Help understanding timing related code?

[ril3y]

Hello all,

I have an application where I would like to drive an LED controller something like the tlc5940 or the
MY9921 - https://www.seeedstudio.com/wiki/images/9/98/MY9221_DS_1.0.pdf

However I would like to use the wifi at the same time. So after reading a bunch of docs I am still a bit curious about what to use? Meaning what SDK? Can this be done on the ESP8266? Or is doing something like this really not what the ESP8266 is capable of doing? I have toyed with the idea of putting another uC on the board to drive the LED driver chips. I would like to avoid this but if its what I have to do then I would very much like to just move on and get the project going

Also, On AVR's it looks like you can set a fuse and output the internal clock to a GPIO pin. Does the ESP8266 support this sort of thing? If so I have not found it.

Thanks all for any help.

ril3y

[kolban]

If this wasn't an ESP8266 story but was instead an Arduino story ... would you be able to solve that puzzle? The ESP8266 now has an Arduino environment meaning you can write Arduino sketches and deploy them on the ESP8266. In addition, there are now other languages available including JavaScript, Lua and Basic ... all of which provide timers and GPIO controls.

The ESP8266 also has both SPI and I2C interfaces which might also be relevant to the story.

I get the sense that the puzzle can be broken up into two parts ...

(1) - How to write a program that drives the protocol of the ICs that you want to control
(2) - How to deploy such a program on an ESP8266 to take advantage of the co-located WiFi support built into the ESP8266

I'd suggest tackling issue (1) first of all and investigate all the different techniques you might use to integrate your target IC with boards such as Arduino or Raspberry PI. Once you have convinced yourself that you can "speak" to your target IC, then the translation to ESP8266 should be more mechanical than challenging.