Author: scornel1

The wifi ESP8266 development boards that we ordered came in. Took me a solid day of trouble shooting to finally get to the point where my MacBook Pro would recognize the existence of the ESP8266 being plugged into its USB port. The arduino IDE would not recognize the ESP board in the sketch—> ports section. Selecting the correct port is necessary to upload a sketch to the board so I scoured online forums and found that a USB to UART driver needs to be installed in order for the connection to be made. After installing and reinstalling to no avail, I eventually changed the board  sketch–>board to some other board and then back to the ESP8266 and finally the IDE recognized the board. The next problem that came up was that I was getting compiling errors that were board specific. The code was syntactically correct so there was obviously some board connection issues still.

I found some other mac users online that were having the same problem. I think it had something to do with the USB-UART drivers being “signed” and the computer needing authorization to use them. I tried running a few suggested terminal commands which fixed the problem. Currently I have the blink.ino sketch running on the ESP8266 to confirm that I can successfully upload sketches to the board.

I’ve been looking at the code and immediately noticed a potential problem for using this board: all the code I’ve found so far has been written to be used in home wifi systems where there is a single SSID and password to get onto the network. At Swarthmore there is Eduroam which, requires a swarthmore account to gain access. We all have these accounts but figuring out how to code our user credentials for the ESP8266 board to get access to the internet might be a bit of a challenge.

I will be taking one of the boards home with me and I will get it working on my home network which will be a less complex process.  We will have to solve the Eduroam network access problem once the spring term starts up again.

 

Image Capture App -------web server------->ESP2866 NodeMCU ------------->  LED matrix
Takes photo and                            receives message                updates to next
sends message                                                              LED pattern 
that is ready   <---------------------------------------------------------- 
for next LED pattern.                      sends message                                                            the next image.
Image stored locally                       to app "ready for
on device.                                 next image"

This week Megan and I discussed our options with regards to establishing wireless communication between a mobile phone and the Arduino. For the past week or so I was operating under the assumption that the Wifi module we were given (ESP8266) would solve all our problems and that it would be a simple initialization process and we could have at least a simple web server hosted on it. The ESP8266 runs off of 3.3V and thus requires 3.3V logic from our microcontroller. As we are using a 5V Arduino Leonardo we would need a 3.3V to 5V logical level shifter. The module additionally is not breadboard friendly because of its pin grouping configuration. There was also confusion about how to use it after coming across conflicting information about the board.

After doing some research, we learned that it is actually quite typical to use the ESP2866 via a development board with the module embedded. Many of the resources we found used the ESP8266 NodeMCU development board which can be programmed in the Arduino language in the Arduino IDE. Considering that the only input the board would be receiving is through the internet through the wifi module embedded into the dev board, and the only output would be the single digital signal pin for the LED matrix, we decided that the NodeMCU board could be used as the single microcontroller for the project. 

The ESP2866 NodeMCU board would simplify and condense the scale of the wiring. One drawback however is that the board is a 3.3V logic device and the LED matrix we are using requires a 5V digital control signal. This is a minor inconvenience but easily remedied with a  logic level shifter purchased through Adafruit (SN74AHCT125N) link: https://www.adafruit.com/product/1787

 

• 3.3V device so to use with an Arduino Uno we will need a 5V to 3.3V Logic level converter.
• Module also draws more current than the 3.3 V pin on the uno so a voltage regulator might be necessary or use another power supply that is rated or up to 500 mA.
• Might be simpler to buy a dev board with the ESP8266 chip onboard and program the board directly with arduino code.

The HUZZAH breakout board from Adafruit Industries looks like a good bet for our initial set Foldscope optimization setup.

• The Adafruit Huzzah Board has a built in 500 mA rated 3.3V regulator, is breadboard friendly and has plenty of documentation from Adafruit. It is also inexpensive.

Questions:

• What exactly is FTDI cable and uploading? Why is it more desirable over uploading via USB?

• Conventional imaging system:
  • • • 1) low pass filtering process
      • 2) discrete sampling of image sensor
• Coherent imaging system:
  • • • Phasor amplitudes of the light field vary in unison at all spatial points
      • When light waves come from single point source (LEDs often)
• Incoherent imaging system:
  • • • Phasor amplitudes at different points all vary in an uncorrelated manner.

• Optical aberrations impose practical limits on resolution performance

Chapter 2 – Imaging Procedure of FP

• Space bandwidth product (SBP) to characterize the total number of resolvable pixels.
• SBP can be calculated with the total imaging area and the smallest resolvable feature of the image.
• SBP of conventional microscopes on order of 10 megapixels.
• FP tackles improving SBP without physical scaling up lens size
• How does phase retrieval work and why do we need it?

1. Post on this blog!
2. Re-read Fourier Ptychographic Imaging by Guoan Zheng
3. Re-read chapter 2 of Fourier Optics
4. Get the smaller LED Array with the Arduino working with the image collection python and Arduino codes used in the full scale version.
5. Build simple webpage and render as app with Cordova framework.
   • This will require learning a bit more about Cordova as a framework and choosing, installing and learning how to use a camera plugin.
   • Building a simple test app that can open the phone’s camera and take a picture is a good start.
6. Build a web server hosted on the Arduino with a Wifi shield. Be able to handshake between the app and the Arduino.
   • Will need to order a Wifi shield or look into other wireless communication options.
   • There are loads of example code for Arduino web servers to interface user input over the web, so that will be a big help in getting started.
   • Connecting the app and the Arduino seems like it might be a challenge, because I have no idea how local web servers work and how the code behind the app will respond to the web server hosted on the Arduino.
7. Sample flow for live worm imaging.