Episode 785 transcript

FLOSS-785

Jonathan: This is Floss Weekly, episode 785, recorded Wednesday, May 29th. Designing GUIs and building instruments with EEZ. This week we chat with Dennis and Goran, two of the brains behind the EEZ ecosystem of projects. That started out with a DIY programmable power supply that quickly became a modular test infrastructure.

And more recently, they found success with the EZStudio. And that's a project for designing GUI and workflow for embedded applications. It's a lot of fun. You don't want to miss it. So stay tuned.

Hey, it is time for Floss Weekly. That's the show about free Libre and open source software. I'm your host, Jonathan Bennett. And today we're going to be talking about some software and some hardware. This is actually one of those interesting projects where the hardware came from. First and the need for some software sort of borne out the the, the software project that went with it.

So that's gonna be really interesting. We're gonna talk with EEZ, the folks behind EEZ, the EEZ studio. I'm gonna ask them if they ever get tired of saying EEZ like that all the time. Maybe they just call it EZ. Maybe that's the intent. We'll find out here in just a second. I am, I am flying solo today.

We had sort of a crossed wires with who was supposed to co host, but that's okay. We've done it this way before. So our guests today, let's see, we've got Dennis and Goran, and I believe that Dennis is the guy behind EEZ and then Goran is One of the one of the high profile power users, I was told, and so they're going to give me their perspective on what's going on here.

Now, just a note, we lost a tiny bit of audio at the beginning of Dennis answering this question. And the context that you missed is he's talking about designing and building the very first programmable power supply, the EEZ H24004. which is a mouthful of a name and he talks about that. So that is what he's talking about and the rest of the interview goes great.

I'm not going to waste any more time and going ahead, going to go ahead and bring them on. So Dennis and Gora and first off, welcome to the show. Let me start with, I think with Dennis because this is originally kind of your brainchild, right? Give us the, give us that first story. Like what problem were you trying to solve?

And you kind of put some hardware together. How did, how did all of that happen?

Dennis: And okay, I started with Mission Impossible and the company's name Anvox and that EZ comes from Anvox experimental zone. So actually I initiate a experimental zone within our company. Okay. Company. There is basically two of us my colleague Martin, who is a real guru in all type of software and product development.

Development software development stuff. And I actually tried to, from other side to, let's say, to, to see what I can do on the hardware part. Actually I did something with electronics many years ago before I started with that adventure. And okay. Step by step I start to, to put something together.

There is there was a lots of I don't know. Wondering around what could be what should be done in that about that project and from almost from the very beginning, I actually decide to To start to post my adventure on the couple of sites, one of them it's also Hackaday and another prominent it's that Eevee blog from a day from Australia and communities, community starts to gathering about the project They also helped me to somehow to redefine some ideas to just to redirect me from some dead end and stuff like that.

And again, step by step, I start to, it starts to materialize something what looks okay, usable or functional. Okay, anyway, I started to do that to, to really To really serve all my wishes and the requirements in that time. And even beyond that, even something what I, I didn't, I cannot imagine in the time.

So I really tried to do something. What is a. Flexible and programmable and when we talk about programmability in I think in first place about that connectivity with the PC and so some, some kind of remote control so that you can take control over the unit, the device and remotely program that from your From your PC.

So something what is what has happened, uh, during that journey is that in one time I decided to put a touch screen in something what in that time was really almost like a heresy. To to not to to not have a encoder and that all many of that knobs on yours so that to to to looks and feel much, let's say, professional or whatever, but OK.

Again, since I did it for, for, for my for myself, I say, okay, let's, let's try to do something with touchscreen. Anyway, in that time already touchscreen made a great premiere or entry in all that mobile phones. And so I didn't see a really a problem with why not to put a touchscreen on something like.

Power supply. Okay, and the community responded very well about that and they encouraged me to launch even the crowdfunding campaign. What we really did on the crowd supply. I don't know if you if you know about that, it's not like a Kickstarter or Indiegogo, but for let's say like for open source projects, it's probably the, the, the first place where one should go.

Yeah. Else to say? The, I was surprised with the, with the, with the result of the crowd funding campaign. It was, at least for me, it was a great success. We actually got almost three, three times more funds than what we initially asked for. And, we also successfully fulfill the campaign.

And that is the first part of the hardware story. Immediately after that, actually starts to think about what could be what could be done in a better way of what is. Done in that first project. The first project was okay. The, the, the name is okay. A little bit awkward, like age 24, 0 0 5.

So it's age for the hybrid 22. It's like two channel 40, it's 40 volts and zero five it's up to five amp. So, okay. Makes some sense, but it's it's not so easy to pronounce or to, to remember. Anyway, something what's interesting about that project is that it was built around the Arduino Due as a digital controller.

In that time it was the only 32 bit board with 32 bit MCU. All other was just 8 bit and we actually we started first with Leonardo and Mega and we actually went beyond Possibility of that's a small MCUs and end up with the, let's say, like powerhouse in that way in that time or from Arduino due and but even that we actually pushed to the extent.

So there was a. The memory usage and everything, it was really yeah, we push it to the to the limit. And that was one of the reason why actually I start to think about a new platform, a new, new unit. Okay first to have, let's say, a better digital controller and to put more modular, actually to put more modularity in the And in that in that way we end up with something which is not necessarily even a problem.

power supply, but it's more like I want to call it test and measurement modular chassis so that you, you can put a, up to three different modules, which could be like power source, like converter, DA converter some digital input, output tunnel or stuff like that. So idea is to have and to put all the time, a different type of functionality in the same modular and really nice and compact, uh, enclosure.

Okay. And, uh, yeah when it came to the, that part of the digital controller first I, I tried to do something with that X MOS MCU. It's, it's, it's pretty, I wouldn't say esoteric type of MCU. It's not like a general purpose from SD or from, I don't know, from Microchip or some other guys, but it's something actually in between MCU classical microcontroller and FPGA.

And we didn't try to go into the in the FPGA because it was really beyond our I don't know, capability. And I actually think that with that ExMOS we'll probably can find the middle ground, let's say and that we end up even with some working prototype like evaluation board for that microcontroller.

But after some time, we actually stuck on the, on the, on the software on the software part, because The software support for that that, that type of microcontroller, it's, it's very limited that it's, it was mostly that company was mostly focused to high end Audio like high fidelity streaming and like video conferencing real time with low jitter, low latency and stuff like that.

So yeah, I spend maybe, I don't know, For half a year doing that XMO stuff and eventually gave up. And continue with st actually St. Cortex M seven. In that time age seven wasn't developed, but like M seven was okay, again, the, the, the best in that cortex m series from, from SD.

And we also, because we needed some, let's say, universal interface to communicate between that hardware, that digital controller and that peripherals. That was that was ended up in something what I baptized like DIB, like DIY instrument bus. So it's like a simple bus to communicate over the SPI with your, with your peripheral models.

Yeah. So, and again we put that in a nice enclosure. We have now more powerful MCU microcontroller. We put even the now even bigger touch screen and again community ask for another crowd funding. And we did it once again. And yeah, this is a more or less. A short story of a harder part of the project.

Jonathan: So is that, is that hardware platform, is that still a thing? Like, can people go out and buy it somewhere? Did the development ever get finished on it?

Dennis: Unfortunately, no. What's happened

We have prepared everything to after that after fulfillment of okay. I forgot to mention what's the name of the second project? It's a BB tree like bench box tree. It could be even a blue box tree because it's painted in blue, but okay. It's a. It's acronym for bench Box three. Three means three three models.

So, okay. That's the, and it's probably, it's easier to remember that BB three than H 2 4 0 5. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So yes we actually prepare everything to to go with like cereal production and then we. And then that oh yeah, COVID stuff came and everything was just broken.

All the supply chains lack of many some of, of the components finally was starts to be available again to the, to the end of next previous year. So there was a really a long. Opposed in and it was really, yeah. Understood. Yeah. It, it was, it was impossible to, to, to do anything in, in, in, in that sense.

Yeah. We have some, we started to, to think about restore, mm-Hmm. production from our side. But in the meantime as we learned many people because. It's it's really hardcore open source. That means it's open to, to the, the, the, to, to the, the

Jonathan: hardware and everything is open, right?

Dennis: Yes.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Dennis: Yes, yes, yes. To to to to, to the extent to, to the biggest extent. So you, you can just go to GitHub and get all what you need included how to, to build mm-Hmm, that enclosure, and, all that wire harness harness for connecting everything and stuff like that. And some people in the meantime successfully assembled the unit.

And not just like just that. Some of them even start to to build their own which is a compatible with, with our harder. So that was actually one, yeah, that was one of idea to, to, to have something open and able to, to, to anyone to, to start to experiment and Stuff like that. So, yeah so, yeah, in that sense the project on the harder part, it's still in, let's say, officially in the limbo state but it's not completely let's say retired or stuff like that.

Jonathan: Actually, the hardware piece here sounds really interesting and I'm kind of excited to maybe eventually get my hands on that because I've, you know, I've got a little. Cheap Chinese power supply for doing stuff. And it's got a, you know, a voltage and amperage measurement built into it, but it's really bad.

It's really, it's a hardware is terrible. And so having something that would be better and open source, that'd

Dennis: be great. Imagine that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's it's really small powerhouse. There is it's packed with so many features, even many of that. It's really unnecessary. We just we just put it because we can.

We don't have any commercial marketing limitation to say, Okay, this is not, I don't know. feasible for we are not corporations. So we are really played with that to the, yeah, to the biggest extent. So

Jonathan: I I eagerly anticipate then these things once again, being available. I think that would be great. So I guess the other part of the story is the software side of the story.

And there was, there was just kind of, was it just a spinoff of trying to do the hardware? And that's the EEZ studio.

Dennis: Yeah. We started Yeah, it's like a spinoff or like, I don't know, sidekick or whatever, or something. What because, okay I started with develop that hardware and the, in one one moment of time when you realize that all that analog linear part and that power part, it works properly. And we have some, let's say, basic connection with that microcontroller.

You need something more than hello world in that sense. Hello world will be just set the voltage and and get or set empty current it's, it's, it's not something what will be satisfactory for me. And Martin, my colleague start to, to, to create a firmware for the. For the project. And since we pretty early starts to to To work with with touchscreen.

Uh, display as as as a main interface with the unit starts in that The, the, the. The thing starts to, to be starts to to be pretty complicated complicated because yeah, it's not so easy to to put something nicely on the screen and to have some yeah, you need some Go, let's say decent mm-Hmm.

Appearance. And some user experience should be like, let's say like yeah, something. What at the end will not por mm-Hmm. put in question the functionality during the operation and stuff like that. And also from other side because one of my, let's say a pretty high priority request was to have a remotely controlled unit.

We also need some software to control that unit. So, OK, on that on that side, there was a couple of still available solution, like probably the most famous is National Instruments LabView. But yeah, it's, uh, okay. It's if you ask me, it's really outdated in design. It's bulky, expensive, and of course it's not open source.

So it's not open source. And we started to, to to to work on something. What is Let's say which has which has two main, main parts. One, it's part to to provide control remote control of the unit, and another one which allows us to to, to, to, to fast in a, in a, in a easier way develop at all that graphical user interface on that, on which will be display run on that touch screen display and yeah, and we started to do everything from the scratch. So there was, there was also some tools available for embedded GUI development, but again, it was It was limited because no, none of them was was it was open source.

And so that means that in one moment of time, you can expect that you will need to put something, what is very specific to your project, your hardware, and you will be probably in that end, or you need to. To beg someone to, to put your feature in the next release or maybe within next one year or whatever.

Okay. People experience the same things with us also, but okay. At least we have something what is open source. We have that task list in the get GitHub and in some, if someone really wants to. To add something that is currently not available. Okay, he can hire some developer and put that in place.

So, yeah, it's the rallying cry of open

Jonathan: source projects everywhere. Pull requests welcome.

Dennis: Yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jonathan: All right. Hey, I want to bring, I want to bring Gorom into this conversation here. We haven't talked to him at all. And I think this might be an interesting place to bring him in and kind of get his his experience and his thoughts on using the studio himself.

So let's let's start with there. Kind of where do you, where do you fit into this project?

Goran: Yeah. So in this project, I work in the, like, In custom hardware designs. So from my side, as I am co owner of the company. So I am also designing the, because everything is like open source. So I, I take some parts of design.

So I do new designs on top of the existing designs. So there is like a full story in that part. So maybe I can just switch Here to a presentation. So as it all started when actually Dennis noticed Radeona Makerspace. So that is the space where, where I am like home. So he noticed our ULX3S project that is also open source.

And actually, he contacted us and he wanted to collaborate, so with us with actually the integration of the FPGA into the, into this BB3 project. So, so we started to work and After some time, we had we had actually the STM32ULX3S, also an encrypted name, for the project. And the main goal was actually To get the picture to combine so stm would be Doing everything that is does currently in the bb3.

So it is doing the like All the stuff but we wanted to integrate like the part that fpga could do So this is something like fast signaling like oscilloscope spectrum analyzer or something and we also As we also on the ULX, we had one project that is called Scopio from Miguel that is, he's from Argentina.

So we already had those two projects and we just wanted them to combine. So Miguel helped us actually to get the to get those things combined and we, and we actually got Got it to the place like it boots and it shows the picture of the scope you're in the background and we can control Control that scope with the actually bb3 or switch just to normal power supply or whatever Because bb3 now can do many things not just the the power supply but then also the so we had that board actually ready, but then also the The, that COVID and and shortages hit, so we decided like it, it would be not possible to like, and also the users could, would like, if they want oscilloscope they could, they needed to buy like the whole thing.

And if they want just the BB3, they need to buy like separate things. So, so we started to think like about Starting things even more modular. So BB3 is actually modular. It has modules But the main board is actually only one board So we wanted to be modular and at that time I actually started the project that is called ULX4M So with that project we We put the FPGA big, big bigger board, FPGA ULX3S to a modular form factor.

And that form factor was actually CM4 compatible. So because we decided to, yeah, yeah, we decided to go with compatibility because there's It's really a range of prod baseboards that we can actually use even in, with, even outside of this like BB3 project. So after I created this ULX4M board, we start, and this is currently in like in ending stage because we have two versions of this ULX4M board.

So, so it's almost available for the crowds, crowdsource campaign, but we are still waiting a bit. So when I had that, that finish, I started with the, with the baseboard for BB3. So recently we got it like we have the, the baseboard for the BB3 that is CM4 compatible, so we can put actually Raspberry Pi in it and boot it and show it, show it like, And also like Martin at that point was Was helping me so we, we figure it out that if we use like a BB3 firmware, so it is done in the studio, so complete firmware is done in the studio and you can actually run it on the BB3 itself, but it has the like one flag that you set and it can be built like a simulator so you can run it in the web browser or in the Linux.

Yeah, so yeah, and that was like starting point for like. Few fix few tweaks and we we got it complete almost completely running on the on the CM4 module so that is like really crazy. We only didn't didn't get didn't get the Peripherals so like SPI and things because this is different The first with the STM32, but it's also like a big possibility that when we are finished with some part of the project that we will start to do that we can have also the, like CM4, CM4 module inside of the BB3.

Also, the, the one thing that was actually missing, Dennis also, Dennis, Dennis mentioned it in in the start. So he started with the STM. Actually f4 and it's also when you have a baseboard. It's really like you need to have like lots of Custom boards with different different parts but now when we have like this cm4 compatible we actually could start the the production of the H7 module or any other like module.

So we can just switch modules and, and push push other models. So recently I also finished the STM H7 module that we, that we could use at, at some point. And currently this is just the, like running the simple firmware. And nothing is happening on screen because we need to like push push to the DSC DSI screen.

So we need to switch switch to the to the DSI screen. Now we have only like simple digital VGA, RGB screen. Yeah, that's the, and actually that is the. The end of my hardware involvement. There is probably more with smaller, smaller fixes and smaller modules, but this is like something around that. So, yeah.

Jonathan: Yeah. I am, I am intrigued by one thing. Where you're, you're looking at using the Raspberry Pi and talking to some of these hardware interfaces with your firmware. One of the projects I've actually been involved in and working on for the last few months is taking the, it's the Veshtastic firmware and actually making it run on the Raspberry Pi and talking to real SPI.

And I2C devices. And we've got a, we've got a little library. It's called Portduino that lets you, it sort of translates the Arduino IDE over into actual Linux system calls. There, there, there might be there might be some room there to, to kind of collaborate on that. That could be interesting.

Goran: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, because we stopped with that. So yeah, it's going to be called to integrate that part. Yeah,

Jonathan: I will, I'll shoot you some links to to what we're doing there. Cause that could be fascinating. Hopefully avoid some having to rewrite of code and get other people bashing on the, on the code that I've written that, yeah, that sounds like fun.

Okay, so let's talk, let's talk specifically about the studio then because that's kind of where I first discovered the entire EEZ sort of ecosystem and project, and we've talked about it a whole lot yet. So like, what does that, the EEZ studio, what does it let you do? What problem does it solve?

Whoever wants to, you guys decide, who knows it best. Dennis. Okay, Dennis, go for it.

Dennis: Okay, okay, okay, okay. First about naming you, you mentioned is it easy or easy? Yeah, it's basically it's, it's easy. It's easier to say easy. Easy Studio. But, okay, whatever, it's Yeah, that, as I said before, easy, it's like it's nVox Experimental Zones, and this studio, it's a softer part of that.

Adventure. Okay. So I just started to talk that we have that it's a, it's a two part in, in in easy studio. So one is to to have good control, remote control of BB three. But not just BB three you can communicate with any other like like oscilloscope, like function generator, programmable power supply, spectral analyzer for any other manufacturer like key site, like regal sigilent Keatle, just name it.

Because we are, we implement one, uh, de facto, it's the industry standard, it's a Skippy. It's a Skippy communication it's textual based and it can go over the, the, the, the, the. of interfaces like USB serial, like, uh, internet, like Modbus. And on top of that Skippy there is also something what is called Visa.

It's a, so it's like a software middleware, which reside between low level Skippy and Harder layer and your application on the PC side. And usually that application is called the Skippy controller. So like application who control your devices using Skippy Skippy command set and stuff like that.

So means that from the, from the center part using Studio, you can make connection with different, you can actually connect all your labs test and measurement units, whatever that means in, in, in your, Particular example. And you can make some con you can make some test and measurement automation so you can automate, sending and control some command and to, to get back some measurement data.

And you can put that in. In the searchable database, you can draw some nice graphs on, on, on the screen and stuff like that. On top of that, we also introduce something what we internally call easy flow. So that flow is a flow chart, a flow chart flow charting or flow chart type of programming.

So it's like a low code or no code type of programming so that you don't need to go down there in, I don't know, in Python or on the C, C and stuff like that. But we have a lots of that pre made widgets and components and you just drag and drop in your, In your project and make connections so and you can pretty easy build up a very complex, uh, automation and testing environment.

And we use that part of the easy studio even to to. To, to, to test in, in production when we when we were in production of all that part of, of the, of the BB3, all that modules and every, everything we just sent to our PCBA vendor to that easy studio project with a wiring and everything.

And they, they, they, there was in in they were in a position to automate everything and deliver us to us Assembled, tested and calibrated the modules so that normally stuff like that could cost thousands of dollars and that can also consume lots of time to To build something like that.

So this is a one. Let's say not so obvious or hidden part of the easy studio. So in in the recent recently we started to put in the first place that embedded GUI. Part what actually attracted you and and many people was attracted just because that dispute between LVGL guys and square square line studio guys.

Because yeah, in one moment of time, that was actually beginning of this year. There was a. A gap and some need to fulfill that gap. And yeah, people actually, I put some some post on the LVGL forum and yeah, the the acceptance was positive and. People starts now to, to to, to use easy studio more extensively than before.

But again many of the people don't still realize that even if they have some embedded GUI project that they don't, that they can use the, that same Very same easy studio to in the production to test the module or whatever it is, and even as a remote remote application to remotely control that that modular unit or device what is built using easy studio for that embedded GUI.

So this is a, let's say, a pretty unique as far as I know, or for example, that SquareLine Studio or some other, let's say, competitors they are, they are focused just on the building embedded GUI editor, visual editor, but don't have that. Another part, which is also, we found very, very important to if you want to have some really quick some completed project so that you have a hardware and excellent software support for that hardware.

And in that, in that way I think we, we got to that, uh, by implementing both, both type of functionality in the, in the studio.

Jonathan: For, for those that aren't kind of in the embedded world that are our listeners. Let's start what's, what is LVGL? Whichever whoever wants to take it.

Dennis: It's, it's a, it's. It's open source, it's open source, uh, library for, for which have a lots of widgets to, to, to build a embedded GUI.

So you need to so you can call that from your C, C or Python code and you can create a code. A very complex embedded GUI. The problem with that is that it's just it's just a library. So like many other, like for, I don't know, for communication, for with Ethernet, with USB and stuff like that.

You still need to be a hardcore programmer just to, to, to put All pieces together and with in case of easy studio you have, you have two possibility. One is, one is to use to call actually to, to use all that functionality of LVGL and and drag and drop and build all, all the stuff on the In easy studio visual editor and when you build a project easy studio will will generate all all code which you can embed in your let's say native project it could be C plus C plus plus it could be even in the arduino and could be in platform you and could be in python and stuff like that.

And but another possibility what we have in easy studio is that you create everything. Using that easy flow so that you don't need to to write a single code, a single line of low level code like C or stuff like that. So we have two possibility for. For working with with LVGL. Also the studio can be used for for building.

Obviously, I actually mentioned that before to create that dashboard. So which you can which you can use to control multiple devices using that Skippy and for test and measurement automation during development or in the production phase or even for the calibration and for serial production and stuff like that.

So that's something what we actually we added that LVGL in In the later stage, we first start with our native widgets, but that was a really overkill and Martin one in one moment to decide and to go with adding in parallel that LVGL because that, that project was in that time was almost very mature and Very visible in a open, open source community.

And yeah, that was a, a good let's say a good step what we did. And now we'll continue to to, to support all new, new stuff. What will be added in in A-L-L-V-G-L part something which is also important. I think or something what is good to mention that easy studio, it's Across platforms so you can run it on the windows Linux and Mac.

And something was also important when you create a runtime application. That the dashboard, which you can use for, to control your, uh. External instrument stuff. It is also a cross platform, so you can create some dashboard with lots of that nice graphing and I don't know, buttons and stuff like that.

And you can, you can run it as a, as a standalone application. So you don't need to have easy studio behind, below that like, uh, what is a normal required requirement to some other type of a solution, but yeah. Okay, very cool.

Jonathan: So I've, I've got a, I've got a note here to ask Goran about his use of EZStudio.

Is there a, is there a story there or something particularly interesting that you are using this for? And what's, what, there you, there we go. The mute button. I need to

Goran: unmute myself. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I wanted to talk a bit like, a little bit about actually our use cases for the studio. And the first first use case was, was actually that Dennis already told you about.

It is, it was like batch production testing. So at that point in time, so we had like the script for the batch testing that was done with by our good friend Dobrica Pavlinovic and the script was good enough when I was testing the boards because I know how it works. So I just plug the boards, see the text and remove, press the button.

It's really easy to use, but once we switched to PCBA company, they were all confused. First they need Linux, then many things to run it. So it was really

complex. And so I asked Dennis could we do something because I knew that they already had it for the for the BB3 project so at At that point actually martin, was already working on it.

So and he actually translated So it was like he used the dashboard, so easy studio dashboard project, and he actually transformed our script into the visual flow and with that flow, we actually got the, the graphics for the PCBI company. So they had like really fancy graphics with all the, all the parameters that they need to check all the all the, all the things like what they need to click if they need to press a button, it says like press the button or check the screen, connect the HDMI.

We even had like first screen is when you have stop on some, because it goes to two stages. So it has like 11 stages. Stages, so it goes through stages. And if it stopped on some stage, it will tell you what you need to check on the hardware side, like, like check ADC or check whatever button or, or something nice.

So it was really cool. And on the other side, because it was like it already had it studio has support for the saving into database. So it is really cool because on the other side of the in the other city, I can. Like lively monitor all those devices so and the status of those devices So I know when they like do something so you what is the status actually?

Yeah of the test so and like that was like mainly the first use case for us, but later I joined like in many, many other smaller projects and especially when LVGL came like this little, little graphic library. So they implemented the support for the LVGL and maybe Dennis didn't mention. So when you build the LVGL project, it will be platform independent.

So it doesn't it doesn't Fix you to a platform. So it will be built inside of one folder and it will be platform independent It depends on you. What platform will you connect to it? So you just push the calls to the LVGL to show the screen we have like this Flow actually has two calls. So one is like in it and second is like Tick or something.

So it's like it's doing it like in the background and it is doing the flow, but the LVGL itself, it's like platform independent. Also, the, the flow is completely platform independent, but you just need to set up to, to your to your platform. So we, I started to experiment because I had really a lot of like we all have like lots of gadgets inside of our like home.

So I had lots of gadgets with the screens and lots of gadgets with everything. So like with the ESP 32, RP 2040. So I started, yeah, with one, two, three. So we first ported things with so SDM 32 was already ported because they had it on the BB3. But we first from other platforms, I think the first thing was the ESP32 because it's so popular that everyone use it.

So, yeah, so you can use it with the screen or even without the screen. So you can use flow to, to do things like communicate with ESP, ESP if it is in the, like some. I don't know, measuring equipment, you can transfer it to to like Skippy. So it will respond to a Skippy commands and you can like change things.

And also like RP2040 is really popular, Raspberry Pi. Yeah. So we already, we have also supported that one. And both are supported with the like platform, your platform. And some are like in from Arduino and like ESP has even, I think like those ESP, ESP IDF support. And there is support for many screen, even screens, even the, the ink screens.

So there's really really, really a lot of examples that you can now use even from the studio. So now the studio has like a one. Part that you can go and check like examples and you can see all the examples we did and you can just start the project from there. So it will build you complete complete project for the desired environment.

So that is really cool. And like it is also running, like I already mentioned on the. on the Linux itself. So I have like a small open source like everything we talked in this, in this talk, it's, it's open source. So even my projects, all of harder projects are open source. So this is some open, open, open source tablets.

So this is also like, I wanted to run studio. So I have some widgets around to, to get it to work. And And maybe the, the last things for, for the last thing, what happened actually the thing that happened recently was I, I got some projects and I didn't mention many of them. At least mine projects, but I know the easy studio also is is finance true annual net grants.

So that is yes. So lots of our, almost all that I mentioned was, was actually go to the grant from the annual net. So they finance open source hardware and software stuff.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Goran: And the, like the one project that I am working on is the I'm working on the I'm Creating some small EMC testing chambers.

So that is like the main, main thing in the project, but I am using, so I need to use like those tiny essays to check the signaling, so tiny spectrum analyzer. And I told Martin, but like, it's like, it's not so visible on the like spectrum analyzer when I use it, the signals are not like quite good. So he suggested me to go with the.

Go with the flow. So to create a dashboard and that we will work it out so we can like control that instrument at least get the data out of the instrument so I don't need to like put the SD card out and in to get the CSV and stuff. So I started to work on like this simple dashboard for tinies. And actually I got it really, really far, so I got it to, to have what I want, but, but after that, yeah, after that Martin Martin took over and he, he noticed that he can actually turn this turn this tiny SI into the instrument.

So he added the support for the studio and now you can actually. Use it as an instrument. So it is on the, like, you can just write, I want like a picture from it. I want whatever lines. So it is controlled like any other, like skip instrument. So it is serial, but it is like support is there. So it is like controlled, like any other instrument.

So that is like cool part when you like start something and there is lots of ideas of what to do and what, how, how to. How to actually handle things and like the things just building up. So it is really like cool.

Jonathan: Yeah. All right. So we are, goodness, we've just about filled the hour and I want to make sure and ask what is coming in the future.

And that that may be a question more for Dennis, although if Goran, if you have something you want to throw in there, you can, but what's, what's next for like the, the easy ecosystem.

Dennis: Okay. Yeah, something what I really I forgot to mention it's a great contribution from NLNet. So without them it will be hardly to imagine that, uh, EasyStudio will got this shape and functionality.

What, what is now? We are in we are currently in a phase four, let's say, and we have Agreed with NLNet a few more milestones. And so for everyone who will stay tuned in in, in this story can expect a lots of a lots of interesting features in a feature. And Possibility with with the studio on the harder part.

Okay. It's hard to say right now. Maybe we first need to somehow to resume production and probably try to to support and to, to collaborate even on the, on the production of New models. What some of members of community already did like we have, let's say there is a great guy.

Jan from the Netherlands, from the Holland, who made a BB 3 compatible electronic load Electronic load model. There is from Austria, there is precise time, time time standard. So it's it's a rubidium atomic clock model. There is another, uh, guy from from Germany who started to, to work on, high high resolution multimeter module for BB3 from outside we'll probably try to, to continue on work. What's Goran already mentioned so that to tightly integrate on the software side all that new type of, uh, modules like CM For Raspberry Pi or FPGA functionality or that age seven and stuff like that.

In that case, we can, someone can expect stuff like digital audio, digital video outputs so that you can play. On the, on the, on the bigger screen, like when you say, when, when you work on some measurement and probably we will try to, to, to work on at least one or two new models.

I don't want to mention it right now, but yeah. Idea it's anyway to to continue something on the. On the hardware part as well on the software, but on the software part currently one can expect much more progress and much more visible resulting in the near future. So, so the project it's it's, it's really live and kicking and we are looking forward Together with community and we are, I also want to, to, to thank to all members that there is some guys are really gave us a wonderful and fascinating feedbacks and, uh, ideas, how to, how to improve some, some, something what is already in in studio and yeah, stuff like that.

Jonathan: Yeah, it's always, with a project, with a project like the studio particularly it always grows a lot when outside people start using it. Because there are things that you would never have thought of to do that somebody from the outside goes, Hey, it would be really cool if this works. And that's really how projects sort of come into their own.

All right. Well, we are at the bottom of the hour. That means we've been going for an hour. And a couple of last questions that I want to get in right before, right before I let you guys go. And I'm going to start with Goran, actually. And I want to know your favorite, favorite scripting language and text editor.

And you guys are kind of hardware guys. This might not exactly apply, but we'll see what we get.

Goran: Yeah. Well, I am like, I do lots of languages, but yeah, Python is like. Simplest, so like I, I do C and JavaScript and like, but like,

I mean, I need something quickly. I will

use like Python and I do it in nano.

Jonathan: We are users. No, so it's, it's funny. Nano, Nano has been my text command line text editor choice for a long time. And I tell people, I think it's because I got started with my very earliest programming was in QBasic, the, you know, the Microsoft basic from years and years ago and the QBasic editor looks so much like Nano.

I think that's why. All right. And Dennis, same two questions. Text favorite scripting language and text editor.

Dennis: Scripting. I don't know when the last time I did any scripts, but it probably, there was something small in the micro Python, which is also related to BB3 because the BB3, you can create you can create apps.

Which can be downloaded and run on the BB3 and it can be yeah, it could be developed in the, in the micro Python editor. I don't know. It could be anything. Yeah, it could be even none or whatever. I really don't have any, any, any preference, something. What is it? Yeah.

Jonathan: Well, very cool. It has been fun to get to chat about the projects and I appreciate very much you guys being here.

Thank you so much.

So that was the Easy Studio and the Easy, I call it the Easy Ecosystem. The, the BB3, if you go looking for it, it's, it's literally just the letters and the numbers. So bravo, bravo. And then the letter, the number three. It looks really interesting. I, I definitely see sort of a I don't know, maybe, hopefully a future if they can get if they can get production going again.

That seems like it would be really neat to have as a, as a benchtop power supply and testing platform and, and all kinds of stuff. So I'm definitely on the lookout for that. for that one. And then, like I said, we, we, I, a project I'm in, we use the, the easy studio and found it to be a, a really, a really competent replacement for a square line.

And so that's neat to see. Usually I would hand it over to my co host at this point. I did hear from Catherine was scheduled to co host and she's of course down in the Dallas area and they are having power outages right now. So she has no power and we sort of decided that it wouldn't be very good to try it.

co host on the show without any electricity. That would just be a challenge. So anyway, so that is the show. You can find it, of course, on Hackaday. You can find my other work on Hackaday. It goes, we have the security column, goes live on Friday mornings. And yeah, that's it. We will see you next week on Floss Weekly.