Running some RGB LEDs had me thinking about alternate sources of power. Specifically I need a mix of +5v and +12v to power different types of LEDs. Old ATX computer power supplies are a good/cheap source of power because they are easy to harvest from old PCs. They're also usually rated for high wattage.

After some research I found that you need to do a little work to turn on a PC power supply that's not hooked up to a motherboard. Specifically you need to short the green PS-ON pin to ground. This simulates pressing the power button on your PC and triggers the supply to turn on. You can tell the power supply is on when the fan starts to spin. This can be accomplished by cutting the green and (any) black wire out of the ATX connector and connecting them together.

Alternately the power supply will supply +5v of power even in off or standby mode if you use the purple +5vSB line. If all you need is a small amount (less than 2 amps) of 5v power using the +5vSB line is a great alternative and will be quieter because the fan will not be on.

Once the power supply is on you can use the other wires as follows:

Other pins are less useful but available:

Be sure to check the amperage ratings for each voltage on the side of your power supply before use.

Here is a quick way to get the IP address and/or MAC address from your Arduino device as a String.

String get_mac_addr() {
    uint8_t mac[6];
    WiFi.macAddress(mac); // Put the addr in mac

    char buf[18] = "";
    snprintf(buf, sizeof(buf), "%02X:%02X:%02X:%02X:%02X:%02X", mac[0], mac[1], mac[2], mac[3], mac[4], mac[5]);

    return (String)buf;
}

String get_ip_addr() {
    IPAddress ip = WiFi.localIP();

    char buf[16];
    snprintf(buf, sizeof(buf), "%d.%d.%d.%d", ip[0], ip[1], ip[2], ip[3]);

    return (String)buf;
}

Quicky helper function to connect to WiFi on Arduino so I don't have to re-invent the wheel every time I start a new project.

void init_wifi(const char *ssid, const char *password) {
    WiFi.mode(WIFI_STA); WiFi.begin(ssid, password);

    while (WiFi.status() != WL_CONNECTED) {
        delay(500); Serial.print(".");
    }

    Serial.printf("\r\nConnected to: \"%s\"\r\n",ssid);
    Serial.print("IP address  : "); Serial.println(WiFi.localIP());
    Serial.print("MAC address : "); Serial.println(WiFi.macAddress().c_str());
}

I picked up some new ESP32-S2 boards to play around with. These newer boards come with native USB on board, instead of a separate USB to serial chip to handle communications. With this new chip, there are some new USB acronyms in the Arduino menus. I kept getting them confused so I looked them all up and am committing them here for future reference.

I bought an Arduino Relay Shield to use on my Wemos D1 (ESP8266). After some poking around here is the mapping for which pins enable which relays:

To enable the relays on this shield you pull the appropriate pin HIGH. Other relay boards I've seen require you to pull the pin LOW, so don't get confused.

Here is the Tasmota template I used for the relay shield.

{"NAME":"Relay Shield","GPIO":[0,0,0,0,24,0,0,0,22,21,23,0,0],"FLAG":0,"BASE":18}

I wrote some code to stress test my Arduino. The code below will make your Arduino calculate prime numbers.

long start       = 0;
int  max_seconds = 30;
long i           = 2; // Start at 2
long found       = 0; // Number of primes we've found

void setup() {
    Serial.begin(115200);

    while (!Serial) { }

    Serial.println("");
    Serial.print("Running prime benchmark for ");
    Serial.print(max_seconds);
    Serial.println(" seconds...");

    start = millis();
}

void loop() {
    int prime = is_prime(i); // Check if the number we're on is prime

    if (prime == 1) {
        found++;

        if (found % 2000 == 0) {
            Serial.print(".");
        }

        if (found % 50000 == 0) {
            Serial.print("\n");
        }
    }

    int running_seconds = (millis() - start) / 1000;

    if (max_seconds > 0 && (running_seconds >= max_seconds)) {
        Serial.print("\nFound ");
        Serial.print(found);
        Serial.print(" primes in ");
        Serial.print(max_seconds);
        Serial.println(" seconds");
        delay(10000);

        i     = 2;
        found = 0;
        start = millis();
    }

    i++;
}

int is_prime(long num) {
    // Only have to check for divisible for the sqrt(number)
    int upper = sqrt(num);

    // Check if the number is evenly divisible (start at 2 going up)
    for (long cnum = 2; cnum <= upper; cnum++) {
        long mod = num % cnum; // Remainder

        if (mod == 0) {
            return 0;
        } // If the remainer is 0 it's evenly divisible
    }

    return 1; // If you get this far it's prime
}