Sonoff NSPanel

[PiotrMachowski]

Hi,

Has anyone tried using openHASP with Sonoff NSPanel? It uses ESP32 and has been confirmed to work with ESPHome (description).

[fvanroie]

Nextion displays only use RX/TX serial protocol and have a proprietary Nextion firmware running on the MCU attached to the ribbon cable of the Discovery display. ESPhome can be flashed to the ESP32 but it seems they are having trouble connecting to the Nextion display over serial:

We did not manage to get the display working yet. We are reanonably sure GPIO 16 and 17 are used for TX/RX and since the original Sonoff firmware uses 921600bps for USART-updates, we are also quit sure the Baud Rate is correct. Nevertheless we keep getting [W][nextion:072]: Nextion is not connected! in the logs.

openHASP needs direct access to a 'dumb' commodity display to write directly to the screen. The design of the NSPanel + Nextion display makes that impossible. ESPhome or HASPone for ESP32 might still be possible. Tasmota is also looking into the device, so to be continued...

[PiotrMachowski]

ESPhome can be flashed to the ESP32 but it seems they are having trouble connecting to the Nextion display over serial

Yeah, I have seen it and I hope they will figure it out

It's a shame that openHASP is not possible, I really wanted to use it

[fvanroie]

The purpose of openHASP was to eliminate the dependency on proprietary Nextion hardware and use open hardware designs.
I'm optimistic about the future now that Sonoff is joining the switchplate market, competitors will step up their game too.😃

[PiotrMachowski]

Sonoff has just published some technical details of NSPanel: link

[fvanroie]

Interesting that there is an SPI connection to the display. I wonder if it can be controlled directly...

edit It seems the SPI is only used for the SD card on the Nextion Discovery panels:

[fvanroie]

We now know that the NSpanel hardware is not compatible with openHASP.
You can use Tasmota or ESPhome with this device.

[ivdimitro]

Hi, I see there has been a lot of development around the NSpanel and there seems to be even "sutom firmware" https://github.com/peepshow-21/ns-flash
Not sure if this will change the compatibility of the NSpanel in any way with openHASP.

P.S. I appreciate your work on open hardware but I need a device with high "wife acceptance factor" and I am afraid 3D printing will not deliver it :)

[fvanroie]

Not sure if this will change the compatibility

No, the hardware is not compatible because of the Serial Nextion display. That's why openHASP can't use that display.