Update:
I have received a reply on the Espressif forum that gives a few suggestions. The suggestions did get me thinking about the problem in a new way, I’ll see where this leads.
Moving Forward:
I have not been very motivated to work on this project. The lack of feedback makes me wonder if anybody is getting any value out of what I write. I have been very busy in my Embedded systems consulting business. I have worked on it for over two years now. I feel like I have hit two significant roadblocks.
I have decided to fight this lack of motivation. There are a few things I do when I am struggling with motivation. There is a song by Martina McBride called “Anyway”, I like to play it when I am feeling discouraged. I also saw a couple of Ted talks by Brene’ Brown about vulnerability and shame that I like to revisit. They remind me that the risks I take in putting my work out to the world have intrinsic value.
Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation creativity and change. — Brene’ Brown
The Roadblocks:
First, The ADC is not very accurate with an active WiFi Connection and it takes a lot of cpu overhead. I need the ADC to be accurate so that I don’t burn up the target with too high of a Vpp voltage, or fail programming because Vpp drops too low. Also, the High CPU usage means that data transfers can be very slow, or hard to control critical timing.
Second, the level shifter seems to be very sensitive to loading. If this is the case, then connecting a target board that wasn’t designed specifically for this programmer might be a challenge. Different loads could cause problems just like my scope probe did. I need to do more testing of the level shifter to see how sensitive it is to loading in different ways.
Feedback:
Please leave a comment below to let me know if you find value in my this project and or this blog.