Different platforms

[Wallygatorr]

Hi Greg,

First of all huge thanks and great appreciation for your outstanding work.

I have Waveshare 4.3" board which works perfect, I want to experiment with connection of wired MIDI (I have UART to 485 module).
I have tried to upload the code to Waveshare ESP32-S3 7" Touch, which works except USB communication. It is slightly different than 4.3" I use UART (USB socket) to power supply 5VDC and USB port for communication with TonexOne. TO unit gets the power from 7".

I would like to ask for adding few other devices:

M5STACK Atom S3 Lite,
M5STACK Core3SE,
M5STACK CoreS3.

and if possible support for M5STACK MIDI Unit (SAM2965) as wired MIDI interface.

I believe that for Atom S3 Lite, it is only configuration change, as the rest of the code should be identical to Atom S3R.
The other 2 devices probably work the same way.

I am cnot much into microcontrollers programming (in the past I was programming some PLC's and some small programming on early PC's), but I tried to analyse the code as per adding new platform procedure and I think that Atom S3 Lite would be easy to add; still, I have no idea what tools to use to debug, compile and upload program.

Any help appreciated.

Thanks and best regards

Aleks

[Builty]

Hi Aleks.
Thanks for the kind words.
It is possible to get USB working on the 7". It needs a resistor removed, R117. This resistor disables USB OTG so the Can bus can work.
With this resistor removed, it should work normally, however you still might have some issues with Midi and footswitches, as this is not an officially supported platform.

I looked at the new suggestions. The Atom S3 lite is not suitable, as it doesn't have the PSRAM available which is needed. There are a lot of different S3 versions, and this one is the smallest/cheapest which cut out the PSRAM support.

The Core S3 and S3E look to be suitable, but they are actually a fair bit more complicated than the Waveshare boards and the Atom S3R. Particularly in the power management area. They would need some new drivers to be written.
The screen resolution is also different to the others, which means it would need a modified user interface design.
I have plans in place for the next 2 versions. Once I get that completed I can look more at supporting these.

With the Midi Unit, I don't quite understand what it would do here. It can make synthesizer sounds, or pass Midi through it, but I'm not sure how it would help the Tonex controller.

[Wallygatorr]

Hi Greg,

Thanks for prompt reply.

I will try with 7" and let you know the results.

In regards of the Midi Unit, it is about to read incoming wired MIDI and (if possible) act as merge for wired and BLE MIDI messages to daisy chain other devices. That could be useful functionality. As it is UART device, it can be used for all hardware platforms.

I'll be happy to do some testing and share results.

Best regards

Aleks

[Wallygatorr]

Hi Greg,

I have removed R117 but 7" still does not communicate. Digging in the diagram and description I found information:

EXIO5 (pin 2) on U10 (CH422G) is :
EXIO5 | USB_SEL | Pull down to USB mode, otherwise CAN mode

Pin 2 is connected to R115 100R. Is that a pull-up resistor? Then it should be removed to pull down or make it floating.

Please advise, so I will move on with experiments.

Thanks and regards

Aleks

[Builty]

My 7" works, OK, some pics below.
Make sure you get the right USB port. The one lablled UART1 as power, and the other for the Tonex.
The removed resistor shown in bottom photo.

Ah oops, sorry you are right. Its R115 that needs to go, not R117. Removing the resistor in series lets R117 pull the pin to the right state.

[Wallygatorr]

So I will solder the R117 back and remove R115 and let know results.
The USB port is proper, once Tonex is connected to UART/USB it does not get power.

Cheers,

Aleks

[Wallygatorr]

Ok, R117 back, R115 removed and unit is working with TonexOne.

When I will have more time I will test wired MIDI.

[Builty]

Great, but keep in mind the 7" is not an offcially supported platform. I haven't tested Wired Midi on it. The build for the 4.3" uses the RS485 port via another board. For the 7" there is an ADC input which could do Midi instead without needing the extra board.

I will think about this one. I could just add it as an official platform.