M5Stack Cardputer: ESP32-S3 Pocket Computer

[Music] welcome to another video from explaining computers.com this time we're going to take a look at this the M5 stack card putter this contains an ESP 32 S3 microcontroller along with a small keyboard a screen various other peripherals and interfaces and rechargeable batteries all wrapped up in this tiny form factor so let's go and take a closer look right here we have our card putter which sells for $29.90 from the M5 stack store although I purchased this one for £870 from The Pie Hut here in the UK so let's bring in stanle a knife so we can cut through the seal I just need to get Stanley through the edge like oh there we are and uh that's got that open and hopefully now the whole package will open if I can do this I can never get into anything can I but uh yes we've got into our card pter Let's uh get it out like this and get rid of the packaging entirely there we are and uh here it is the car Putter and it's got dimensions of a 84 by 54 by a 19.7 MM it weighs about a 92.8 g and as we can see it also comes with this little tool by the name of Alan the key as noted earlier at the heart of the device is an expressive esp32 S3 microcontroller unit which here is packaged in an M5 stamp S3 module this can be removed if required and features a 40 MHz tza lx7 dual core processor coupled with 512 Koby of RAM and 8 GB of SBI flash storage also included a USBC connector that can offer OTG functionality 2.4 GHz 82211 BGN Wi-Fi Bluetooth 5 low energy and loads of GPO connectivity most of which is hooked up to the hardware included in the card putter talking of which top left we have an SPM 1423 mems microphone which like everything else here is clearly labeled with your gpio pins to which it's internally connected next to this there's then our color LCD screen this is a 1.14 in IPS with a resolution of 240x 135 pixels down below we then have our 56 key keyboard which is uh pretty comprehensive it's got the space key down here like uh this which is in the same place it was on aex 81 and clearly this is not a keyboard intended for mass text entry but it should be very good for entering things like Network credentials usernames passwords and that type of information and the keys do have a nice little click to them I think these keys are rather nice I'm rather impressed with this small keyboard transitioning to the left Edge below the USBC connector we find a small Grill and this covers an 8 ohm 1 wat speaker which is rather handy and then around the corner we discover a button linked to gp0 a power button a micr SD card slot a reset button and an infrared transmitter finally rotating 90 for a second time lurking in plain sight is a four pin Grove connector that provides access to 2G iio pins as well as 5V power and a ground connection and as we can see there is a switch here and this allows us to select whether the 5V Power Pin is either an input or an output and it's also worth noting the M5 stack sell loads of iqu C sensors and other modules that can be plugged into this port if we turn the card poter over here we go we discover a sticker with loads more hardware and connection information everything is rather well documented on device and we also have under here nodules which are supposed to be Lego compatible and I want you to try this out but the only piece of Lego I could find around was this piece of Lego here this is a small Stormtrooper called Michael but if we take his hat off like that you should plug in to this nodule like uh that there we are and yes it seems the nodules really are logo compatible although for most people probably far more useless the fact that under here we have two magnets and this allows the Carter to attach to any Ferris metal surface finally if we call on the surfaces of tiny L on the key we can remove the base here we go and uh there we are let's just flick it that way around we can now see the magnets and also the main battery which is a 1,400 milliamp but this is not the only battery in the card poter because there's another battery in the top and we can get to that if we very carefully remove the top and we have to do this carefully not least because the sm5 stamp here the S3 this is actually attached by a ribbon cable to the LCD display so we have to be a bit careful as we do this I've now taken this out we've got our second battery here this is just 120 milliamp but certainly nice to have it and in the top over here we've still got the M5 stamp I just flip this over carefully you'll see it's still attached to the LCD display by rhm cable but it's now actually a loose component I wouldn't suggest taking all this apart unless you're doing something like making a video or have some other really good reason to take everything apart so having said that I'm now going to use the magic of film making to put everything back together there we go our card computer is now once again intact and I do think this is a very cool little device it's one of those gadgets that feels cool even before you've turned it on and I guess this is one of the reasons that the card already has a growing community of users and developers now one of the great things about the card poter is that some sample software is pre-installed so all we have to do to try this thing out is to turn it on which we can do like that there we are we need to press a key let's press a that key there and we now get to this little menu which we could work with the arrows down here to select between different sample programs let's go that way like that there is a a Wi-Fi scanner for scanning for Wi-Fi networks there is a recording program let's press enter and try that and everything I'm now saying is going into a a buffer and it'll record the last few seconds and play it back if I press the enter key so let's have a little Gap and try that greetings hello greetings hello yes that seems to work and I can go back from a program by pressing the button on the back of the machine like that what else do we have we have a little chat application for chatting between two of these devices we have an IR remote application where we can use the IR transmitter to send signals to a television things like that although sadly only an NEC device haven't got one of those but there is software available to use this as a universal remote control there's a little terminal application there's an application for setting Wi-Fi credentials there is a timer which obviously gives us uh the time we become a clock or watch like that there is a keyboard program we'll come back to a little notepad program if I select that it's looking for an SD card to save files on so that doesn't currently function as we can see and there's a program that actually writes hello on the screen like that which is very exciting but uh I think we'll just go back to that program for the keyboard over here this is rather useful let's just press enter on that and this turns the device into either a Bluetooth keyboard or we can become a USB keyboard like that so let's just try this out like that I've now got the card poter connected to a desktop PC and so if I just press some of the keys on the keyboard one two 3 4 5 yes we're typing on the desktop PC we're using the card poter as a USB keyboard now the card poter can be programmed using the Arduino integrated development environment which can be downloaded from this page and which looks like this to use this IDE with the car poter we first need to go to file and to preferences and then if we scroll down here we can add an additional board manager URL like that I've got that in the buffer but I'll leave you this link in the video description so we now just click on okay and we now need to install both the board and its libraries so let's first open up the board manager like that and if we search for M5 stack it comes up pretty easily there we are and we can just install that there we go and well now go down to libraries where we'll search for M5 card poter there it is lo and we'll click on install and we will install all to take all the relevant dependencies and there we are the board it libraries have been installed and we will collapse the side panel next we're going to go across to our card poter I'm going to press the button on the back like that keep it held in while I plug in this USB lead to connect it to the computer and then back in your uino IDE we're going to go to tools and board and M5 stack and somewhere down here we'll find the Carter there it is and it's not connected right now so we'll just click here here and uh select board and Port should be selected on a com for it will just uh do that and there we are the M5 Carter is now connected on comp 4 and so what we're now going to do is to go to file and examples and we'll scroll all the way down keep going loads Load Away there we are M5 carpa and under basic we've got a few bits of sample code let's bring in for example button there we are and why you doing R insists on doing it in another window like that I've got no idea but we'll do that and what this piece of code does is to basically set up the display and then it prints on the screen button test and then it's got a loop which basically checks to see if they a button on the back of the card poter is pressed and if it's pressed it prints pressed and if it isn't it prints released and just to prove we in control I'm going to change this text I'm going to change that to mister and we'll change it down here to uh guess what scissors like that and then we'll go across to this button here and press it to compile and upload the program over to the cter and with this complete if we go back across to the card poter and I'm going to just press the reset button on the back and hopefully yes it says button test on the screen and if I press the button on the back Mr scissors Mr scissors see little beep look okay it isn't a very large beep but clearly the code is come across and it's working so let's test another piece of code and to allow this to happen what I'm going to do is to hold down the button and then also press the reset button on the computer like that and release it and release that this will reconnect the device so it can communicate with the Arduino IDE and back across here we'll go back to file and examples and all the way down to somewhere here get out the way Windows there we are somewhere down here we have a M5 caruto there it is look and we can see under basic there are various sample programs for the keyboard including the USB keyboard program we were trying out earlier good to see the code for that is here but I think for now we'll click on display bring him in this little display sample bit of code and what this does is to draw lots of random colorful shapes on the screen so once again we'll send it across to the card poter there we go and if we again go back to the device and press set on the back like that oh look we've got exciting colorful patterns on the screen and if we disconnect the wire from the computer like that the whole thing goes dead because it hasn't got any power but we turn it back on again we just use the on off button which is just back there where we are can I flick it yes there we are oh it's come back to life running its new colorful test code now as I said earlier there's already an enthusiastic community of card pter users and they're creating all kinds of applications which can be uploaded to the device using a piece of software called M5 burner available from M5 stack we just go down here we find it somewhere down there there it is and this looks like this and contains all kinds of things I'll just scroll down a little bit to give you a a feel of all the sort of things available for the card putter in particular I want to go down to the universal remote control I wouldn't mind trying that out and it's also worth pointing out that here we have the M5 launcher for the carda which allows you to load programs from a micr SD card or download software from a Repro so I thought we'd try installing this I've got the Cara connected it is unofficial firmware with the usual providers that go around that but we'll say continue and uh we will start the process there we go and if we go across to the card poter and I uh flick it on like that oh look we're running M5 launcher it's an exciting little devic this isn't it I really like the Retro feel of it and uh I just press the enter key down there we can just connect to a network and I'm just going to enter on that and enter Again by The Magic of film making those details have been entered it's now getting information from the Repro which should be the things we just saw but uh let me just flick across to the ultimate TV remote there we are we could have installed this directly as we installed the launcher but I just wanted to try this out in fact there's even a web interface for this which I haven't tried yet it's all fantastic what the community is doing anyway let's just press uh enter on this there are some options here but hopefully we can just go to enter I think I'll just take default if that's all right oh look we can download to SD or we can install it's Jolly clever isn't it I think we'll just do an install for here obviously we could put lots of things on the SD card and keep going back to them if we wanted to but it's now installing our firmware and there we are we've now got the ultimate remote running on the card putter so let's go and see if it works and here we are in my living room where in theory I can now use the remote to control for example the volume of my television yes it works doesn't it isn't that amazing in theory I can even turn the television off by pressing P like that yes the universal remote clearly works the card poter is an addictive little device with great potential for iot and other projects that require a microcontroller hooked up to a keyboard and a screen and rechargeable batteries but what would you user card poter 4 please let us all know down in the comments section but now that's it for another video if you've enjoyed what you've seen here please press that like button if you haven't subscribed Please Subscribe and I hope to talk to you again very soon [Music]

Channel: ExplainingComputers

Views: 47,529

Keywords: ESP32, ESP-32, ESP32 S3, Cardputer, Card Computer, M5Stack, Arduino IDE, M5 Launcher, M5Launcher, Christopher Barnatt, Barnatt, microcontroller

Id: qSK12jhltfM

Length: 17min 5sec (1025 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 14 2024