Bluefruit funky sound? Moderators: adafruit_support_bill, adafruit

[userpay]

So recently got in a Playground Bluefruit and a couple of Playground Expresses but have been having some issues with the Bluefruit and it's sound chip. When I first got it I ended up updating CircuitPython and the associated libraries to the latest via here as I was having issues getting the Makecode site working, later realizing that I needed a different site for the Bluefruit. Anyway the sound chip doesn't seem to be working consistently or correctly. When comparing against the same Makecode on the Expresses the Bluefruit either doesn't play any sounds at all or when I can get it to do so it... Best I can describe it is it plays a garbled version of the file in question and seems to run much louder (static) than the Express when nothing is playing. Am I doing something wrong or is the sound chip potentially defective?

I also cannot seem to see it in the phone app in bluetooth for connecting.

[neradoc]

Hi, I'm not sure what the level of support is on the MakeCode site for the CPB. I don't believe it's officially supported by Adafruit yet.
The CircuitPlayground Bluefruit does not have a DAC, so the buzzer uses PWM to output audio, which will not have the same quality as analog audio.
Nevertheless, it should be able to play wav files with Circuitpython for example (mono, 16 bits, 22kHz or less).
I tried a few audio things from the makecode site and they seemed to play ok, though not very loud.
Could you provide examples that give a bad audio output ?

I also cannot seem to see it in the phone app in bluetooth for connecting.

What app are you trying to connect with, to what ?
Are you trying to use Glider to connect to Circuitpython ? Bluefruit Connect to your application ?
Depending on what you do, you might need to reset the board's pairings by pressing reset then again when the status LED is blinking blue.

[userpay]

While waiting for someone to reply I opted to give loading the standalone firmware from here a go and it sort of seemed to have worked. In it's initial state I was able to connect it to the app though the app didn't seem to be able to pick up that it was a Playground Bluefruit properly (kept seeing it as a Uno?). I tried loading in one of my previous makercodes to it and it disappeared from the bluetooth visibility but the sounds played properly for the first test though after restarting it it goes back to having the same sound issues as before. Maybe the storage chip is what's faulty not the sound chip?

[userpay]

Hi, I'm not sure what the level of support is on the MakeCode site for the CPB. I don't believe it's officially supported by Adafruit yet.
The CircuitPlayground Bluefruit does not have a DAC, so the buzzer uses PWM to output audio, which will not have the same quality as analog audio.
Nevertheless, it should be able to play wav files with Circuitpython for example (mono, 16 bits, 22kHz or less).
I tried a few audio things from the makecode site and they seemed to play ok, though not very loud.
Could you provide examples that give a bad audio output ?

I also cannot seem to see it in the phone app in bluetooth for connecting.

What app are you trying to connect with, to what ?
Are you trying to use Glider to connect to Circuitpython ? Bluefruit Connect to your application ?
Depending on what you do, you might need to reset the board's pairings by pressing reset then again when the status LED is blinking blue.

Strange, either it didn't show your post when I checked this morning or we posted at similar time despite timestamp showing up differently for me.

I was under the impression the sound output on the Playground Bluefruit should be the same as the Express which is what I'm basing my comparison on. In the post I just made I was able to get the sound to play properly once after flashing a standalone UF2 to it though after restarting I encountered the same sound issues.

I was trying to get it to connect to Bluefruit Connect but as I said in my previous post it doesn't seem to be polling the correct info from the Bluefruit.