After lots of tinkering, I've managed to improve the speed of writing to the SD Card of my ESP32-TV considerably, but it's still not as fast as I'd like. The Arduino 'readRaw' and 'writeRaw' functions were the culprits, they can only write one sector at a time! After bypassing this and using IDF functions, writing speed improved by 70%. I also experimented with writing to the SD Card in the background, which ironically yielded even better results. However, it's still slower than I'd like, so I've got a crazy new plan: using a cheap IC (GL823) for SD card interfacing...
I've had some commenters point out the issue with the slow display updates in my recent Arduino Nano ESP32 video. It turns out, the software SPI of the Adafruit_ST7789 library was the culprit. Lo and behold, the solution is simple - using the hardware SPI constructor of the library. Apparently, this isn't well documented, so I wrote some code to serve as reference for myself and others who might run into the same snags. Trust me, the difference in speed is absolutely bonkers. Check out the video to see the magic in action.
In this post, I explore the usefulness of GitHub badges to easily represent the status of a GitHub project. I discuss their importance in attracting people to your project and provide a step-by-step guide on how to add these badges to your Arduino projects using GitHub actions. Lastly, I recommend setting things up so that only successful pull requests can be merged to maintain the integrity of the project.
In this article, I explore the different reactions that folks are having towards this tidal wave of AI in our lives, ranging from 'meh' dismissals to outright existential anxiety. I argue that AI is here to augment our capabilities, not replace us. While we might find AI occasionally stumbling, let's not overlook the amazing gift of efficiency and productivity it brings. Sure, we might be worried about the implications it has on our jobs, but isn't it also thrilling to have an AI companion working along with us 'cause if a computer can do my job better, maybe I should...