Glad it worked for you, Cole PDX. I've used it (and variants of it) in a lot of my projects. As you say, it "just works".

Excellent! Just exactly what I had hoped people would do, take the circuit and run whatever project. 👍

Yes, I used this device for my previous cat's outdoor run, so we would know whether it was raining or not. Worked like a dream. But the MP3 device needs to be used with a μController really, for the reason you state plus just not having to use any buttons.

A bit of fun in our hobby is never wasted!

On the ePulse Feather there is a connection for a battery, so I can connect the VCC to it too (instead of) I guess. Needs a bit of checking out.

@@RalphBacon Ah yes - I just looked at that ePulse Feather board - nice board. On-board TP4056 and also an onboard XC6220B33 LDO. The only potential problem I see is that they haven't included any over-discharge protection - they assume this is part of the 18650 battery (which isn't always the case). It would have been nice if they had included a DW01 - but apart from that a nice, interesting looking board.👍

I guess it's a fine balance between silent, information messages (whether using an LED, message or email) and a loud, attend-to-this-right-now type of message. I'm hoping to get it right this time but I will create an HTML interface so I can switch off the aural part of the message!

Glad it's got you thinking, Pierre!

Yes, I had this issue with one of my designs. It was effectively a resistor divider network that was "always on". By moving stuff around I could save lots of power.

@@RalphBacon If you don't have a PPK2 as I mentioned it would be a great video topic. Not only are they cheap ~$100US, but the usefulness in embedded systems is limitless. I know everyone isn't making battery powered projects but they can also help gauge the real-work power requirements of a design, a blinky light isn't going to have the same power requirement as a 24bit I2S internet radio. It's an unbelievable deal honestly, it can be a power supply for custom circuits and fast enough to catch WiFi transients. I'm not affiliated with them it's just that damn good!

Ho, ho, it's the way you tell 'em, Mark. But I'm glad it might have got you thinking about this!

We think alike, Tony. I used the 18650 plus TP4056 in my storage bin lid reminder project (somewhere here in YT). Works well, and as you say, includes a charging circuit.

Thank you, glad you liked it. All a bit of fun!

That's a good idea, using the _receiver_ to play the sound. Not only do I get confirmation of the door being opened/closed but also that the message was successfully received. Nice one!

Yes, been there, done that, bored with the limitations now. But you are correct, you can make a decent enough melody that way.

Breadboard (two of them, joined together) is from Cool Components: bit.ly/3O6P3fS

Standard boards certainly waste power this way, true. The ePulse Feather specifically avoids powering the LDO if running off battery power though.

Yes, I had considered this too but was in a bit of a hurry to complete the proof of concept. I have not used the Hall Effect switch on the ESP32 at all, and certainly don't know whether it can bring the ESP32 out of Deep Sleep. If I experiment with this I will update the video comments.

No "normal" ESP32 (other other) dev board is designed for Deep Sleep usage. The thingPulse feather device I'm using has been designed so that all the external stuff (LDO, USB chip etc) is NOT powered up by the input voltage, only when it is powered via the USB. Makes sense, really.

No, the N-channel FET is upside down (blame the CAD program I was using... what, you mean it's _my fault_ ?) I will be progressing this project soon.

If you don't already have a setup, then my suggestion is to avoid watching umpteen UKposts videos on other channels' equipment. How anyone with a new channel can afford thousands of pounds on equipment that may never return anything, I just don't understand. Even now I don't understand it. Or have such equipment. I started off with a simple digital camera (sorry, can't remember the brand, not relevant these days) that could shoot video at HD on an SD card. It probably cost me (I had it lying around) about £60 back then. My microphone was NOT the ubiquitous Blue Yeti (overpriced if ever I saw one, although it sounds OK) and chose an Anua microphone that (to me) sounds even better (more natural, but you can judge that just by listening to my videos). Prior to that I used some cheap headset microphone that sounded as though I was a captain on a plane (watch any of my early videos, #2 to #20). 🤦Over and out! If you record onto SD card in a self contained camera then that's all you need, but if your camera has a clean (no battery levels etc) HDMI output, then you can use that to input into OBS (Open Broadcast System - which every UKpostsr uses, as it's free and is quite good and gets updated now and then). I don't have any lights to speak of (once again, spending money on something that has marginal payback just doesn't make sense) just the ones in my workshop. If you really need more lighting, use an old Anglepoise-type lamp for now. Once your channel actually starts making money you can decide whether you want to put that money into yet more equipment. I'd love a 4K video camera but have you seen the prices?!? How can I justify that? How is it going to be "better" than what I have? Editing programs are manyfold and I started off using a £25 version that was fine but eventually drove me up the wall because transitions between scenes was too slow. Now I pay a bit more but don't use Adobe Premiere either! Frankly, it was a minefield, but I'd recommend you spend as little as you can on stuff that does the job - for now. We'd all like that £1,500 4K Sony camera, a £200 microphone and a £1,000 lighting rig just for starters but you have to take a step back and think how any of this is going to get you your 10,000+ subscribers and some cash! Of course, once you DO start making money, you can spend big bucks on whatever you want. Good luck! 👍

@@RalphBacon Thanks for the honest and in-depth advice. Very much appreciate it. Just turned the big 50 but have had the electronics and computing in my blood since mid 1980s so I can completely agree with the points in your reply😊 The kids are all grown up now so I can settle down to what I enjoy. My requirements are inline with what you are doing - albeit it will be part of a bedroom setup. I could never afford at this moment the fancy equipment many of the youngster creators use nowadays. I think I will need one camera for the main shot and another (ideally autofocus and zoomable via a remote (for the closeups) of breadboard and other small circuitry. I have messed around with OBS before so let see how things pan out.

I'll put it on the list but first I must check out what those two microcontrollers you mention are capable of!

Ha, ha! When you have it finished don't forget to send me one. Hello? Hello? Now where have you disappeared to 🤷‍♂️

That could be one of the sounds I use. Open All Hours, I'm sure. (If you are not UK-based you won't get that).

I'm bemused by the fact that it is somehow more of a challenge connecting up a range connector to an ESP8266 rather than an Arduino?

@@RalphBacon I have attempted to add the HC-SR04 or the JSN-SR04 Ultrasonic (water proof) sensors to the ESP32, ESP8266 with no luck as it keeps telling me that the libraries are not compatible with either of the sensor types. Tried all the libraries that I could find.

Are the sensors not just standard 40KHz transducers? Knock up a quick Arduino sketch and test them out. Then transfer the sketch to the ESP8266 - unless the library you are using is fiddling with registers to get the timing right, in which they won't work. But there must be some libraries out there for ESP8266/ESP32 that just use a standard PWM pin for the transducer signal?

@@RalphBacon Thanks, will give it a try

Yes, yes. Once the project is beyond proof-of-concept stage I'll be sharing it all.

Yes, that would be good, Peter, if only I could actually generate proper sounds using I2S. Not quite so simple (for me, anyway). But the advantage of using an MP3 player (with built in SD card) is that I can play _any sound_ that is on the card, including voices. We shall see how it turns out in due course.

The binding posts have two breadboard holes associated with them that you can then link to the main power rails on the breadboard if you wish. See the close up photos here: bit.ly/3Iba5WI

@@RalphBacon Very nice! It's good to see somebody thought about this rather than stamping out an other cheap copy. Thank you!

The difference between a car and my door, is that the car could be telling you lots of different things, depending on what the "fault" is. With me, it's just the door opening / closing plus the "I'm still running when I should be switched off" scenario. I'd get too bored with the same old sound each time.

Yaaay! I hope you "liked" 👍the video!

Not hard work, fun! Well, OK some hard thinking but still something I like doing, in the same way some people like gardening (does not compute). Now you can watch all my videos again, Kent, for being cheeky!

Hmm, interesting. Different sounds depending on what time of day it is. Easily done with an ESP32, of course. Thanks, Lez.

I did some videos a long time back involving thermocouples but I'm pretty sure no Platinum was involved - although the principle in using a PT100-compliant sensor should be very similar. I would try reading the voltage from an analog port that goes via the PT100 sensor to see whether you can accurately get a reading.

The new rock based boards are awesome ehh. I don't know why the rpif is sitting on their hands creating artificial scarcity. In Canada a 4gb pi4b is the better part of 300. It's cheaper to buy a pi400 and print an enclosure and overclock it. The jetson xavier pascal and Volta based boards can be found at great prices now too because they stopped making the maxwell based board that the jetson, shield and Nintendo switch use. Nintendo had to uses fidelity fx to get Zelda to run better...on nvidia hardware lol. I get it's open source but Jensen doesn't like it I bet hahaha. I've never seen Ralph do sbc projects and I've watched his channel for like 7 years. He likes playing pcbway against jlcpcb if you've noticed haha

I was just thinking. You could use one of those pca servo boards I bet or you could bit bang the pwm.

No experience of the Orange Pi5, I'm afraid. I did have a very early model Orange (and Banana too) but then went with a proper RasPi.

@@RalphBacon Thank you.

@@jstro-hobbytech I am slowly getting things to work on the OPi5. OpenCV works very fast on the Orange Pi5. OpenCV Haar_Face OPi5 (22-FPS) or RPi4(5-FPS) Just need to figure out the PWM Pan/Tilt? Thank you.

That would have been a great idea if I still had my LED status board (you mean the circular LEDs, 3 rings?). More on that in a future video.

I'm with you on the "can never be over-engineered" 😉 I could have used 3xAA batteries as they will work just fine for an Arduino when in Deep Sleep. Also OK for an ESP32 if you have a specifically designed low power consumption board (when in Deep Sleep). But a 18650 will last a lot longer for the latter.

That's about the gist of it. And also keeping it alive so that it can wake up again when I flip the switch back to the "resting" state.

Glad to see your Internet connection is good this week, Yogesh!

@@RalphBacon 😀😀😀😀😀

Upside down or back to front? Or is the arrow the wrong way (should be going IN to the device, for an N-channel MOSFET).

@@RalphBacon I mean upside down. In the drawing you have the source of the N-channel connected to the gate of the P-channel, so the N-channel body diode conducts to ground, which would mean the P-channel is always on. The N-channel drain should be on top, with the source connected to ground, and the body diode blocking any current if the N-channel is off. I assume the actual circuit is not the same as the drawing.

The circuit is, in that case, wrong. The source of the N-channel definitely goes to GND, the Drain goes to the Gate of the P-channel. I think the part I chose in the CAD program was printed like that (ie the wrong way round) and I didn't notice. Doh!

We don't have those in Canada. So I buy 18650s at the dollar store. They usually have 2200mah a piece and like you I save the board and harvest the ic if needed for a project. Broken video game controllers and old drone batteries are good too. I fix that stuff for friends though so they give me that stuff. Ralph should solar panel his roof. He strikes me as the type who doesn't swing a hammer though lol

@Joey you would be wrong there, DIY is my next favourite pastime! From installing my own central heating (apart from the actual boiler [furnace] which we are not legally allowed to touch) I do all my own DIY.

@@RalphBacon I know that ya nut hahaha I was kidding to get a rise outta ya my friend. You know I enjoy tormenting you. I'm told I do it to people I like, a trait inherited from my father I'm told haha.

@@RalphBacon my last house I added a few hundred pounds of weight to with just nails. A nasty side effect of over investment. I did learn alot though

I'll consider myself tormented, Joey!

whoa so no interrups, amazing!

Well, the ESP32 device is brought out of Deep Sleep by an interrupt (GPIO pin going low) but that's probably not what you mean by "interrupt" here, right?

@@RalphBacon indeed, i was rather thinking about some hardware IRQ/NMI trigger which will awaken device out of deep sleep. That's why i watch wiser ones than myself - every time i'll learn something new by prooving myself wrong ;p

Great idea. I can include those as part of the repertoire of sounds! Thanks, Mike.

So COVID was the result of Wi-Fi, and not a virus? Who would have thought 🤷‍♂️