Mochi is a cute little display like device that has animated faces and emotions. It's originally manufactured and designed by Dasai™.
Though Mochi is very cute but it's very lack of any funtions. It only show animations and make noises, although in version 3, it could make movements according to your car, but to myself, it still lacks the functions that are suppose to have being a "car pet". And that's why I wanted to make some improvments to it and making it a BETTER MOCHI.
Addition to the basic features mochi already has, I personally thinks that below features could add some touch to the cute little buddy.
- speed guage
- welcoming tones
- clock
Also, the screen are both too small for the animimations and the features above. So, by changing it into a 1.28 inch round display, things starting to look interesting. First, it finally looks like a guage, or a clock.
To implement the above mentioned features, you could just use a vanilla ESP32/ESP32-S3 and a round tft display powered by GC9A01 with an GPS module. Or, you could use a M5Dial for more features like a rotary encoder for changing modes, and a built in buzzer for melodies.
As for myself, all the software is tested and implement using the first way on a bread board and later been implemented onto the M5Dial and tested. The below installation steps are specified for implementation on the M5Dial or similar devices with same GPIO outpins.
To make your own Mochi on a M5Dial, you first need the following parts.
- A M5Dial
- Neo6M GPS reciever
- Any ESP32 (This includes S2, S3, C3, etc.)
- CH340 UART to USB connector
For an easy burn in for the software, we'll use arduino as the platform.
Place the files excluding the datasender folder into a sketch folder and choose M5Dial as your board, then hit compile&upload.
Connect your Neo6M to your computer using the CH340 dongle and change the baude rate to 115200 and rate to 5Hz using U-center.
More infos of changing the settings could be found Here.
Connect the GPS to the secondary ESP32 using UART. Here we use the second UART port for communication, but since specs may be different, feel free to modify the code to meet your own needs.
Place the files in the datasender folder into another sketch folder and select the corresponding board then hit upload.
At defualt, after installation, the dial should got animations running on the screen. You could use the rotary encoder to change to the guage page by spinnig the outer rim.
Below is a picture showcasing the guage page.
Also, the touch screen is for adjusting the brightness of the screen, swipe left to dim it and the opposite to lighten it!
