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Comment by SEJeff | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if this could be built with an esp8266 or esp32 instead of an arduino.

An esp32 would enable so much cool features. Like control by bluetooth/wifi, apple homekit integration, ...

I can't think of any reason to control my desk over the internet or via Bluetooth. If I'm not at my desk I don't care how high it is, if I'm at the desk and want to change it a button is much more convenient than using my phone.

Think about a button on your desktop to move the desk at a predefined height for standing. It‘s more easily comfigurable than the hijacked ikea bekant buttons to support more logic by different type of presses.

While I agree Wi-Fi would enable other methods of control, the megadesk is designed to do exactly what you suggested.. store and load pre-defined positions by different types of presses :)

I can think of two from the top of my head:

- Let's say you work in a shared office environment with a hot desk policy. Storing the configurations on the board will become unwieldy once more than one person stores her configuration on the board.

- I personally would love to automate my desk to move to a specific position at preset intervals. This would be mostly to force me to change positions throughout the day. I tend to forget to do that.

I'm sure people would come with all kinds of different use cases you and I can't think of right now.

I'd prefer serial control, so I can reliably control it directly from my PC without any wireless protocols: https://github.com/gcormier/megadesk/issues/12

My thoughts exactly! Basically anything you can do with an arduino you can do better and cheaper with esp*. It also gives you some interesting benefits (with the esp32 especially)

The main change would be to the power supply, as the esp8266 has a far higher (~300mA) peak current than the ATTiny814 used (~3mA). Currently, an LDO provides 3.3V from the 24-35V motor supply. This would need to be changed to a buck DC/DC regulator, as a larger LDO at this voltage would need too big a heatsink for the case.

You should be just fine with a cheap lm1117 and no heatsink, that's what most people use with esp's. Also that's peak current from the radio, which for IOT things is generally very short.

EDIT: Wait I meant from 5v, nevermind!

as you note with your edit, most usages aren't going to be dropping from >24V.

> Also that's peak current from the radio, which for IOT things is generally very short.

this is the interesting bit, though.

if you're releasing an open source board design, to have customizable firmware dropped on to it, what do you really know about the radio usage when you're designing the circuit/board?

safest is to spec it for maximum draw on any controller/radio. write the BOM to call for one of the three-terminal drop-in switching regulators ($5), and if somebody knows what they're doing they can put in the original linear part and save $4.50.

Someone mentioned it on my repo a few months back. I think the space constraints would make it very challenging to make a drop-in replacement that fits in the original housing.

Of course, with a new housing, the sky is the limit :) But that wasn't the main design goal.

And bare esp8266 is about the size of my thumbnail. They're tiny. I'm not personally aware of a smaller Arduino.

Regardless, really cool project. Thanks for putting it on github!

Some kind of networking/bluetooth stack would be very useful.

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