My Pico W powered capsule will celebrate its first birthday soon

=> 😈 dimkr

2024-02-11 · 1 year ago · 👍 skyjake, lykso, norayr, fab, aRubes, johano, numb3r_station, nonausami, CitySlicker, DdlyH · 🤘 1 ❤ 1

12 Comments ↓

=> 👤 AnoikisNomads · 2024-02-11 at 14:51:

oh neat! what do you use as gemini server? do you have ny practical numbers on power consumption?

Also, I suspect the pico is online 24/7, or did you figure out a clever way to wake it up when there is a request?

=> 😈 dimkr [OP] · 2024-02-11 at 17:37:

@AnoikisNomads It runs a very simple server written in Python, 24/7, and I have no idea about power consumption

=> 🚀 numb3r_station · 2024-02-11 at 20:02:

that's super cool :) I wonder since Gemini is so lightweight if we could have autonomous capsule in remote location with solar panels and sim card

=> 🎵 xavi · 2024-02-11 at 21:54:

A Gemini capsule on an ARM Cortex-M0+? That sounds really cool, congratulations!

Mine runs on an Orange Pi Zero. Not nearly as impressive, but Gemini was a nice usecase for it.

=> 😈 dimkr [OP] · 2024-02-12 at 09:17:

@xavi Previously the same capsule ran on an ESP32, but I wanted to go smaller :)

=> 🚀 nonausami · 2024-02-12 at 19:41:

I am kind of imagining that I will get around writing my own for the rp2040 someday soon (on freeRTOS) as i really like that setup.

=> 👤 AnoikisNomads · 2024-02-12 at 20:36:

@dimkr is the python code online somewhere? I'm curious :)

=> 😈 dimkr [OP] · 2024-02-13 at 06:20:

@AnoikisNomads There's a link at the bottom of my capsule, gemini://gemini.dimakrasner.com

=> 👤 AnoikisNomads · 2024-02-13 at 19:28:

sweet! thanks a ton. that's not a lot of code :D

=> 🐙 norayr · 2024-02-16 at 00:18:

on power consumption there is famous research and according to it, go, pascal, c are the best, and python and perl are worst, i think tcl and some others too were at the end.

so to me it's a pity when something is written in python and not in go. especially it is interesting why such choice was made when the author wrote incredible software in go. (:

=> 🐙 norayr · 2024-02-16 at 00:21: | — article about the research which features the table.

=> 😈 dimkr [OP] · 2024-02-17 at 13:50:

@norayr Pico W can run C code written against the SDK, or Python code on top of MicroPython. Go is not an option. When I wrote this server, the Pico W was still new and the SDK was hard to work with. And I think Python is better from the educational perspective, many students (+ many Pi users) start with Python (or learn only Python), so open-source Python code is in some ways more "open" compared to C.