This is a simple C / NON-OS SDK based firmware for the ESP8266 devices to drive a MAX7219 based display of 4 8x8 LED matrix modules to display a 24 hour clock, synced via NTP.
It uses the ESP8266 SPI interface to talk to the MAX7219, though repurposes MISO to be CS as the MAX7219 isn't strictly an SPI device:
ESP8266 MAX7219
GPIO13 (MOSI) -> DIN
GPIO14 (CLK) -> CLK
GPIO12 (CS) -> LOAD / nCS
You will need an xtensa-lx106 toolchain and the Espressif NONOS
SDK. If the toolchain is in
the system path and the SDK resides in /opt/esp8266-sdk then a simple make
should output 2 ROM images (one for each flash slot).
If this is the first time you've built the project you'll need to modify
project_config.h to match your settings - in particular wifi details.
You can then flash to your device as follows (these addresses are for a 2MB flash part, change the last 2 addresses to 0xFC000 & 0xFE000 for a smaller 1MB part):
esptool --port /dev/ttyUSB0 --baud 921600 write_flash \
0x0 boot_v1.7.bin \
0x1000 rom0.bin \
0x1FC000 esp_init_data_default_v08.bin \
0x1FE000 blank.bin
(You might need a --flash_size and/or --flash_mode parameter to keep your
device happy - I found getting this wrong led to a failure to boot correctly.)
Basic Over-the-Air upgrade functionality is included; UPGRADE_HOST and
UPGRADE_PATH must be set appropriately to form the base of the URL to check.
version.txt is looked for at the URL, and a ESP8266-Upgrade-Version: header
parsed to determine the version available for download. If this is later than
the running version then, depending on which flash slot is currently in use,
rom0.bin or rom1.bin will be downloaded into the non-running slot. If this
is successful the device will boot into the new image. A check for updated
firmware is made every time the wifi is reconnected to.
All my code in this project is released under GPLv3 or later.