Wifitally

An ESP8266 based tally light for use with Blackmagic ATEM.

Goals

This project aims to be an open source solution to otherwise cost intensive commercial projects. We chose to use Wifi, because this enshures that it is legal and license free to operate in most countries. The ESP is a perfect fit for this project, because its cheap to get and has almost everything we need onboard.

Requirements

To get the Wifitally to work you will also need to have some sort of Arduino Ethernet or an Arduino with an Ethernet Shield. Because the ATEM Controller only supports a limited number of concurrent connections and it needs a fast and stable connection we decided to use an Arduino with an Ethernet Shield as a bridge between the ATEM and the Wifitally.

Minimal requirements:

• Wifitally
• A single cell Lithium Polymer Battery
• Arduino + Ethernet Shield
• ATEM
• Wifi Access Point with at least two Ethernet ports for the Atem and the Arduino
• Some sort of FTDI or USB to Serial converter (we will add a Serial to USB bridge in the next Revision)

Optional requirements

• SSD1306 display 128 x 64 in Size, the i2c version (for details see the Display section)

IDE Preparations

• Download Arduino IDE if you do not already have it on your computer (www.arduino.cc)
• Download and install the Skaarhoj Libraries (https://github.com/kasperskaarhoj/SKAARHOJ-Open-Engineering/tree/master/ArduinoLibs)
• Patch your Ethernet library. (for details see Details on the Ethernet lib)

Usage

Get the PCB design for the Tally, which is located in hardware/ and get it manufactured by your favourite PCB Manufacturer or do it yourself if you are able to etch two sided PCBs. Order the neccessary parts, we provide a shopping cart for Farnell in hardware/shoppingcart and get an ESP8266-07. Solder everything onto the PCB, if your finished with that, the hard part is over.

Turn on your Wifitally and put it in to flash mode. You can tell if it's in flash mode, if the green LED is on. If it's not, flip the programming switch and press reset. Now the green LED should light up. Connect it to your PC using the USB to Serial converter. Flash the receiver part of the software onto it, you can find it in software/receiver.

To initialize the EEPROM (the part where the data is stored) make shure your tally is turned off, then press the "Mode/Setup" button, while powering on the Tally until the LEDs flash white once. Now you should see a wifi ssid named "Wifitally". You can connect to it using the password "wifitally2342".

The remaining steps are easy:

1. Assemble the Arduino and the Ethernet Shield and flash the Transmitter part in software/transmitter onto the Arduino. You may want to have a look at the IP setup part of the transmitter.
2. Connect the Arduino and the ATEM to the Access Point
3. Connect to your Wifitally using the SSID "Wifitally" and the Password "wifitally2342" and browse to the IP of the tally, it may be 192.168.4.1, if this won't work, have a look at your ip setup and checkout what ip your gateway has. This will be the IP address of your Tally.
4. Enter the SSID and the Passwort of your Access Point into "WLAN SSID" and "WLAN Password" and uncheck "Standalone". Now click save.
5. Your Wifitally will reboot now, shortly after, it should be connected to your Access Point. You will see when it is connected successfully if the blue leds stop blinking. If you misconfigured the Settings, you can again initialize the tally by switching it off and pressing the Mode switch while turning it back on, until it flashes white once.

The Tally runs on a single cell LiPo battery, you can (once it's fixed) charge it using the USB Port onboard. Currently the only purpose of the USB Port is to charge the battery.

Display

First of all: Unfortunately if you want to have a Display, you will need an Arduino wich has bigger memory than an Arduino UNO. If you chose to invest in the SSD1306 Display, you can use it to display stuff like "Low Battery on Tally 2" or "Tally 2 shut down because it's battery is drained". Make shure you have the i2c version and hook up the 4 pins. Should be labeled

• VCC, which goes to +5V or VCC
• GND, which goes to Ground or GND
• SDA, which goes to the SDA Pin of your Arduino
• SCL, which goes to the SCL Pin of your Arduino

Uncomment the display lines in the transmitter code. You will find

// for display use, uncomment from here
....
// to here

Just remove the slashes in the lines between those two lines. There is more than one part, that needs uncommenting

Setting the battery threshold

If you decided not to use a single cell LiPo or chose different values for R17/R18, you need to set the threshold to match your battery. Of cause you can also remove R17 and R18 if you are using a powersupply

If you got your voltage divider right, do one of the following:

• Connect your almost empty battery to the Wifitally and open up the configuration page. Hit "Update battery threshold". The Wifitally will use the current voltage of the battery as threshold for the low battery warning.
• Measure the current voltage of your battery while the tally is powered on, go to the configuration and enter the measured voltage in to the corresponding input (in millivolts please!) and then enter your desired warning and cutoff voltage.

Few words on the Ethernet Library

You might run into problems with the Ethernet Library. There are different Ethernet Shields available. Some use the W5500 chip, some the W5100. The 5100 Chip is supported by the Ethernet library, the W5500 chip needs to have the Ethernet2 lib, which ships with the Arduino IDE from arduino.org.

I am using the W5100 chip and will need the Ethernet lib

fine! you do not have to change anything in the code :)

However, if your Arduino IDE throws an error, that there is no method "beginMulticast" have a look at this:

https://github.com/aallan/Arduino/commit/3811729f82ef05f3ae43341022e7b65a92d333a2

but change "beginMulti" to "beginMulticast" in both files.

I am using the W5500 chip and will need the Ethernet2 lib

This concerns you most likely if you got your shield from Arduino.org. Or if you use the Ethernet shield with POE Support. It's called "Ethernet Shield 2"

You will have to do some work on the EthernetUdp2 lib, the Transmitter code and the ATEM Lib. Do not worry - it's not that hard. First of all, you have to see where the librarys are installed, see (https://www.arduino.cc/en/Guide/Libraries) for help.

EthernetUdp2

You will need to find two files: EthernetUdp2.h and EthernetUdp2.cpp. On the OSX app you will find them by browsing to your Arduino.app, rightclick it and "Show Package Contents" from there on, those files are located in /Contents/Java/libraries/Ethernet2/

EthernetUdp2.h

Find:

public:
  EthernetUDP();  // Constructor
  virtual uint8_t begin(uint16_t);  // initialize, start listening on specified port. Returns 1 if successful, 0 if there are no sockets available to use

and add

virtual uint8_t beginMulticast(IPAddress, uint16_t);    // begin multicast

after.

EthernetUdp2.cpp

Go to the bottom of the file and add

/* Start EthernetUDP socket, listening at local port PORT */
uint8_t EthernetUDP::beginMulticast(IPAddress ip, uint16_t port) {
    if (_sock != MAX_SOCK_NUM)
        return 0;

    for (int i = 0; i < MAX_SOCK_NUM; i++) {
        uint8_t s = w5500.readSnSR(i);
        if (s == SnSR::CLOSED || s == SnSR::FIN_WAIT) {
            _sock = i;
            break;
        }
    }

    if (_sock == MAX_SOCK_NUM)
        return 0;

    // Calculate MAC address from Multicast IP Address
    byte mac[] = {  0x01, 0x00, 0x5E, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00 };

    mac[3] = ip[1] & 0x7F;
    mac[4] = ip[2];
    mac[5] = ip[3];

    w5500.writeSnDIPR(_sock, rawIPAddress(ip));   //239.255.0.1
    w5500.writeSnDPORT(_sock, port);
    w5500.writeSnDHAR(_sock,mac);

    _remaining = 0;

    socket(_sock, SnMR::UDP, port, SnMR::MULTI);

    return 1;
}

ATEM

In file included from transmitter.ino:7:0:
/Users/henne/Documents/Arduino/libraries/ATEM/ATEM.h:34:26: fatal error: EthernetUdp2.h: No such file or directory
 #include "EthernetUdp.h"

If you try to compile the code, you might see this error message. Just open the referenced file, and search for #include "EthernetUdp.h". Replace EthernetUdp.h with EthernetUdp2.h

Transmitter code

In line 2 and 3 of the transmitter code, you will find the includes for the Ethernet library. Replace EthernetUdp.h with EthernetUdp2.hand Ethernet.h with Ethernet2.h

Future Releases

Current status of this Project is still beta. There is some work to be done in the future releases, including:

Software

*

Hardware

• Adding a CP2102 to programm the ESP directly with the onboard USB Port
• Adding a LED breakout to be able to add external leds and / or fets for bigger leds
• fix the charger circuit

Thanks to

• Kasper Skaarhoj for the great work on the Arduino library for the ATEM Controller
• Alasdair Allan for the Ethernet Multicast patch!

This Project was born in the Chaostreff Dortmund www.ctdo.de