yoursunny blog
computer, Internet, and life

Is ESP32 Big Endian or Little Endian?

Junxiao Shi

I'm programming network protocols on the Espressif ESP32 microcontroller, and I want to know: is ESP32 big endian or little endian? Unfortunately, search results have only videos and forum posts and PDF; the answer, if present, is buried deep in pages and pages of discussions and irrelevant content. So I quickly wrote a little program to determine the endianness of ESP32.

The Straight Answer: ESP32 is Little Endian

I have determined that: the Tensilica Xtensa LX6 microprocessor in ESP32 is little endian.

ESP32 is little endian. Many other processors are little endian, too:

  • Intel and AMD x86 and x86_64 processors are little endian.
  • Raspberry Pi and Beaglebone Black are little endian, although the underlying ARM processor may operate as big endian.
  • ESP8266 is little endian. It has Tensilica Xtensa L106 microprocessor, similar to the ESP32
  • nRF52 series is little endian. This includes the Adafruit Bluefruit nRF52832.
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ESP8266 Call Button

Junxiao Shi

It's NDN Community Meeting again and this time I'm officially presenting HomeCam at the demo session. I'm the sole presenter of this project. Normally, I have to stay at my table to show my project to the audience. However, I don't want to miss the chance of seeing what others have been doing. To solve this dilemma, I come up with an idea: a call button.

I put a big button on my table. It is labelled as: if I'm not here, press the button to send an Interest. Then, I wear a battery powered light ring on my body. Whenever someone presses the button, it lights up for 15 seconds.

me wearing a light ring at NDNcomm demo session

How It Works

Both the button and the light ring are based on ESP8266. The light ring unit acts as WiFi access point and NDN producer. The button unit acts as WiFi station and NDN consumer. When the button is pressed, the consumer transmits a signed Interest, and the producer turns on the light for 15 seconds after verifying the signature. Since the light ring unit is battery-powered, it enters deep sleep mode if there's no connected WiFi client.

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Get Online in McDonald's with ESP8266

Junxiao Shi

McDonald's used to be the largest chain of free restrooms in the world. Nowadays, they are the largest chain of free WiFi across the United States. Every McDonald's I've been to offers AT&T WiFi services. I can walk in, connect to "attwifi" on my phone, accept the license agreement, and I'm online.

attwifi captive portal in McDonald's

The license agreement page is called a captive portal, a web page displayed to newly connected users before they are granted broader access to network resource. While it's trivial to click through the captive portal on a smartphone, if you are wearing an ESP8266 as a connected jewelry, it would not connect successfully. When I encountered a captive portal in my apartment WiFi, I made an Arduino sketch to send the packets I found through Fiddler, but McDonald's WiFi is different:

  • Each McDonald's store hosts their captive portal on a different domain.
  • The form submission step needs several parameters from the HTML, but does not use cookies.

attwifi captive portal form HTML

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How to Print uint64_t in Arduino

Junxiao Shi

The Arduino programming language looks like C++, but it is weird in its own way: there's no C++ standard library. In C++, you can print a variable to the debug console with std::cerr << x;. In Arduino, you have to write a function call: Serial.print(x);. I love that the Streaming library brings back the familiar syntax Serial << x; through some template and macro magic. But when it comes to a uint64_t variable, nothing works!

error: call of overloaded 'print(uint64_t&)' is ambiguous
   Serial.print(x);
                 ^

note: candidates are:
note: size_t Print::print(const __FlashStringHelper*) <near match>
note:   no known conversion for argument 1 from 'uint64_t {aka long long unsigned int}' to 'const __FlashStringHelper*'
note: size_t Print::print(const String&) <near match>
note:   no known conversion for argument 1 from 'uint64_t {aka long long unsigned int}' to 'const String&'

The cause of this error is: Arduino does not know how to print a uint64_t!

How Arduino Prints Stuff

Arduino contains a subset of C++ standard library, plus some additional headers known as the "Arduino Core". Each microcontroller has its own Arduino Core: AVR, SAMD, ESP8266, ESP32. They follow roughly the same API, one of which is the Print class that knows how to print stuff.

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Simple Temperature and Humidity Indicator with ESP8266 and HTU21D Sensor

Junxiao Shi

I decide to mix up a few existing toys to make a simple temperature and humidity indicator. ESP8266 reads temperature and humidity from an HTU21D sensor, and displays the numbers on a 4-digit 7-segment LED display. Since a 4-digit display isn't wide enough for both temperature and humidity, the display cycles between temperature, humidity, and a blank state.

temperature and humidity on LED display

Hardware

Bill of materials

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Moving Dot: How Many Displays Can You Fit on an ESP8266?

Junxiao Shi

In yoursunny.com's toy vault, there is an assortment of LED displays. I'm wondering, how many LED displays can I fit on an ESP8266? So I built this "moving dot" demonstration, with two LED displays and a buzzer.

moving dot demo

The LED matrix serves as the game board. A dot appears on the matrix. In each time step, the dot randomly moves by one pixel or stays in the same position. The 4-digit displays current time step number. Whenever the dot reach any of the four corners, the buzzer plays a piano note selected between C3 and B5.

Hardware

Bill of materials

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"Wireshark" on ESP8266: PacketDump

Junxiao Shi

I dived into the open source lwip library in ESP8266 Arduino Core, and figured out how to observe raw Ethernet packets.

PacketDump.ino demo

lwip's struct netif

lwip declares a network interface structure in lwip/netif.h:

struct netif {
  struct netif *next;

  ip_addr_t ip_addr;
  ip_addr_t netmask;
  ip_addr_t gw;

  netif_input_fn input;
  netif_output_fn output;
  netif_linkoutput_fn linkoutput;

  u16_t mtu;
  u8_t hwaddr_len;
  u8_t hwaddr[NETIF_MAX_HWADDR_LEN];
  u8_t flags;
  char name[2];
  u8_t num;

  // (some fields are omitted)
};
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How I Put a Temperature Sensor on the NDN Testbed

Junxiao Shi

The frontpage of my recently renovated website shows a room temperature reading of my apartment. This is not your average IoT project, but a showcase of how an IoT device can communicate directly over Named Data Networking (NDN). This article explains where does this temperature reading come from, how is it turned into NDN Data packets, how the sensor appears on the NDN testbed, and how the temperature reading shows up on the website.

room temperature display on yoursunny.com frontpage

Sensor Hardware

If you have been reading my posts, you may have guessed that the temperature reading comes from an ESP8266. Of course! It is actually my very first ESP8266, which I received from Losant IoT Inc. It comes with a TMP36 analog temperature sensor, and has been reporting my room temperature to Losant platform since May 2016.

Losant Builder Kit with all the additions

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How to Change the MAC Address of ESP8266?

Junxiao Shi

Each ESP8266, like every other WiFi network interface card, comes with a MAC address that identifies itself to the network. Sometimes you want to change the MAC address of an ESP8266. How to do that?

ESP8266 has the built-in MAC address

ESP8266 Arduino core does not provide an API to change ESP8266's WiFi MAC address. While there is a WiFi.macAddress function, it actually retrieves the current WiFi MAC address, instead of setting it. However, Espressif SDK offers an API to change the WiFi STA MAC address:

bool wifi_set_macaddr(uint8 if_index, uint8 *macaddr);

This API is declared in user_interface.h. To get access in this API, you'll need to include this header.

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