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Comment by teamonkey | Hacker News Reader

Microcontrollers are fun. The specs of modern MCs are similar to home computers 30 years ago. The community aspect is there. They’re cheap, too.

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Esp32s are amazing fun. I designed boards in the 80s and I still love tinkering with microcontrollers. The reflux control for my still currently uses a brushed motor controlled by PWM and I am upgrading it to a second hand pump with a brushless motor so I am looking at driving it. I just set up an old drone ESC and am controlling the motor with dshot and it works ok. There is a little pre built board Simple FOC that is also esp32 I just ordered for 20 bucks to give a try.

I've been a developer for 45 years and I still actually like it most days.

I recently learned of ESP32-P4 that has graphics compositing optimizations.

A couple of years ago, I used an RP2040 to build a graphics card with 2D triangle filling and other pretty nice abstractions.

Next time... It'll be the ESP32-P4. Somewhat looking forward to that project, but there are prerequisites that need to be dealt with first. Yes, I'm very grown up. It sucks. :)

agreed, I think much of the appeal for me is the physical element of wiring things up and seeing it do something more than changing a few pixels on my screen.

Soldering is very relaxing as well.

How you know me so well. I also like how cheap all of the parts and pieces are. It's like the next step after Legos. Although, they have way more interesting Legos today than what I had as a kid. I've bought components with an a specific project in mind, but once it's built I find myself taking them apart and making a new something with it combined with other parts I have lying around. Things are cheap enough that I don't mind so much if I got something wrong and release a little magic smoke.

Yes exactly! I still can't believe how cheap an ESP32 is - a device with bluetooth, WiFi, and ample processing power and RAM for most tasks you'd use an MCU for. And yeah I love finding out I already have all the parts I need. Now, keeping them organized, that can be a struggle. I have a couple of these double sided tool organizers [1] and a tackle box, but sometimes I'm still digging through bins to find a part I know I have but can't find

[1] https://i.imgur.com/4KpnFZJ.png

Agreed. OP, get a CYD (Cheap Yellow Display) and run wild.

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