Skip to content

11. Networking and Communications

This week I worked on communication between two microcontrollers.

Weekly Objectives

  • individual assignment:
  • design, build, and connect wired or wireless node(s)
  • with network or bus addresses and local input &/or output device(s)

  • group assignment:

  • send a message between two projects

Group Assignment

In this week group assignment, I . You can find our full group documentation here.

TFT Touch Screen

Since my final project requires te use of TFT screen, I decided to use TFT screen for this week. During weekend I followed Connor Cruz’s Documentation and downloaded the library Connor used.

Next I asked ChatGPT to help me with the wiring according to the example code. I used XIAO Rp2040 for this.

I then successfully uploaded an example code from the tutorial.

Since it was really late that night, I decide to leave the rest of it till the next day. In order to put the screen back to its box, I took off the wires from the screen.

The Tragedy of my TFT Screen

The next day, when I tried to connect the wires to the screen according to the picture I took the day before, the TFT dsiplay suddenly satrted to have smoke

SD Card

Elle Hahn

Touch Sensor with ESP32-C3

Screen with RP2040

Communication between ESP32-C3 and RP2040

I used the simplest way - GPIO Communication - to make two microcontrollers communicatewith each other. The only circuit change

Kicad and Milling

Soldering

Reflection of the Week

This week was so dramatic. After experiencing my first hopefully last frying a component, I was upset for a while since the component was kinda expensive. However, after 15 minutes of panicking, I decided to use back to my tiny safe OLED screen (at leat if I frythis one, it won’t cost too much). I also learned a lot about communication. ChatGPT told me to use 12C communication (SPI and UART) while Claude gave me thesimpler way GPIO communication. Now I trust Claude more than ChatGPT on electronics (Claude you are my GOD but ChatGPT I still love you~~~). This week was really fun and I am kinda scared for machine week which is next week. Let’s see what I can make in two weeks!

AI Usage

I used ChatGPT to help me generate the code and fixing my wiring. You can found the whole conversation here.

I also used Claude to help me improve my code. You can find the whole conversation here.

File Download

You can download my file here.


Last update: April 30, 2025