Is there a Real Time Clock in PicoBricks?

"Why was that particular example included if the hardware requirements are different than what ships with our PB kits?"

Using MicroBlocks you can program a lot of different boards. https://wiki.microblocks.fun/boards/supported, not just Raspberry Pi Picos.

The example @Turgut showed was made with another board/screen in mind. You could change it so it works with the OLED screen of your PicoBricks.

There is no library code for the ESP01. Instead there is a project #25 Smart Green House that uses the ESP01 as a server. All the ESP011 codes needed for that project is under Custom Blocks. This project is an advanced project and it will require a bit of knowledge on data communications with Serial Protocol.

You can study that project and also read a bit about the ESP01 AT codes to see how all is put together.

Since there is only a single project with ESP01, we did not make it into a library yet. However, you are free to use it and modify it to send and receive messages as shown in the WIFI example. It will require a bit of "programming" to achieve the same functionality. As you mentioned, the other WIFI project was meant for a unit with a TFT display. But the OLED in the PicoBricks is very similar in blocks usage to the TFT library. So you can easily replace the TFT display blocks with OLED display blocks and achieve similar output. After all, what is the fun in just copy / pasting all the code !

Raspberry organization also created a WIFI version of the Pico board. Because of this, the future apps will be gravitating towards this new processor and utilize the WIFI library that the Online Clock example uses.

If you decide to tackle your project, we are here to help you out as you get stuck in various different ways! The result will be worth trying!

😎

@ReedMikel

There is no difference between having a library and using custom blocks (My Blocks). All libraries start out as custom blocks and then get exported.

If you want to or plan to use ESP01 a lot, you are going to need much more than just the library. In cases like ESP01 comms, there is also the need for what I call "glue" logic that makes coordination of events work. These are never in the library. You are not in an environment where you make sequential library calls and string them together as in Python or Arduino IDEs.

Best approach is to first study the example and understand the comm flow, msg handling, msg parsing, etc. Then you can modify the behavior to your needs.

Please keep in mind that you are working in a very memory constrained micro processor environment in a real time fashion. There is no compiling and optimizing code by a compiler. There are limits to size of code and libraries. Therefore, when working in MicroBlocks with advanced projects one needs to get good in understanding of the environment and restrictions. We simply cannot put everything into a Library; it would be huge and will not fit. So work needed has to be split between some custom block code and some application coordination logic.

However, that does not mean one cannot do serious stuff in MB. The perfect example is the OLED library that I have written, which performs at C++ levels or better, is 26K+ in size and is TOTALLY written in MicroBlocks, manipulating the hardware. You can open read each and every block of it. There is no hidden magic behind the scenes.

The PicoBricks kit and the block programming paradigms provided are primarily a learning environment where experimentation and exploration is the key learning approach. If you are only comfortable with running examples and don't feel like experimenting, then you might not be happy with the exploratory approach, and might be better served by the Python or Arduino environments, with their compiled, linked, and downloaded approach to programming. and relatively less memory restrictions.

I understand the overwhelming amount of "NEW" that needs to be absorbed, understood, and applied. I will try to coordinate a few WEB presentation sessions to cover the complicated projects, as it is rather lengthy and hard to write about each and every detail. I believe an interactive session with interested users like yourself will be more productive.

Many ways to skin a cat...

You can check the specs for the PICO2040 chip (https://datasheets.raspberrypi.com/rp2040/rp2040-datasheet.pdf) for memory limits.

If you are playing in the Arduino / Python IDE environment with compilers etc, you will go by those limits.

However, remember that while in MicroBlocks, those do not mean much, as the MB VM (virtual machine), user programs, libraries, variables, user functions all need to use a slice of the big pie. So there are other limits imposed by the MicroBlocks to make sure everything runs real-time with all the events firing on time, and still allow the users to modify the running code.

There are a few holy numbers:

Individual script size: 1000 bytes; Strings: about 800 bytes; Numbers: 32 bit limit (actually 30 bits); IO buffers: change depending on method used, but still bracketed by the 1000 byte limit.

@PeterMathijssen s memory numbers are related to runtime memory for the user programs and their data structure needs, but is not indicative of the numbers I have provided. VM needs its space as well, and will complain when things are not quite sufficient, which is very dependent on what processor board you are running on. The style of code you write impacts the memory use and dynamics a lot. For small programs, nothing really matters much. But as you get into bigger tasks, you will have to abide by the limits and use the proper techniques, or things will simply not be the way you want it.

When one is working in microsecond resolution event driven environment all in blocks, one tends to forget that it is not the same as the compiler optimized code running in other IDEs.

Back behind the chips and circuits, it is a wild wild world! And we love it, of course!