Devlog 2

Now that I have the bluetooth and IR functionality working together, the ir demo is attached in the video. 

I’ve also created a schematic, which was done as my first time ever using KiCad, so I first followed the web tutorial to get the basics, then went in. While I don’t need to get a pcb  since I plan on just soldering everything directly, it does make visualizing the connections easier. That is especially imoprtant since I’m running very tight on applicable GPIO pins.

I need 10 total IO pins for everything (screen I2C, shift register, rotary encoder, IR receiver and transmitter).

The board I’m using (ESP32 C3 super-mini) has 16 pins, 13 for GPIO. But of that 13, 3 are strapping pins (required to be in particular states at boot), and 2 are for UART transmission. Leaving only 8 fully open pins.

Theoretically I could just stack shift registers for everything input and only use like 5 pins, but that sounds overcomplicated, and I thought it would be a fun challenge to get everything to work.

I went through the datasheets to figure out which state would be safest and would logically not be a worry, for instance pin 8 should be low at boot, but afterwards it acts an output to the internal LED, that meant I could safely connect that to the IR since it would never need to be pulled high unless it was being used, and having a visual indicator of when the IR was transmitting seemed like a fun inclusion. 

I’m sure the final schematic is not the most tidy thing, but I think it works for what it needs to be. I attached it to the end of the video