HUZZAH32 (ESP32 Feather) with NeoPixel Featherwing not worki

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Lukasbruh
 
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HUZZAH32 (ESP32 Feather) with NeoPixel Featherwing not worki

Post by Lukasbruh »

Hello. I am very very new to tinkering with electronics and LEDs. My project requires me to attach a NeoPixel FeatherWing to a HUZZAH32 (ESP32 Feather) board. I soldered all the pins onto the NeoPixel Featherwing. I then went online and began researching and I installed the Arduino IDE. I inserted "https://dl.espressif.com/dl/package_esp32_index.json" in preferences, found the Adafruit boards menu.

I no longer have that board menu because I changed something (honestly cannot remember what). WHen I plug in the HUZZAH32 then yellow light on the board begins flashing repeatedly. I've tried hitting the RESET button a couple times to get it to go into the bootloader but nothing appears in Windows File Explorer.

It seems like I can communicate to it through the Arduino IDE. The most I've gotten the NeoPixel FeatherWing to show is the very first pixel and I have no idea how I did it.

Sorry for the long post but I am extremely lost at this point. I have tried multiple URLs in the "preferences" menu. I have tried switching the board type in the IDE. I just ordered a new Micro USB cable in case for some reason it's not a data cable and just a power only cable. It shouldn't be because I have used it for another project with another WLED project and it seemed to work just fine.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. If it's possible to get a step-by-step setup guide on this that would be great as well. But anything helps. Thank you!

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mikeysklar
 
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Re: HUZZAH32 (ESP32 Feather) with NeoPixel Featherwing not w

Post by mikeysklar »

The yellow LED flashing is likely the charging circuit.

https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-huz ... aq-2431727
Why does the yellow CHARGE LED blink while USB powered?

The charging circuit will flash when there is no LiPoly battery plugged in. It's harmless and doesn't mean anything. When a LiPoly battery is connect it will stabilize the charger and will stop flashing
Testing with a known good data cable will help remove any doubt about the USB connection.

There is a driver requirement for the Huzzah32. Did you install the CP2104 drivers?

https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-huz ... rduino-ide

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Lukasbruh
 
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Re: HUZZAH32 (ESP32 Feather) with NeoPixel Featherwing not w

Post by Lukasbruh »

mikeysklar wrote:The yellow LED flashing is likely the charging circuit.

https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-huz ... aq-2431727
Why does the yellow CHARGE LED blink while USB powered?

The charging circuit will flash when there is no LiPoly battery plugged in. It's harmless and doesn't mean anything. When a LiPoly battery is connect it will stabilize the charger and will stop flashing
Testing with a known good data cable will help remove any doubt about the USB connection.

There is a driver requirement for the Huzzah32. Did you install the CP2104 drivers?

https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-huz ... rduino-ide
Hello mikeysklar. Thank you for your help! The yellow LED was interesting to me mainly because it stops flashing when I plug in the NeoPixel FeatherWing. I have installed those drivers for a previous project, but I went ahead and installed them again and tested and still got nothing. I also purchased a new USB cable and plugged in a circuit python compatible device and was able to pull up its file structure (it's the HalloWing skull with the eyeball on a screen). Anyway, I have confirmed that the cable I'm using now can transfer data.

I'm kind of stuck on next steps. Is there anything else I could be missing? I downloaded some sample code from a YouTube video I found and the code was working in the Youtube video, but not on my board.

Here's the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gLSVN3f97o

Here's the GitHub link:
https://github.com/cwalk/AdaBox001

It looks like he may be using a different board but everything else looks identical to the HUZZAH32 board, so I'm not sure what I'm missing.

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mikeysklar
 
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Re: HUZZAH32 (ESP32 Feather) with NeoPixel Featherwing not w

Post by mikeysklar »

I have seen reports of people using an ESP32 FeatherWing + Huzzah32 using Makuna's NeoPixelBus library.

https://github.com/Makuna/NeoPixelBus

Do you want to give this a try?

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Lukasbruh
 
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Re: HUZZAH32 (ESP32 Feather) with NeoPixel Featherwing not w

Post by Lukasbruh »

Sorry for the delayed response and thank you for the continued help! I downloaded the library as well as copied and pasted some code from the github link you posted. I uploaded the code via the Arduino IDE to the board. I am now getting a single light to come on on the FeatherWing. Before it was white (see image), but when I turned it off and back on it turned green. Same pixel and same (perceived) brightness.

Hopefully I included the image properly in this post. If not let me know!
Attachments
NeoPixelFeatherWingIssue.jpg
NeoPixelFeatherWingIssue.jpg (754.44 KiB) Viewed 127 times

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Re: HUZZAH32 (ESP32 Feather) with NeoPixel Featherwing not w

Post by mikeysklar »

Soldering looks good on the Neopixel FeatherWing soldering looks good.

Can you post a photo of the soldering on the headers for the Huzzah32 so we can rule that out?

Which script did you end up running there are several example in the NeoPixelBus repo?

You probably saw this already, but the ESP32 controllers are not recommended with this NeoPixel FeatherWing.
It works with but is not recommended for ESP32 Feather at this time due to a NeoPixel timing issue that makes it hard to control more than 30 pixels
https://www.adafruit.com/product/2945

https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_Ne ... issues/139

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Lukasbruh
 
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Re: HUZZAH32 (ESP32 Feather) with NeoPixel Featherwing not w

Post by Lukasbruh »

Well that sounds like my issue then. I did not see that the Huzzah32 was not recommended with this board. Maybe I thought the Huzzah32 was different than the ESP32 boards?
I was under the impression they were using the huzzah32 board for this project in the demo video they posted for the NeoPixel FeatherWing. If this is not a good board to use, what board is recommended?

Script Used:
https://github.com/Makuna/NeoPixelBus/b ... arTest.ino

Soldering on the Huzzah32 board was done from Adafruit. I purchased it with the extended headers pre-installed and to me the soldering looks ok.

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mikeysklar
 
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Re: HUZZAH32 (ESP32 Feather) with NeoPixel Featherwing not w

Post by mikeysklar »

The Huzzah32 is effected as it is based on an ESP32 board.

If you do not need Wifi or Bluetooth then I'd use a Feather M4 Express board which is well supported with high performance and plenty of storage.

https://www.adafruit.com/product/3857

Pretty much any other Feather will work, but I would try and stick with the most establish Feathers such as the M0, M4 and nRF52. The ESP8266 (old Huzzah) will work if you need WiFi.

The example code you linked to looks like DotStar code and is using software bitbang.

Checkout the NeoPixel test code from that library and note the line to uncomment for NeoPixel RGB with ESP processor usage.

https://github.com/Makuna/NeoPixelBus/b ... st.ino#L47

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Lukasbruh
 
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Re: HUZZAH32 (ESP32 Feather) with NeoPixel Featherwing not w

Post by Lukasbruh »

I went ahead and ordered the Feather M4 Express and I'll be soldering the headers on when it gets here. I'll open a new thread if I'm still having trouble. If not I'll come back here and let you know what fixes it. Fingers crossed it works! Thank you very much for your help. I'm new to all this so this has been a great help!

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mikeysklar
 
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Re: HUZZAH32 (ESP32 Feather) with NeoPixel Featherwing not w

Post by mikeysklar »

Glad you picked up the Feather M4. Do let us know if you experience any issues.

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Re: HUZZAH32 (ESP32 Feather) with NeoPixel Featherwing not w

Post by Lukasbruh »

For anybody who may stumble upon this thread I was able to solve the issue by purchasing the correct board. Who would have thought? Thank you for your help @mikeysklar!

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