ESP32 not available to AM

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jph
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ESP32 not available to AM

#1 Post by jph »

Hi guys.
ESP32 standard DEV board. Flashes perfectly but then not seen at all by AM. I can confirm that the ESP32 IS seen on the router diagnostic client list as connected via wifi.
Also noticed that there is no option at all for ESP32 in the hardware pin assign pull down menus. It is 'missing in action' 'Pining for the Fjords' ;)

I was trying a test with a basic ESP32 DEV kit but I eventually intend to use the Olimex ESP32 POE unit in hardwired ethernet mode.

Many thanks
Joe
Joe. CISSP, MSc.

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Ralph
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Re: ESP32 not available to AM

#2 Post by Ralph »

We haven't tested the ESP32 for a while, so it might be that it stopped working. I will give it a try next week.

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jph
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Re: ESP32 not available to AM

#3 Post by jph »

Much appreciated Ralph,
I have a specific use case for the Olimex ESP32-EVB in wired mode. I have the standard Dev Board C here at the moment if you need any testing just let me know.
Cheers,
Joe
Joe. CISSP, MSc.

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jph
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Re: ESP32 not available to AM

#4 Post by jph »

Update to ESP32

It DOES work, in respect of getting Air Manager to 'see' it - Hardware pin assignments seem to be ONLY available manually and not via a pull down menu although this was simply probably not updated in the later versions as very few people use the ESP32, but, I also believe that may be that very few are actually aware of what it is capable of in AM. It has certainly been an eye opener for me. It is also probably missing some of the later routines such as the 1637 etc but have not tested yet. ANY error when testing means a complete re-flash.

First issue, windows device 'discovery' needs enabling. This is the most common issue that people have with Air Player type devices. I will do a specific post on this later and how to fix it s it deserves it's own topic.

I, and I am sure the vast majority - have / had a fundamental misunderstanding of the use of the ESP32 in Air Manager ! I believed that it was simply a very fast board that allowed wifi or network comms with Air Manager similar to a super fast Arduino etc. This is NOT the case. The use of the ESP32 is designed to have an instrument 'pushed' to it and then be a standalone wifi enabled unit - as the name it shows up with implies, it is a 'mini' air play (HARDWARE I/O ONLY)
I found this page after I attempted to use it - doh - it is probably one of the most hidden aspect of AM :o ;) https://siminnovations.com/wiki/index.php?title=ESP32
I must confess there are many areas of this I am still unsure of and it is extremely difficult to test which is again probably my limited understanding of what is trying to be achieved here.
As can be seen below my experience then closely followed the SI Page

Here is the flashing procedure for the ESP32.

Flashing an ESP32 - first select your device - I am using a generic DEV C board identical to the first selection. It only has WIFI and not ETHERNET.
ESP32 flash1.jpg
Select the appropriate ESP32 that you are using then enter the WIFI SSID and Password of your network that you want to connect to.
ESP32 flash2.jpg
After flashing the device will show in AM as follows
ESP32 discovered.jpg
.
.
So, all this part works as I believe it should.

I believe I can only use 'named' hardware I/O as there are no pull down menus for pin selection. I will test this later but again I am obviously misunderstanding some fundamental points regarding the use of this. ?
Joe
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Re: ESP32 not available to AM

#5 Post by Ralph »

It is like Air Player, but without graphics (hence Air Player Mini). It does I/O only.
But running Lua is quite heavy for the most ESP32's, it requires a lot of memory. So it can only do a few basic things, like buttons and switches.

I'm still on the fence on creating my own ESP32 board, based on the WT32-ETH01 design, and then taking the biggest and greatest ESP32.
It would be an open source project, and I would sell them for cost-price.

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Re: ESP32 not available to AM

#6 Post by jph »

Hi Ralph, yes, I can see issues with 520K on board when running LUA.
Is the idea with the implementation in AM that, for example, If I coded a simple switch to be 'gear up or down' (just something picked at random) - and then assigned appropriate gpio to the spdt switch and assigned the appropriate datarefs / writes etc, that when I click 'run' in AM, it writes a compiled version including that small code, directly to the esp32. This is now completely independent of AM ? .. in the case of XP, for example, would this then be communicating with XP via the UDP XP protocol directly ? - in this case I could close AM completely ? or is there a third party in-between ?

As for making a unit, it would be rather interesting. What sort of QSPI RAM / FLASH allocation were you thinking of ?
The ETH01 board is dedicated to Ethernet <> Serial but is bloody fast at up to 5 Mbit serial so you could certainly do some interesting stuff. A big problem I have found with ESP32 units is extremely limited number of GPIO available, especially if you utilise an Ethernet connection as this takes (iirc) 12 GPIO on it's own, then 4 gpio for the serial I/O if you are using dedicated up and down and you are only left with a handful of GPIO, probably less than 10 and not all available for Output as many are in only.
Are you planning on strapping that to another processor board ?. I was thinking of something on similar lines.

Where I have a huge headache at the moment is getting data in and out of AM at fast enough speeds. I want to be way WAY faster than 115Kb Serial in Messageport, yet I still want to be able to program whatever board I use - preferably with Arduino IDE - which supports Arduino, PICO, ESP32 etc already and have all the libraries one could ever wish for so I don't want to learn another language lol :)
I want to be able to send data to an ethernet port so the ETH01 is perfect as it allows incredibly fast serial - as said, up to about 5Mb - I believe this can be duplexed on two channels to 10Mb.
This is the big issue though - I do not see any way of getting data in or out of AM at a fast rate ? All the current boards seem limited due to using serial. There is of course the Pico using CDC and this has to be given serious consideration. Would you know at what actual speeds AM can and does communicate with PICO ? (I would still need to program AM standard LUA Digital IO as a crude 8 or 16 bit port to transfer data to another programmable processor to then program to do the conversion to ethernet......

This is why I was, initially, so incredibly excited about ESP32 as I though it offered a truly high speed interface to AM that was Ethernet capable.

Joe
Joe. CISSP, MSc.

petertornado
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Re: ESP32 not available to AM

#7 Post by petertornado »

Hi, I'm new to this forum. Thank you in advance for any help.
So far I can manage AM 4.0 using Arduino Mega and to control the Garmin G1000.
Because in may panels I have a space issue, I planned to use the ESP32 to interface the buttons and rotary encoders to MSFS

After hours of try and error and reading what ever I found on the net, I hope someone can answer my few basic questions:

1. Has anyone an ESP32 running with AM (simple switch for example)
Is this basically possible with the current version ?
I can flash the ESP32 and it shows up as Mini Airplayer, but I can not push any HW script or any instrument to it
(neither by push instrument from the main page nor from the create/edit page)
As an attachment is a screenshot of what I get using the create / edit page
Screenshot 2022-07-10 145746.jpg
2. If there is a way to use an ESP32 for my purpose, can someone please help me with a clear instruction ?

Thank you , Peter

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Re: ESP32 not available to AM

#8 Post by Ralph »

It hasn't been tested for a long time, so as I think I mentioned here before, there are probably things that are broken.
It'll be better in version 4.2.
4.2 is going to get a lot of technical changes, to which the ESP32 has to be adapted as well I think.

petertornado
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Re: ESP32 not available to AM

#9 Post by petertornado »

Thank you for the quick answer, Hence I will wait for 4.2 I will then test and comment.
Hopefully this will not take too long.

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