Endless Endless Eight

A solar-powered AVI video player which plays "Endless Eight" episodes endlessly. Utilizes ULP/ESP32. Let's see the never ending summer again

Description

"Endless Eight" is a title of eight episodes from the legendary anime series " The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (2009)" (Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu, 涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱) by Kyoto Animation.

**Spoiler alert**

The episodes are characterized by the fact that they follows the (almost) same storyline to indicate a temporal loop the main characters got trapped in in a mid of August.
Some criticize it's boring and disappointing, and some say it's avant-garde and impressive.
Anyway, the point is that the time loop is not finished in just eight loops but actually there were ten thousand elapsed.

This device here is a self-sustained AVI player to replay hundred years of the summer days.

- ESP32 to play MJPEG-AVI video files from microSD at 24 fps.
- Utilizes ULP coprocessor for BAT voltage monitoring, Deep Sleep management etc.
- 5V solar panel and Lipo battery as the main power source.

Details

Project status:

Designing a 3d printed enclosure

Done:

Implement basic features: GitHub
- AVI parser
- MicroSD R/W via SDMMC IF
- Deep sleep handling with ULP co-processor
- Status reporting with MQTT
Fun with some soldering
Long-term stability testing on the breadboard
Draw schematic: GitHub
Testing with an universal PCB

Todo:

Ordered PCB ? (more soldering!)

Topics to be logged:

Programming ULP (ESP32-Arduino, PlatformIO)
- ulptool-pio
Workaround for an issue of MQTT client instability under intermittent WiFi connection
A serendipity about CH340 and Sabrent USB Hu

Components

1 × ESP32 WeMos LOLIN32 Lite

1 × ST7735 80x160 LCD module (Green tab)

1 × MicroSD Card (>= 2 GB)

1 × 5V 2W solar panel

Project Logs

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EEE Enclosure
likeablob • 03/09/2022 at 17:14 • 0 comments

It's time to launch OpenSCAD to make a dish for my spaghetti.
The main LCD of EEE is just 0.96' and it's a bit tiny to see from 1~2 meters away.
So I decided to use a trick for enlarging the display visually; a Fresnel lens.
This CRT-like shape is actuallyoriginated from the dimension of the lens I've bought.
Let's see this trick works as expected or not.
Drawing schematics, soldering spaghetti
likeablob • 03/07/2022 at 16:09 • 0 comments

↓↓↓

↓↓↓

Spaghetti?
↓↓↓

Spaghetti!

The schematic and KiCad files are available under https://github.com/likeablob/endless-endless-eight/tree/main/kicad.
Finally it's running stably (hopefully)
likeablob • 02/23/2022 at 16:39 • 0 comments

(Battery voltage, Brightness, millis() reported, respectively)

Still in stability testing by leaving the breadboard circuit by the window.

It was a bit cloudy day but from the log, the device successfully has completed 6 episodes (24 min each * 6 = 144 minutes) of EE. Also based on the battery voltage observed, the battery has been charged in total eventually.