This whould be useful for hydraulic steering. Throw out original orbitrol, replace with el. solenoid proportional valve. And use steering wheel as pot / encoder to drive wheels manualy, and direct control valve with aog.
Would you drive such a tractor on a road? I would not dare to drive even in a field if there was no manual backup steering if a fuse gets blown or something like that.
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It sounds like changing the tractor that way is very illegal in most European countries
AOG illegal as well, intresting possibility, of course not recommending in any way someone do this.
But use of AOG motor or valve with joystick sounds useful in field, when K turn is used.
There is already a secondary analog input for the WAS that almost noone uses. Connect it to a 5v signal joystick and write some code and you can joystick steer your tractor from the existing ampseal connector.
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Most important thing I’m missing is a WiFi gateway/access point, to be able to connect section control wireless
An esp32 module? Which wifi chip would you use? Just need a transparent bridge to one of the teensy serial or should it go straight to the ethernet and skip going through the Teensy at all.
I actually made an esp8266 into a micro F9P format. The idea being that you could stick it into one of the micro F9P ports and use it as a wifi to serial bridge like those cheap modules you can buy. Never bothered testing it though.
The ESP32 would be good. I like the WiFi performance of the 3D metal antennas such as the ESP32 Pico D4 has. These are much better than the PCB antennas. With the ceramic antennas like UM ESP32 ProS3 I don’t have experice. Alternatively use a module with external antenna, would be good with alu housing.
We could go via teensy, so there will be no IP settings needed for the ESP and no extra LAN port / switch will be needed.
Maybe use the XBee slot, no idea if it is possible with 3D or external antenna. Also depends on the costs. A S3 module directly put on the board when power supply is already there and no real USB chip is needed might be cheap as well
Which ESP32 Pico D4? A search brings up a few options with 3D ant.
I see JLCPCB stocks the bare chip but that would require some RF design on the PCB. If we’re talking an external antenna then an ESP8266 variant with rf connector is just as good as a wifi AP/bridge like the ESP-07? I think it needs a small resistor removed to use the IPX connector?
There is also the ESP8266 Wemos D1 mini PRO but it needs a small resistor moved or removed and a solder bridge.
The AP still needs an IP for the section control wifi to connect but it’s on a different network than the Teensy.
An untested idea designed by @Guy1000. It’s meant to plug into a F9P Micro/Xbee socket
Either way the Teensy would need to relay all PGNs coming from Eth to the ESP serial port and vice versa?
ESP32 module with onboard rf conenctor, <$4 USD and JLC does currently stock it. Can order parts ahead of time though to your own “parts library” if necessary. Would be the most compact, and best RF perf with ext ant.
Other modules
I currently use the ESP32 pico D4 def module for a PANDA board.
https://www.mouser.de/ProductDetail/356-ESP32-PICO-KIT
The M5 stamp looks the same, but has no USB, thats why I didn’t buy it, so no idea.
I’m about to check out the ESP32 ProS3 for my section control PCB, as the S3 or C3 has native USB support and many GPIOs. So maybe we could just put an USB jack on the board, like at the F9P micro. But I didn’t order one right now.
Other possibility would be to use c3 super mini, but idea of the power of the ceramic antenna:
Yes, a differed IP for WiFi is needed. I use 192.168.137.x the same as Windows hotspot. My Section Control codes all have DHCP, and support 5 different SSIDs and passwords, so no problem.
I’m using the concept of forwarding the data cable ↔ WiFi at my PANDA board: ESP32 with W5500 to tablet and WiFi to SC. Kind of access point. Works good. No delays, as there would be delays, when using the RUT955 (mine is for sale if someone is interested ;-))
The idea of Guy1000 is also good, as it may fit to the AIO board, as it is. My experiences with ESP8266 aren’t that good: often don’t boot, always busy, as single core.
Is the esp32 computing power enough for an aio board without teensy?
Currently it probably is but I’m not up to speed on all the peripheral options of all the esp32 variants so I don’t know what would all need to change.
best idea would be to keep as much as possible and only add this feature, so hopefully the firmware could work on both boards.
@MTZ8302 What’s your opinion on using a Seeedstudio XIAO ESP32-X footprint vs a module soldered by JLCPCB? Would you be interested in developing the firmware for this ESP32?