Choosing a dev. board ESP 32 S3 ProS3 or Arduinos -
IOT, Air quality sensors,Temperature,GPS,Touch Screen, Battery Hi everyone. Need some advice.

Question

I have no formal education in electronics. In fact, I just started self learning recently. I do have formal education in programming though. I am building ( as fast as I can ) a prototype of an IOT air quality measuring device using ( currently )

Arduino R4 Wifi Rev 2

www.adafruit.com/.../3686 PLantower PM2.5 Air Quality Sensor and Breadboard Adapter Kit - PMS5003

DHT 22 temperature/humidity sensor

ILI9341 TFT display

GPS Module NEO 6M

Those are the main items. However once the above is working perfectly, i’d like to add other air quality sensors to the prototype such as the ones listed here

shopee.com.my/SGP30-GY-SGP30-Air-Quality-Sensor-Module-For-TVOC-And-eCO2-ElectricA--i.96013540.14461806521
shopee.com.my/Gas-Sensor-Module-MQ2-MQ3-MQ4-MQ5-MQ5-MQ6-MQ7-MQ8-MQ9-MQ135-MQ-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-135-Arduino-Raspberry-i.126211897.7671802063 as well as try running it on a Lithium Ion Battery.

Problems ( bare in mind the dev board is Arduino R4 Wifi ) - 1. TFT i can't make the TFT ( touch screen display ) to work : Compilation error: "wiring_private.h: No such file or directory"

But it works on Arduino Uno R3

2. Serial ports ? And then i can't seem to use more than one softwareSerial. when running PM2.5 sensor and GPS sensor at the same time ;

If i declare pmsSerial.begin(9600) FIRST, the GPS part will not output anything if i declare gpsSerial.begin(9600) FIRST , the PMS(pm2.5) part will not output anything So i applied this docs.arduino.cc/.../

on arduino Uno R3 and it worked but when i apply it to R4 Wifi , it says

"class SoftwareSerial' has no member named 'listen'. " I have received some feedbacks from several forums mostly regarding the R4 has 2 serial ports. My point is, i need to build a prototype real fast so i can&rsquo;t have for example, the TFT working but not those main sensors or vice versa.

SO i am thinking of getting a different dev board that can make all these sensors AND the TFT to work seamlessly.

One guy suggested Arduino Giga R1 Wifi but it is so much more expensive than ESP32 Pro s3 by unexpectedmaker . If i am not mistaken the Giga R1 has 4 serial ports while the Pro S3 has 3.

I doubt that it&rsquo;s worth the price for that one difference . cost if of course an issue. I want to get a development board that does not require me to buy , for example, another TFT other than the one that I have right now Thanks

shabaz · Answer

For the TFT, you'll simply have to search out where the wiring_private.h file is, and ensure that the compiler can see it. There's no shortcut here; if google has not helped, then you'll need to do the work of locating that file, or looking to see what that file is used for, and see if you can modify the TFT driver code to not require it. The Arduino Uno R4 is quite different from the other Arduino boards, so you could also consider just buying a different Arduino. 
 Regarding serial ports, you'll eventually learn some techniques to address this, but if you're in a rush, maybe it's good to stick with what's working, and simply remove the GPS module. It's likely not needed for the device (you can always obtain the time via WiFi). The display might not serve much of a purpose either, if people can access the data using other methods. But it seems like removing the GPS module would solve the problem with little impact. 
 Some random techniques you could investigate (but be prepared for it to take some time if you're new to this) could be to implement your own PM2.5 or GPS driver code, i.e. not rely on the ready-made one which seems to require a member function that doesn't exist with the R4 uno. Another technique is to simply only use one device at a time, i.e. create and delete the object after use. This may or may not work. You could multiplex the interfaces with a bit of hardware for that. If you move to different hardware, the lowest-impact method will be to use another Arduino board, and just accept the price difference for your prototype. Or use I2C peripherals as bidrohini mentions. 
 In summary, there's lots of approaches you could try, a few listed above. But the simplest is to remove the peripheral that you don't need.

Choosing a dev. board ESP 32 S3 ProS3 or Arduinos - IOT, Air quality sensors,Temperature,GPS,Touch Screen, Battery Hi everyone. Need some advice.

Top Replies