ESP32 Serial Communication with Bela in Pure Data

SPORK_Sound_Kitchen · 27 Jan

Hello all!

I am new to the forum, so might not come off the clearest, but will happily clarify!

We have a setup for our sound performances where we have sensors connected to individual ESP32 boards, streaming to a mother (master) ESP32 board over wifi. Previously we had this mother ESP32 plugged into a laptop, sending serial data, which we then read and used in a PD patch.

We are now trying to implement a similar setup, but swapping the laptop with a Bela board running a PD patch. I understand the USB port, UART ports, I2C, and SPI could all in theory be options, but what would be the easiest to implement or has been successfully done? Does anyone have an example PD patch? I have read about needing to write changes for a custom render, but I don’t think I can manage that myself.

Thank you in advance!

giuliomoro · 27 Jan

there's support for transmitting and receiving UART from Pd, see https://github.com/BelaPlatform/Bela/tree/dev/examples/PureData/serial . This requires your board to be updated to the latest dev branch, following the instructions here: https://learn.bela.io/using-bela/bela-techniques/updating-bela/#updating-to-an-experimental-release

SPORK_Sound_Kitchen · 30 Jan

Hey,

Thank you so much and sorry for the late reply. Will reach out if any questions come up!