Rick's b.log - entry 2025/05/10

No audio

It wasn't wrong as in catastrohpic - obviously the system was smart enough to ignore the old kernel. Pulse Audio appears to have been installed but it is dormant and cannot start as PipeWire has already laid claim to the relevant hardware. Whatever, still no sound from the speakers.
The annoying thing is that, using the LiveCD, it did briefly work. So there's likely just a mismatch between the here and the there but I'm not clued enough to figure out what.

That being said, it does seem as if getting sound working correctly is something of an issue with Linux in general. Who'd have thought that accelerated H.265 to a custom screen, no problem. Playing a 'bong' when something goes wrong, huge problem. <shrug>

ESP32-Cam enhancements

So, once again, time to fiddle with the source code to improve the firmware.

• The very first thing to do was to convert the web page sent to the client from a byte array representing the web page in gzip form into plain HTML. Sure, this takes more space in Flash and is slower to send, but on the other hand it does allow for easy modification of the HTML.
• The next thing, something that definitely rankled, was having to scroll down to activate the "Get still" button, then back up to see the picture, then down, then up, then...
  So now the two buttons (still and stream) are at the top just under the settings toggle, and more precisely they are outside the settings so that, once set up, can be toggled away completely.
  
  How it can be made now.
• When the image is shown in the window, it is resized to fit. Unfortunately clicking the friendly Save button only saves a partial image, that being what would have fit into the resized area. It has now been fixed to save the entire image; though it does this by drawing into a canvas so the image being saved is not the image the camera sent - probably better to just right-click and save?
• Now uses the on-board notification LED - only on the AI-Thinker and clones, it would need to be added to the pin definitions for the other boards. This is on while booting, flashing during WiFi connect, then off unless data is being transferred, in which case it'll blink (on during acquisition and send).
• Fixed HTML/script bug where using the image Save button would save only a piece of the image that's the same size as the on-screen image. One needs to use naturalWidth and not width (ditto height).
• Fixed HTML/script bug where it was trying to turn off the face detection/enrollment buttons, that no longer exist.
• Dropped the XCLK down to 16MHz. Seems to work a little better for my OV5640. You might find the OV2640's can be quite noisy in video stream unless the XCLK is quite low, like 4MHz or so (but then it won't be anything like as fluid).
• Sometimes the WiFi fails to connect, reporting "E (2520) wifi:Association refused too many times, max allowed 1" or maybe even nothing at all, so there's now a timeout that will cause the device to restart itself. This often clears whatever the blockage was.
• Defaults to maximum image size at start, so will allocate the most memory possible for the frame buffer. Given the limitations of the hardware, you can't go beyond about 960KB per image, but it's much better than the 350ish you'd have had before.
• Flash now works. And not only that, it's an enhanced flash that will blink and then flash for a longer period. The reason for this is both to give the camera time to adjust, and also to help combaqt red-eye if taking pictures of people in low light.
• For the AI-Thinker board, the flash is limited to half power. This is because it's wired directly to the 3.3V supply with no current limiting resistor in place. Running for too long at full power, not good.

Now the generic camera server is that much more useful. ☺

For those outdoor photos.

 

Eurovision

Next week is Eurovision week. Semis on Tuesday and Thursday. And, guess what, I'm now going to be working eight hour days (so getting up at six) to make up for the days off around the public holidays (there are several in May). So... yeah... I think I'll be kind of dead afterwards.

I think I'll do what I normally do and just write down my ideas in a fairly unformatted way, and then just dump it on my site without any read-through afterwards, because by the time that's done, it'll be way past my bedtime.

And, as always, I have no idea about what's going to happen or who is going to appear. I prefer everything to be fresh on the night, so no social media things prior.

 

 

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John, 11th May 2025, 10:51

I love the piece of string - or is it bailing twine, ficelle de lieuse? I do miss bailing twine!    Anyway, very rustic and evocative!

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