This is a bit smart-home specific... I've long wanted to build some smart speakers with Home Assistant's voice assistant and a multi-room music solution. Sadly I could never get Snapcast work to an acceptable level, but seems there is a new kid in the block now.

Sendspin (formerly Resonate) is an open synchronized music protocol. Currently being implemented within ESPHome. A few days ago they fixed some more memory issues and seems it's getting along. Maybe we'll get an open and working multi-room audio solution added to ESPHome soon.

I got it working on both an ESP32-S3 and an old ESP32 (with PSRAM). It's got nice features like the title, artist, album and cover art being transferred so we can just display that on a small TFT. And it's just about starting to work well enough. Now they need to finalize it, get some more things changed around in ESPHome and I can finally assemble some synced speakers for the kitchen and livingroom. Yay!

Seems it's early days for the server-side of it as well. We got support by Music Assistant. Other than that the (few) libraries warn they're still more or less just a tech demo. So as of now this is somewhat limited to tinkerers, but IMO looking really promising.

• https://esphome.io/
• https://www.music-assistant.io/
• https://www.sendspin-audio.com/
• https://github.com/esphome/esphome/pull/12284 (plus a bunch of related PRs)

Builder: @pelya@lemmy.world

Components:

• ESP32-S3-Zero with RGB LED. I've selected it over more energy efficient ESP32-C6 because bigger chip looks better, and it's placed symmetrically.
• two CR1220 3V batteries.
• copper wire from Ethernet cable (single-strand obviously).
• lead-free solder (it's a ring, don't wear lead on your fingers).
• hot glue gun, because I could not make a battery holder using just wire.
• a piece of small diameter heat-shrink tube for copper wire.
• a jewellery file (optional, only needed if you actually going to wear the thing).

Instructions:

• flash the firmware first, because batteries will obstruct the USB port.
• it is recommended to file off all sharp edges on the board before you start soldering, it will be harder to smoothen the edges afterwards without scratching the copper wire.
• smoothen your wire, wrap it around some finger-size object like a tube of flux, cut the wire spiral into rings.
• solder wire rings into one side of the board, use every hole except for 5V and GND, and TX/RX on the other side.
• put the board onto your finger, measure and cut the other side of the wire rings to match your finger size, solder wire rings to the board.
• Glue two batteries together in sequence, then glue them to the top of the USB connector. Watch out for polarity - CR1220 has positive charge on the body and negative charge on the contact plate, you need to put the negative electrode onto the USB connector.
• wrap a stripped copper wire around another wire with isolation on it.
• bend both wires so that the stripped wire will go into 5V hole, and the isolated wire will go into GND and RX holes. The isolated wire is only needed as a mechanical support, because you should not solder another end of 5V wire to the TX or RX hole, or you risk frying the chip.
• add a piece of heat-shrink tube to the stripped wire. You need to make contact with the battery at the top and prevent the wire from contacting the battery at the bottom. You can try to leave a bit of isolation on the wire, but it's easier to use the tube.
• solder wires to the board.
• do not to make a common mistake of connecting 3V3 and GND together, or GND and 5V, like I did. 3V3 wire goes under the board onto the finger, GND wire goes above the board to hold the batteries.
• keep wire ends from sticking out of the mounting holes when soldering, they are going to scratch you when you wear the ring. You can file them off afterwards, but it's easier to not make them stick out in the first place.

Firmware: https://github.com/pelya/esp32-led-cycle-colors

The only thing it does is cycle LED with random colors. It shuts off power by pressing BOOT button or after 5 minutes. To turn it back on, press RESET button. There's no WiFi, Bluetooth, or LCD screen, but at least the LED is bright.

I did not measure how long will these two batteries last. When they are empty, I'll need to rip off hot glue blobs from the board, which would be pretty easy since I only put hot glue onto metallic surfaces.

And it's absolutely not waterproof, hopefully the finger grease will keep to the underside of the board and won't short the battery.

Full video: https://youtube.com/shorts/QZi4RBir2cE

I recently worked on a personal project where I wanted to trigger a sound board using a custom wake word. I had been keeping a keen eye on the work being done for local wake word detection in ESPHome and wondered if I could make use of it in this project. While ESPHome is an amazing project, I actually have a few devices flashed with it in my HA setup, it was more than I needed. This repository is the result of my efforts to make micro wake word a standalone component I could use in my own projects.

If you happen to find this useful make sure to send your thanks to those that did all the real work over at ESPHome, especially Kevin Ahrendt 😉.

And of course, here's a little video of it in action https://youtube.com/shorts/dRHSXZUriEs bqvEoKjWCEACqld0

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/22289228

It's a bit sad how deserted this community is, would love to connect more with other makers.

Let's rattle the cage a bit, who of you is here, and what are you working on?

I'll start: A wireless cryptographic keystore & signer. Keys are generated with the hardware RNG and stored AES-encrypted with the user's password, and you can request signatures via BLE.

Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ESP32-Dieshot.jpg

It's interesting how they are able to fit some much in a small space ~~considering most of it appears to be memory~~.

Check the official website for specifications.

Although I am very happy with the current devices in the 2.4Ghz band, wifi-6 might be a nice improvement.