.

I guess a good starting point would be a PlatformIO send and a PlatformIO receive sketch instead of an Arduino-IDE sketch. Is that a sensible feature request? I am surprised someone hasn't hacked a solution yet, It is just AES-CTR 256 encryption where the channel name is the key. I think it would be much better if Meshtastic supported simple send receive. This new board would be a really good starting point, as it is well made, powerful and inexpensive.

https://www.seeedstudio.com/Wio-SX1262-with-XIAO-ESP32S3-p-5982.html

I have a robotics, IoT, Machine Learning High School (undergrad) curriculum and would like to include a usable connection with Meshtastic.

https://github.com/hpssjellis/maker100-eco

Jeremy Ellis

[hpssjellis]

@thebentern, @caveman99, @GUVWAF, @fifieldt link anyone else you think might be interested.

I teach high school robotics and am connected with Harvard through the TinyML4D admin team. Our goal is to bring machine learning on microcontrollers to developing countries.

LoRa is a great fit for machine learning since it takes complex sensory input (think: vision) and reduces it to a simple response (think: I see three sheep).

I want to like LoRaWAN, but it’s just such a mess. TTN is terrible in North America, and Helium could be good but has sacrificed simplicity for multiple reasons. Meshtastic is the best solution, but there are other (IMHO not as good) options, such as Reticulum Network Stack, Briar, and Yggdrasil.

The only issue with Meshtastic, is that I can't make a machine learning model on an ESP32 and send the result over the Meshtastic network without requiring two MCUs. That’s crazy, and I prefer to stay away from crazy. There also doesn’t seem to be a simple way for a microcontroller to receive a command from the Meshtastic network—for example, a basic "open the gate" command that an MCU can execute doesn’t seem easy to implement.

Am I missing something? Can these capabilities be achieved? If Meshtastic is to grow into a truly useful network—taught by thousands of educators worldwide and valuable in disaster situations—then I think these issues need to be addressed.

Any opinions? Obviously, the Meshtastic business model has been to not encourage Arduino integration. I understand that, because it kept the network clean and controlled, but now that Meshtastic has gained a bit of a following, is it time to re-evaluate arduino connectivity?

[fifieldt]

You're doing great things, @hpssjellis :)

One project I found helpful when testing before is this one: https://github.com/mverch67/device-ui-project

The src/main.cpp there is very small, and so it was easy to insert a few extra lines there.

To use that on your xiao, you'd have to add the variants folder for that from the meshtastic firmware repository into the variants folder in the device-ui-project ... but that may be it!

In terms of simplicity, I find that a lot of the complexity of platformIO is taken away by using the (free) VSCode. Are you familiar with that interface?

[hpssjellis]

Thanks @fifieldt I will look into that next. I just have to get back to @GUVWAF since I tried a simple arduino code on core 0 but it killed the meshtastic code. The arduino code worked fine, even said Meshtastic was working, however it wasn't. I will probably have to try your example from the TFT code. I appreciate the attempts to give me some ideas.

Here is my non-Meshtatic-working Arduino IDE code for core 0;

// Put esp32s3 into boot mode then
// flash Meshtastic using the https://flasher.meshtastic.org/

// Then set arduino IDE to:
// Arduino runs on:  Core 1 (default)
// Events run on: Core 0
// put the esp32 intoboot mode and run the following

TaskHandle_t mySerialTask;

void mySerialTaskCode(void * parameter) {
  while (1) {
    if (Serial.available()) {
      String myInput = Serial.readStringUntil('\n');
      Serial.println("Received: " + myInput);
    }
    vTaskDelay(100 / portTICK_PERIOD_MS); // Let other tasks run
  }
}

void setup() {
  Serial.begin(115200);

  // Create a serial handling task on Core 0 with increased stack size & lower priority
  xTaskCreatePinnedToCore(
    mySerialTaskCode, // Function to run
    "SerialTask",     // Task name
    4096,            // Increase stack size
    NULL,            // Parameters
    0,               // Set priority lower than system tasks
    &mySerialTask,   // Task handle
    0                // Run on Core 0
  );

  // Initialize Meshtastic (this runs on Core 1)
  Serial.println("Starting Meshtastic...");
  // meshtastic.setup();  <-- Uncomment if using actual Meshtastic setup
}



void loop() {
  // Meshtastic runs its main loop here (on Core 1)
  Serial.println("Meshtastic is running on Core 1...");
  delay(2000);
}

The above code works but then the working Meshtastic fails.

I don't have my TFT available so will not be able to run the example give but might be able to work with it a bit.

Please consider my request for a barebones pingPong so use Makers have a starting point.

Here are my pins, if someone wanted to make it work for my board since my entire plan is to promote Meshtastic if I can get it pingPong working.

#define LORA_MISO 8   // confirmed
#define LORA_SCK 7    // confirmed
#define LORA_MOSI 9  // confirmed
#define LORA_CS 41    //NSS
#define LORA_DIO2 38
#define LORA_DIO1 39     // irq
#define LORA_RESET 42
#define LORA_BUSY 40

[GUVWAF]

Hi @hpssjellis,

You certainly have a very nice use case!

I took some time to create a quick-and-dirty example using PlatformIO, see my commit here.
Basically it uses the normal Meshtastic firmware with some components from the device-ui library for inter-core communication.

In core0loop() it will send a “Hello World” text message every 60 seconds, and there is a textMessageHandler() defined where it just prints a received text message.

I tested this on a T-Beam (as I don’t have the Xiao ESP32S3), but I included the necessary changes to its platformio.ini and it builds successfully, so hopefully you can try it out.

If this is helpful for you, we should really make this a nice example for anyone wanting to do something similar as you.

[hpssjellis]

Wow, thanks @GUVWAF I will try that today. Yes, simple examples can reduce first time frustration and get you much more users. I appreciate your effort, feedback soon.

[thebentern]

This is a great example that we should figure out a good way to highlight and point folks to IMO.

[hpssjellis]

Before trying the device-ui I thought I would try the full Meshtastic firmware using the Gitpod and then vscode.

@GUVWAF can you do a quick check if this folder is supposed to be called seeed_xiao_s3 or seeed-xiao-s3 the reason I ask is because the run command needs pio run -e seeed-xiao-s3 but the variants folder has the above. If I change it then the command runs but crashes later. I feel that several folder file names need to be changed.

I guess the definition for the run command could also be the problem. I see lots of variants labelled both ways. Any suggestions?

https://github.com/meshtastic/firmware/tree/94de2315c1f485dcdd3b4a48966f402af19af20a/variants/seeed_xiao_s3

On the good side pio run -e tbeam compiled fine.

So glad someone made the Gitpod link. Gitpod is a godsend to education. On that note when using the esp web flasher tool typically you describe the addresses that the web flasher addresses. Anyone got that information for the Mestastic code.

[hpssjellis]

@GUVWAF almost there using vscode on windows and your code at https://github.com/GUVWAF/Meshtastic-device/tree/secondaryCore

I needed this code to download it

git clone --branch secondaryCore --single-branch https://github.com/GUVWAF/Meshtastic-device.git

then this to add it to vscode

code --add /path/to/your/folder

Everything compiles and seems to be functioning, except I can't load it using the android app to change the REGION from UNSET to US915.

Do you know where to set the REGION in the compiled code? I am looking for a config file I think this is the property that needs to be changed.

 _meshtastic_Config_LoRaConfig_RegionCode

Any suggestions? Another idea is to set in the platformio.ini file this

build_flags =
    -DREGION_US915
``

[GUVWAF]

Best way would be using the userPrefs: https://github.com/meshtastic/firmware/blob/master/userPrefs.jsonc

The reason you can't connect with the Android app is because I hardcoded Bluetooth off in main.cpp (otherwise inter-core communication doesn't work). You could also remove that, set it up first and then manually disable Bluetooth in the Android app to boot using the secondary core communication.

[hpssjellis]

@GUVWAF Strange, I did the very simple step of this firmware link uncommenting:

 "USERPREFS_CONFIG_LORA_REGION": "meshtastic_Config_LoRaConfig_RegionCode_US",

but still getting the seeed-xiao-s3 board serial output:

WARN  | ??:??:?? 120 [PacketAPI] send - lora tx disabled: Region unset

and of course it is not sending to or receiving from my other two meshtastic setups. Any suggestions?

[GUVWAF]

Hmm, seems this only applies when you factory reset the node.
You should still be able to use the Python CLI to set the region with meshtastic --set lora.region US, or the Web Client over serial.

Otherwise, you could remove the hard-coded Bluetooth disable in main.cpp, then configure it with the Android app and disable Bluetooth manually afterwards.

[hpssjellis]

@GUVWAF is it possible to have a fully running Meshtastic that also does the send and receive, since it is using the full firmware? That would make the most sense for the Meshtastic Community using PlatformIO. I know you disconnected bluetooth so that you could alter the secondary core core0 src/SecondaryCore.cpp but is there a way to have both work (bluetooth and send and receive) Perhaps alternate them?

I still think someone should make an Arduino library that doesn't do all of Meshtastic (no bluetooth, no WiFi, no private channels), just allows LoRa modules to send and receive on the public Meshtastic network. Reminder my background is TinyML machine learning on Arduinos and LoRa/LoRaWan is the perfect solution for sending ML results.

I placed a feature request with RadioLib RadioLib/issues/1454

[GUVWAF]

@GUVWAF is it possible to have a fully running Meshtastic that also does the send and receive, since it is using the full firmware?

The issue is that there can only be one client app connected at a time, since the API is not designed to be multiplexed. Instructing it to send from two clients will work, but only one of them can receive packets at a time. It would require a redesign of the API to support multiple connections, which I expect to be a lot of work.
Yes, you could alternate between them (e.g. the device-ui uses a "programming mode" to allow it to be configured using a phone app), either manually like I proposed or maybe programmatically.

I placed a feature request with RadioLib jgromes/RadioLib#1454

Don't think that really fits for RadioLib. Maybe better to discuss with the folks that were talking about using Meshtastic as a library today here: #5739

[hpssjellis]

@GUVWAF Well I got the Meshtastic client installed and managed to change the region to US. So that is good. By the way the Web Meshtastic does not seem to submit the LoRa changes to the region. The web config pages do not seem to have a submit button whereas the web Channel page does.

Still not working, but I am sure learning a lot. Time to dig into the meshtastic client.

[hpssjellis]

@GUVWAF Got it working. Thank you so much for making this example. I will see what I can do with it from the machine learning point of view.

The issue was, your example correctly loaded Meshtastic main channel with encryption. both my meshtastic nodes had zero encryption. Not sure if I set it that way or not but I think they were default flashed. Anyway the client helped debug the problem. I guess everyone should be encouraged to use the client, which was an easy install.

You can close this if you want.

[markjhill87]

hey guys im literally looking for an arduino example for 2 of there module sets to speak with each other over the lora module