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32 bit trouble
Wednesday, January 7 2026
Today I added a serial mode feature to my Arduino I2C slave that would allow it to send subsets of parsed data back to the master so that they could be sent to the server, allowing me to look at them and perhaps edit the parsing configuration accordingly. But to do this, I had to enlarge the serial transmit buffer to a whole 100 bytes, which is something of an indulgence on a microcontroller like the Atmega328, which only has two kilobytes of static RAM. And 100 bytes isn't really enough if I want to capture larger passages of serial data for better context. So I began quizzing ChatGPT about microcontrollers with more memory that might work better as slaves with such demanding requirements. I knew that the Atmega2560 was a possible option, since they have eight kilobytes of RAM. But they also use twice as much electricity as an Atmega328, and I didn't want my slaves (which are always on) to become electricity vampires. ChatGPT weighed the various options, agreed that the RP2040 was probably too energy-hungry, and concluded that the SAMD21 was probably perfect for my needs. It is a low-energy 32 bit microcontroller with 32 kilobytes of RAM, an embarrassment of riches for my needs. Best of all, I actually had such a microcontroller in stock in the form of an Adafruit ItsyBitsy M0. By this evening, I was gung-ho enough on this as an occasional I2C slave that I'd installed the necessary libraries into the Arduino IDE and was having ChatGPT help me translate some of the Atmel-specific code of my original slave sketch to work on this other microcontroller. By evening, this new version was even compiling successfully.
This afternoon I took Charlotte for the loop that has us go through the abandoned go-cart track and then homeward through the scrubby highlands west of the Farm Road. There was a bit of a thaw happening and the snow was delightfully mushy, with Charlotte leaving impressive wolf-like tracks. (She was limping slightly, though, probably from the pain of yet another split claw, a problem that afflicts her frequently.)
Later I made spaghetti cooked with cauliflower and a pan of fried-up red onions, crimini mushrooms, and tempeh. Tonight after Jeopardy!, Gretchen and I watched the sixth episode of Station Eleven and found it to be a tiresome slog. The jumping around in the timeline doesn't seem in service to the story telling at all, and it was impossible to understand what was going on with the creepy cult leader and his army of oddly-decorated children. And why wouldn't Kirsten finish him off with one of her many knives?
Later I took a bath that I had to run slowly in order for the water to be sufficiently hot.
Charlotte getting frisky on the Farm Road. Click to enlarge.
Charlotte is pretty! Click to enlarge.
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