Huzzah + Music Maker, What pins can I really use?

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gardnerp
 
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Huzzah + Music Maker, What pins can I really use?

Post by gardnerp »

Hi All,

I'm having trouble with my Huzzah and Music Maker, but I think it's because I don't adequately understand which pins I am supposed to use and which pins I cannot use, because they are already in use. With the feather_player sketch, I think it works like this:

pin 0, pin 2, pin 15, and pin 16 are already in use by the music maker. I have tried to use other pins as digital inputs, but I have gotten results which don't make sense to me. Should I be able to use pins 1, 3, 4, 5, 12, 13, 14, and 17 (analog) as inputs when using the Feather and Music Maker?

My suspicion is that some of the other pins are already in use in other ways, 4 and 5 seem to be set aside for SPI. Pin 1 is the reset pin and Pin 3 is CHPD, which also seems to be a reset pin. Does that all sound that correct? Should I not try to use those? Are there others I should avoid or should I be able to use pins 1, 3, 4, 5, 12, 13, 14 as digital inputs?

Thanks,
Peter

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gardnerp
 
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Re: Huzzah + Music Maker, What pins can I really use?

Post by gardnerp »

Totally disappointed that no one from Adafruit has answered this post. I really expected more, Adafruit. What's the point of buying unsupported products?!? Had to toss the huzzah ESP whatever back in the parts bin and go with a different version with more pins. Not sure I'm going to keep supporting this company that doesn't support me.

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adafruit_support_mike
 
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Re: Huzzah + Music Maker, What pins can I really use?

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

I apologize for us missing your original post.

The pinout diagram for the Feather HUZZAH is probably the best way to keep track of the pins:

https://cdn-learn.adafruit.com/assets/a ... 1495562428

The flags that show the physical pin numbers show the cross-wiring from the SPI pins to GPIO 12, 13, and 14 on the other side of the board.

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gardnerp
 
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Re: Huzzah + Music Maker, What pins can I really use?

Post by gardnerp »

I've seen the pinout, but it doesn't really help, as I am confused about what it really means when it says that some of the pins are SPI and also gpio. I am not using SPI, can I use those pins as GPIO? I've also since noticed that the 1053 board has methods to set modes for pins. I guess I should be using those methods to declare pins as inputs or outputs, right? Do I use those methods in addition to the arduino pinmode method? Or should I use one or the other? Could write example code to set up all the available pins as inputs? So as to maximise the number or pins I can use in this situation?

Thanks,
peter

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adafruit_support_mike
 
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Re: Huzzah + Music Maker, What pins can I really use?

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

gardnerp wrote:I am not using SPI, can I use those pins as GPIO?
Yes.

Pins and footprint area are precious commodities in ICs, so almost all microcontrollers have more than one IO circuit that can be connected to each physical pin coming out of the package. People using the chip can select the IO circuit they want, tell the chip to connect that to the pin, and ignore anything else that pin might be able to do.

For the ESP8266, the pins broken out as GPIO 12, 13, and 14 can do basic input and output, but can also be connected to the SPI circuit. If you don't want to use SPI, you can ignore that and just use them as GPIO.
gardnerp wrote:I've also since noticed that the 1053 board has methods to set modes for pins. I guess I should be using those methods to declare pins as inputs or outputs, right? Do I use those methods in addition to the arduino pinmode method?
Yep.. the pinMode() function tells the microcontroller what to connect to the pin.

If you want to use the ESP8266's IO pins for general digital signals, write the pinMode() functions the same way you would for an Arduino.

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