MaixDuino 3 - WiFi

1. Breif Summary

In my previous two MaixDuino blog posts MaixDuino 1 and MaixDuino 2, flashing was done using the Arduino IDE. In hindsight, this was neither necessary nor particularly convenient. Especially after flashing the Sipeed official firmware MaixPy-v1 onto the MaixDuino board, there is no real need to rely on the Arduino IDE anymore.

This blog post continues the MaixDuino exploration and completes two experiments:

• A very simple implementation of dual-camera image capture on the MaixDuino board, with alternating display on the onboard LCD screen (Refer to LCD API), without relying on Arduino IDE at all;

• Streaming the stereo camera images over the MaixDuino’s onboard Wi-Fi to a remote display endpoint.

2. Cable Connection

Maix Bit board Connected to a ESP32-C3 Super Mini	MaixDuino board Already Embedded a ESP32-WROOM-32

3. Stream From Two Cameras

3.1 Flash MaixPy-v1 Onto /dev/ttyUSB0

3.2 Flash Maixduino_esp32_fimware Onto /dev/ttyUSB1 (Optional)

• Clearly, there is a typo here Maixduino_esp32_fimware
• Since this is Optional, I just have this step ignored for now.

3.3 Python Scripts For Streaming Two Cameras

The full Python scripts of streaming from 2 cameras can be found in my this Github Repo maixduino_stereocam_esp32:

• main.py – stereo LCD demo
• config.py – stereo LCD demo

3.4 Demonstration on LCD

One Image Captured From Left Camera	One Image Captured From Right Camera

4. WiFi

None of my previous 3 blogs talked about WiFi.

• MaixDuino 1
• MaixDuino 2
• MaixBit 1

MaixDuino‘s Sipeed-M1 uses the FIXED hard SPI1 to communicate with its onboard ESP32-WROOM-32, where you need to use network.ESP32_SPI for communication via WiFi, as follows:

nic = network.ESP32_SPI(
            cs=gh(gpiohs["cs"]),
            rst=gh(gpiohs["rst"]),
            rdy=gh(gpiohs["rdy"]),
            mosi=gh(gpiohs["mosi"]),
            miso=gh(gpiohs["miso"]),
            sclk=gh(gpiohs["sclk"]),
            spi=1,
        )

4.1 Python Scripts

• main.py – stereo LCD WiFi demo
• config.py – stereo LCD WiFi demo

4.2 Demonstration

4.2.1 MaixPy REPL

4.2.2 Camera with LCD

4.2.3 On Remote PC