Quite some time ago, I published a blog about using LibLAME as a library to encode PCM audio data to mp3 using a micro-controller. Yesterday I was asking ChatGPT about this topic and it recommended the Shine MP3 encoder. So I took up the task to provide an Arduino compatible Shine Library and integrate it into my AudioTools. Here is a related Arduino test sketch that measures the encoding perfrmance for 44100 stereo audio data Read more
I recently needed to add SLAM visualization to QGroundControl. The plan: render a map using a simple graphics library, then encode the output via H.265. That’s how I stumbled into writing TinyGPU—and it quickly became my new favorite tool for lightweight embedded graphics. TinyGPU is a lightweight, header-only C++ library for Arduino that handles RGB565 graphics, sprites, and even basic 3D wireframes on small screens. What Makes TinyGPU Different? Most Arduino graphics libraries try to Read more
Working with the ESP32-S3 has always been about pushing boundaries—especially when it comes to multimedia. While audio on microcontrollers has become fairly common, video is still considered “out of reach” for most embedded setups. That’s what makes the lightweight H.264 support from Espressif Systems so interesting. Native H.264 Support on ESP32-S3 Espressif provides a compact H.264 encoder and decoder component as part of their ecosystem. This is a big deal: H.264 (also known as AVC) Read more
I am getting old and usually forget the commands that I rarely use. My solution for this: Just ask AI ! Lately I was running into the issue that my ESP32 Arduino test sketches were crashing because there was not enough stack, but this time ChatGPT completely failed me. I finally found the correct answer in the examples provided by Espressif and it is smiple. Just add the following line to your sketch: // Increase Read more
IEEE 802.15.4 is a technical standard defining the Physical and Media Access Control layers for Low-Rate Wireless Personal Area Networks. It enables low-power, low-data-rate wireless connectivity for IoT, smart home, and industrial sensors, allowing devices to operate on batteries for years. Here in Europe it uses the Primary Sub-GHz Band: 868.0–868.6 MHz. It is used e.g. by the smart home protocols Thread/Matter and Zigbee. These smart home protocols are suited to control audio, but they are Read more
Recently I found the ESP32‐S3 AI Smart Speaker Development Board on Aliexpress for around 15 USD. It has quite some interesting functionality: ES8311 Codec DAC Chip ES7210 Codec ADC Chip with stereo microphones SD Card 6 Neopixel Multicolor LEDs A PCF85063A Real Time Clock 3 User Definable Keys GPIO interface camera interface lcd interface This week I got this board in my mailbox and I expected it to be quite easy to be added to Read more
In my last blogs, I was showing how to create DLNA devices. In my final blog about this topic I will demonstrate how to create a DLNA Control Point (=Client) which uses the functionality of these devices. I will demo a simple Control Point for a Media Renderer which will start playing some music: The Arduino Sketch First we define the relevant objects: In the Arduino setup() we start the processing: We just start the Read more
After having demonstrated how to implement a DLNA Media Renderer in the last blog, I show that it is equally simple to define a DLNA media server. Here is the outline of a basic sketch: The logic for setting up and starting a server is basically the same like the one for the Media Renderer just using the DLNAMediaServer class: The key for this scenario however are two callbacks: one for preparing and the other Read more
I was searching for the most efficient generic way to process the whole SD directory tree in Arduino: this can be helpful if you want to search for files or if you want to store the whole file system in a tree in RAM. The Standard SD API Way When using the API provided by the SD library, we need to open each file/directory to find it’s children. So to process all files in the Read more
Im my last blog I was describing the DLNA Architecture. So we are ready now to dig into my first Arduino DLNA Sketch. By combining my arduino-dlna with the arduino-audio-tools library it is quite easy to build a Network Audio Renderer that can e.g. be controlled via an Android Application: I can recommend Hi-Fi-Cast that let’s you select the Music Sources and Playback Devices. When running this sketch you should find and entry named __ArduinoMediaRenderer__ Read more