ESP32-SBC-FabGL PC Emulator offline?

[Andy2No]

I'd like to try the ESP32-SBC-FabGL PC Emulator without a wifi connection.  Is there a way to download the necessary images and place them on the SD card?

[LubOlimex]

I am not sure about that one, if you nobody answers, you might also want to check or ask at the official repositories for the Emulator project if there is an option to install it offline and how it is done.

[Andy2No]

@LubOlimex  Thanks for the reply.  I only just saw it because this forum defaults to not following threads we create, and not notifying of replies by email.  Is there a legal reason for that?  It seems counter productive.

I don't think the creator of FabGL replies any more.  There is an Olimex fork of FabGL for the ESP32-SBC-FabGL, on github, but no one seems to be replying to issues about that either.

Do I have to solve a CAPTCHA for every single post I make on this forum, or does that eventually go away?  It's discouraging. The images are not clear enough for me to be sure I'm typing it right either - going for a third attempt, on this one...

[LubOlimex]

I think e-mail notification is disabled by default, I think the employee that maintains the forums doesn't like unsolicited e-mails so he decided to disable it. Thanks for the feedback. You are the first person to complain about it, but if more people find it problematic we might consider changing it.

Same for the captcha, we just get attacked by so many bots all the time, and now with AI they are getting smarter and disguise themselves better, sometimes even tricking human employee and get manual approval. It is sufficient for few bots to go trhough to make the forum unreadable and unavailable.

About the upload without WIFI - same Olimex employees that see this forum, see the GitHub fork. If we don't know here, we don't know there either. We are not software experts unfortunately, we are primarily a hardware manufacturer and our software knowledge is limited. We add support for our hardware, but find it hard to know all the software quirks. All software we've done can be seen the fork you mentioned, the user that made few commits last year is an Olimex employee. Outside of the commits he made, we know little about the software specifics.

Even if the FabGL creator doesn't reply maybe somebody else in that community knows more. When it comes to the software it is far more likely to get a knowledgable answer from the FabGL community than from us.

[Andy2No]

@LubOlimex If someone subscribes to a forum and posts a question, I think it's safe to assume they want a reply, so an email notifying them of one wouldn't be unsolicited.  It's what they were hoping for.

I guess the test of how much this causes a problem would be whether a significant number of people asked a first question, then didn't respond to replies because they didn't see them.

I suspect bots appear to be getting better because they're mostly cheap labour, rather than a script or bot.  If people are paid a tiny amount per solved CAPTCHA, they probably become a lot better at it than I am.

I'm going to persist with the ESP32-SBC-FabGL, once the weather gets cooler, even if it means using it as bare hardware, but the fact that it has FabGL in the name suggests to people buying it that it supports FabGL, which implies support from somebody.

Perhaps my impression of how Olimex sells its products is wrong, but my perception of it is that there's Olimex, then there's shops selling Olimex products, with little or nothing in between.  If so, it seems the support for the product should come from Olimex.

Is this just a largely abandoned product that I discovered too late into its life cycle?

[LubOlimex]

We just made a hardware board inspired by the library, as explained in the wordpress announcement, the library came many years before we decided to make the open hardware design work with it:

https://olimex.wordpress.com/2023/05/25/new-open-source-hardware-design-is-verified-esp32-sbc-fabgl-single-board-computer-based-on-fabgl-library-with-ps2-keyboard-mouse-and-vga-display-with-many-retro-computer-emulators/

What does it mean abandoned? It works with FabGL just fine. You want to use the hardware and software project in specific way that no one used it before. What do you expect us to do? Test something that you need specifically? Find a way to do it without WIFI? Tailor the software to fit your personal goals? It is open source hardware and open source software project... All software and hardware resources are available without purchase.

[Andy2No]

You're conflating two different things.  My initial question about how to use the PC emulator offline is separate from expecting Olimex to provide support or documentation about using FabGL on a product with FabGL in the name.

I wondered whether Olimex had abandoned the product based on the fact that the examples don't currently compile, using the latest ESP32 boards support for Arduino, and your previous statement that  "same Olimex employees that see this forum, see the GitHub fork. If we don't know here, we don't know there either. We are not software experts unfortunately, we are primarily a hardware manufacturer and our software knowledge is limited. ".

I have posted an issue about getting the examples to compile on github, and while I didn't really expect a quick reply, your statement made me think I was never going to get one.

Yes, the PC emulator offline question was a question for the forum in general, though I can't find much activity here about this board, or FabGL in general - IIRC, all references here to FabGL relate to that board.

[LubOlimex]

My bad I missed the problem at GitHub. There are few user guides on how to get it working.

[Andy2No]

Thanks.  I've had a reply from DanKoloff on github, which solves the problem of how to compile the examples (including the PC Emulator) and also seems to help with my original question here:

https://olimex.wordpress.com/2023/08/01/esp32-sbc-fabgl-how-to-work-with-the-expander-module-gpios-from-fabgl-library-and-apps/

The main parts, which other people will need to know, is that it needs Espressif ESP32 v2.0.11 installed, not the current 3.0.x (perhaps the last 2.x version, v2.0.17 would also work, but not anything starting with a 3), and that the board type needs to be set to "ESP32 Dev Module" (using Tools > Board > esp32 > ESP32 Dev Module).

It would be good if that information could be propagated to places like the readme pages of the two Olimex repos relating to this board (one specifically for the board, one for the Olimex fork of FabGL), and any product pages or documentation about the board.  As it stands, for anyone wanting to try using the board with FabGL, as the name implies, it's a frustrating experience and relies on finding the missing information from third parties.

I see there's another thread in this forum about compiling the PC Emulator, and the OP found a workaround based on using Arduino's own board support package for the Arduino ESP32 Nano. There wasn't enough information there for me to get it working unfortunately (I tried, briefly).  That thread is from a few months ago, IIRC, so this wasn't a new problem.

I can see that updating everything to be compatible with Espressif v3.0.x would be a big job, and almost certainly not worth the trouble.  Updating the documentation so people know how to workaround it shouldn't take too long though.

[LubOlimex]

Thank you for the feedback. Some resources were updated, how-to was added in the README here:

https://github.com/OLIMEX/FabGL/blob/master/README.md

and the manual was also updated:

https://github.com/OLIMEX/ESP32-SBC-FabGL/blob/main/DOCUMENTS/ESP32-SBC-FabGL.pdf

[Andy2No]

You're welcome, @LubOlimex.  Thanks for the update.

I suspect most of the examples, except the PC Emulator, can be compiled with

Partition Scheme: Default

but I've verified that compiling the SpaceInvaders.ino with it set to Huge APP still works, and it runs as it should, so it's probably fine to use that for all of them, unless there's a comment saying otherwise, in which case I'm sure people will figure it out.

I pasted the wrong link, yesterday.  The one I meant to paste was this, provided by DanKoloff on github, which explains setting up the PC Emulator including how to use it withuot a WiFi coonection:

https://github.com/MrSoxAndShoes/esp32-sbc-fabgl-quick-start

It shows where to get the images to put on the microSD card.  I found I could bypass the WiFi scan at the start by pressing ESC, to get to the boot menu to choose one of them. 

The programming tools disk image used in the previous link, and the MSDOS 6 one, both include QBasic.  QBasic uses labels instead of line numbers. Line numbers were the main thing wrong with the traditional forms of basic, IMO.  Other than that, it's a perfectly useful programming language and a lot more immediate than using a compiler.