Ignitron in ESP32-S3-N16R8 #51
Replies: 5 comments 26 replies
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Hi Marcus, the esp32 board I bought some years ago seems no longer available; it's replaced by new devkit with USB-c but I think pretty similar. Eg: May be you need to remap some pins, but this is a minor issue. That said, I found very strange the new esp32-s3 can't run ignitron code. I have a wroom-1 (less ram than yours) and I hope to have the time to try, just curious.
I hope to give some news in next days |
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My fault. I'm trying to compile for s3 and it returns errors on BluetoothSerial.cpp . This issue confirm ESP32-S3 doesn't support BT Classic: So, at the moment, I can't find a way to compile Ignitron on ESP32-S3. And since BluetoothSerial is used in SparkBTControl.cpp, I think commenting out is useless as it would make Ignitron unusable. I don't know if BLE Serial can replace BT Classic Serial to communicate with Spark amps. |
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I just noticed that board is 30 pins version, not the 38 pins version... Sorry if I appear nit-picky, but after struggling a lot with my board I just want to make sure I will get the correct board at this time, hehehe :-) Is it ok to use the 30 pin version that you linked? |
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You are right. I posted that because it seems to be the equivalent of my old board I used. I used 30pin version because at the time I already owned one. This is why I need to remap some pins. May be it would be better to buy the 38 pin version for better compatibility, but I have no links for that |
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I was understanding from the original documentation that Bluetooth serial is only required by Android phones to communicate with Ignitron in AMP mode as when Ignitron is in APP mode it always use BLE. Doesn't that mean the communication with the amp would always be BLE? If you want to try the compilation without the serial, below are the modifications I have done to (hopefully) remove the Bluetooth Serial from it. |
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Hi Ivan, thanks for answering. I meant that my chip does not support Bluetooth Serial and only supports Bluetooth LE. So, I had to remove the support to Bluetooth serial from Ignitron. I made some quick changes here and there, first to remove references to the library and later to assign the same value for both cases. After some adjustments here and there I was finally able to compile and flash, but the program gets stuck somewhere. I don't know how to discover where it is stuck, so I tried to include, in the very beginning of the ignitron.ino, some blinks in the onboard RGB led and send serial messages back to the computer, but nothing happens. It seems I was also able to upload the partition images with the below commands, but I cannot tell yet if the files are really there. Still need to find out how to check it. While I was still strugling to get the board setup, I had also the situation where the board was resetting continuosly (I could hear the USB device connecting/disconnecting beeps in Windows). I am not saying that my current setup is 100% correct, but as I said, now I can at least run some "Hello World" type of sketches, haha! As for the pin adjustments, I changed only the ones that were obviously not available in my board, but left all remaining pins as is. If it helps feeding your curiosity, here is the json that I am using for the board and below my entire platformio.ini |
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@MarcusVDTAVARES Hi Marcus, sorry to hear that you are struggling with building the Ignitron. It might sound a bit selfish, but I think if you are looking for a versatile pedal to control the Spark Amp, Ignitron should have a lot in store for you. So I think it is worth the effort ;-) Regarding your question, the Ignitron is using Serial Bluetooth only for Android OS to connect to Ignitron in AMP mode (to store new presets). Without particular log output it will be difficult to analyse. Regarding the board I used, the link in the Readme file seems to no longer work. I hope this helps and you will succeed! |
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@stangreg thanks for your words of encouragement... I am definetely not going to give up so easily. But the good thing is that I am having a lot of fun with this project! Well, back to Ignitron, I am now focusing on discovering why my S3 is rebooting in loop when I flash Ignitron to it:
Now that I am sure my board is not faulty and that I was able to individually test some of its features, I am finally reviewing all the GPIO definitions as there are some differences between the S3 and version you used. I know I should have checked it already, but I was too excited to try it out and wrongly assumed that most of the pins would be the same between S and S3. So, @stangreg , could you please confirm if all pin definitions are only in Config_Definitions.h? Also, where is the definition for the SDA and SCL pins in Ignitron? |
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For the changes to disable Bluetooth Serial in replacement with keeping only the Bluetooth LE, refer to previous posts. Tomorrow I will start connecting the wires. Hopefully will be done by EOD. Thank you |
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This limitation on the Android app puts me in a restricted usage of Ignitron as I cannot update the banks with presets of my choice, but I still can use Ignitron APP mode, which is the most important anyway and I am really amazed with it. Is it possible to save the 4 HW presets in a bank in Ignitron? If that feature was available, I could build my effects in the 4 HW presets by using the original app and later connect Ignitron APP mode to the amp and save the HW presets as a bank. I believe the mechanism to load the HW presets from the amp to Ignitron is already there, the mechanism to save presets in banks is already there... so I guess it is possible to implement that feature with some additional code to have a new button operation in Ignitron, correct? Thank you! |
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@MarcusVDTAVARES If you are not able to use the AMP mode, there is still a way to Manually change the presets in your banks. You can create/edit the .json files in the data folder and adjust the PresetList.txt file to arrange them in the banks. To get to the json file you can either tweak an existing one, or take a preset in Spark App and try to manually read the different settings. A reference on what technical the effect/amp names and the order of the parameters, please refer to the Readme. After you prepared your .json files and arranged them in the PresetList.txt file, you can upload the data as described in the src/Readme.md. Let me know how that works for you. It is more tedious, but should work if you don't have access to the AMP mode. |
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That will work for sure! Thank you! But I wanted to do it differently:
It seems easier, however the download_fs.py is not working properly. Btw, Is there a limit on how many presets can be stored? The delivered data folder comes with 96 json files and the PresetList.txt does not currently includes all of them. I wonder why... |
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Hello @stangreg and all, Now back to manual creation/modification of json files, I did some quick investigation yesterday. I could see from serial monitor that when Ignitron (APP mode) connects to the amp, the hardware presets are read by Ignitron and I initially assumed they are saved as json files into the flash memory. So, I tried another way which worked:
That worked perfectly, so now I have ways to have custom json files without having to create json file from scratch. In this process, I dicovered that the download_fs.py works sometimes. I don't know if during my trials there was a specific trigger to alternate between working or not working, but the fact is that, with some insistence, I could download the flash contents to a bin file and then decode that bin file into the json files. The HW preset files (HWPreset1.json, HWPreset2.json, HWPreset3.json, HWPreset4.json) are not there as I expected so I guess they are not saved in the flash as I thought (still pending to check the code to try to understand what is done). When it works: When it does not work: Here is how I got the HW preset configs from the startup messages: |
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@MarcusVDTAVARES great to hear that you have a working setup now. Regarding the download_fs.py, maybe you can experiment a bit with the configured download speed, for my board I have to set it to a rather low value to work properly. For the HW presets, I do actually save them to the file system for caching and it also works because when I restart afterwards, it reads them from the file system and not from Ignitron. When I download, it also does not download the HWPreset.json files for some reason. I might look into this at some later time. For now, good that you found a workaround for the AMP mode. It is really a pity that the new boards don't support Serial BT anymore. |
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Hello Stangreg, I was really interested in using a dedicated led for each
preset so I designed the holes in my box to have them and only later I
checked if I had enough GPIOs... The usable GPIOs were enough to turn on
that mode and I still have GPIO47 and GPIO48 remaining available. GPIO48 is
connected to the built-in RGB led so I put a breathing pattern to run on
that RGB and set it to run as a task on thread1.
The plan was to connect it to an acrylic tube and have that blinking in a
hole in the box... not sure if I will keep it as I don't know if it will
mess with anything in Ignitron...
*Thank you!*
…On Wed, Mar 19, 2025 at 6:31 AM stangreg ***@***.***> wrote:
@MarcusVDTAVARES <https://github.com/MarcusVDTAVARES> great news, on to
the next step!
I have noticed that your display shows "PRESET MODE", which means that you
are running a configuration where there are 4 additional pins required for
additional LEDs. As I assume you don't have too many pins available, you
might want to check that you have commented the line "// #define
DEDICATED_PRESET_LEDS" in the Config_Definitions.h (around line 140). This
way you only need 4 pins for the LEDs.
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@MarcusVDTAVARES does that mean that you got it working with your Spark? If so, congratulations. Thanks for your appreciation, it really feels good when others can successfully build it as I am using it almost daily and it really extends the functionality of the amps. |
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@stangreg and @MarcusVDTAVARES I use Ignitron every time I use my Spark Go AMP, to be able to easily remote control the presets really makes it so much easier to use. Much easier than the orginal android app. Easier to get the connection up and running and really stable in that regard. If you disconnect and reconnect Ignitron to/from power it just reconnects the BT seamlessly. Great! |
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To whoever that may come to this thread in future. In the PDF you find the BOM with all the items bought in AliExpress - around €31 (components, box, solder iron, etc, all included). Additional items bought from local store (not in the PDF) - around €15 or less:
I am still pending to mount the battery with the charger so I am currently using a small power bank inside the box. The small power bank is working fine, I could even keep it, but I will switch to a dedicated circuit that will allow me to expose the USB-C port that will allow me to charge or program the chip from the same single external port. Conclusions until now (if they may serve to anybody else in the future):
Another inconvenient for the average user building Ignitron with ESP32-S3 would be to maintain a custom fork updated with the adjustments for the ESP32-S3. This, if this user wants to take advantage of updates coming from the official repo.
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First of all, thank you for the amazing work you have put in this project!
Among all the modded foot switches, this was my first choice due to all possibilities that it opens!
This is my first project with ESP32, but having some previous experience with PIC and Arduino, I thought that it could be fun and fairly easy to build Ignitron, considering the good information available in this repo.
I have bought all the components, built a box, and then started playing with platformio and my ESP32 board.
The problem is I seem to choose the worst possible board to use in this project: ESP32-S3-N16R8.
I wasn't aware of how significant the changes could be between the board models already supported in the project as compared to my new and first board. I just looked for a fairly modern model with the same number of pins and a good price in ali express.
These are the most relevant, among the major challenges I have faced until now:
-Platformio did not have native support to that board: I found a json that seems to be correct for my board and used it. Also created and env section in platformio.ini.
-It has no Bluetooth serial (only BLE): I believe my phone can do BLE, so I disabled all the Bluetooth serial in the code, leaving only the BLE option.
-The pins in my board are obviously not matching: So I modified the pin definitions in the code to adjust.
I may have done it all wrong, that's ok. The fact is that the board do nothing after I flash the code to the chip.
I know the board is not faulty since I managed to run a code that does some RGB led blinking, shows text in the SH1106 display and sends text messages back to the PC via serial monitor.
But with Ignitron itself I am currently practically stuck!
I have spent so many time already in the boring part of troubleshooting the very basic things (ie. still not able to make Ignitron to show anything in the serial monitor), that I am already considering that it is better to buy another board which will nativelly work immediately and then I can go from there to play with the features to finally identify eventual opportunities to customize it to my needs or even to submit contributions to the project (dreaming a little bit, I admit).
So, my post is just to request some little help from you guys so you can eventually send me a link in ali express for a board that you are confident that will immediately run Ignitron without any hassle.
(of course I would also be happy if anyone generally more experienced with ESP32 would help me to put this board to work, but buying a new board will probably be more effective for now)
PS. After I get it to work, I can share my BOM and details about my specific box, with the links. I spent 25€ with the parts (including the plastic box) in ali express. I consider it was very easy to do the physical part. Of course it is not as cool as the 3D printed version, but it is probably the cheapest you can get...
Below is a picture (I will probably want to replace the switches later, but for a start I used these colored ones which are cheaper).
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