Possible M5StickC Port of Meshtastic?

Does anyone think there may be a way to port the Meshtastic to work on a M5StickC unit? I am thinking of integrating it with a LoRa Grove unit…??
The M5StickC has the following specs:

m5stickc_back

After speaking with @geeksville, he suggested the following:
"It looks like a very easy board to add support for. I think the only changes you’d need are:

  • Add the new board definitions to configuration.h and platformio.ini (very similar to the existing “heltec” target)
  • Then build and confirm that meshtastic runs and works and talks to the lora board
  • Then send in a pull request to add this as ‘alpha’ level support for this board
  • Then make their display work"

The reason i mentioned this unit is that it also has a keyboard HAT that has a 3 color LED. it can be used while the LoRa grove unit is attached, which would make it truly a 2-way communicator.

3 Likes

It is an interesting plug and pray platform.

After a casual google search my first question is what kind of enclosure to use for the stick, radio, keyboard, and larger battery.

Some of the devices included a small battery, not really big enough for long run time with the radios.

Can the keyboard and radio use the same ‘Grove’ port? I didn’t see a simple answer in my quick search.

Over all it seems like a cool play with electronics toy, but not so great day to day use as a communicator.

1 Like

I am curious, why would this be a “plug and pray toy”?? It’s running an ESP32 with 4M, and incorporates many features that the Heltec units have, along with expandability and a TFT color screen?

Yes, there is an 18650 battery pack with passthrough for the HAT keyboard Here and it allows both to be used at once, Keyboard via HAT port and LoRa via grove.

A case will be fairly easy to make too. I have some ideas as to that (it will look like a FRS radio)

1 Like

Plug and pray because different devices using IO pins and possible conflicts with more than one thing connected. Also just an old school turn of phrase based on the original Plug and Play devices in the Windows 95 days.

Are you looking at this just to have a keyboard? As you start adding up the costs it seems to be more expensive then some of the boards that include the radio.

1 Like

I will definitely create some beautiful 3D print cases if we get support for the Blackberry keyboard. This would be super great to have a stand alone meshtastic pager :slight_smile: :heart_eyes:

Edit: https://www.tindie.com/products/arturo182/bb-q10-keyboard-pmod/

1 Like

I wonder if we could process the keyboard output directly with the esp32

1 Like