This is a follow on to this post: /2022/03/23/simple-programming-of-the-esp32-s3-devkitc-1-using-esp-idf/

These are a collection of notes more than anything else.

• I cleaned up the code a bit, then added a few more comments to make things a bit clearer to me for future development. When you write for an audience of one, you tend to forget to leave important bread crumbs for the future when the code isn’t as fresh as when you first wrote it. Overall it grew a few lines, but all in the name of clarity and possible future growth.
• I tried to use the Espressif Visual Studio Code plugin to develop with the ESP32-S3 board, but it wouldn’t see my initial Espressif supplied ESP-IDF installation.
• I tried to use PlatformIO in Visual Studio Code, but it failed to connect with my existing ESP-IDF installation. I will admit PlatformIO looks quite powerful, and I’ve seen a few YouTube videos showing how to use it when writing code for older ESP32 chips and boards. But it won’t work with ESP-IDF 4.4 installed on my computer.

What I now have is a simpler development environment. I use Visual Studio to open and manage my ESP32-S3 projects. There’s no auto-complete, no C++ language checking, just syntax code highlighting. I have a shell opened in a vertical window on the right where I run the idf.py tool with necessary command line arguments, and watch the results. You can see the screen cap of a run at the top of the post. Primitive? Perhaps. But effective enough for my modest needs. I will probably give PlatformIO another run in the very near future.

As for the code, it’s a bit cleaner and I changed a few camel-case names to snake-case. The only camel-case names left are all from FreeRTOS, which makes spotting them a lot easier. Snake-case is the coding standard used in ESP-IDF, so I’ll be using that in my own code examples as well.

#include <stdio.h>#include "freertos/FreeRTOS.h"#include "freertos/task.h"#include "driver/gpio.h"#include "esp_log.h"#include "led_strip.h"#include "sdkconfig.h"// Task 1.//static void task_blink_neo_pixel(void * pvParameters) {static led_strip_t *pStrip_a;pStrip_a = led_strip_init(CONFIG_BLINK_LED_RMT_CHANNEL, CONFIG_BLINK_GPIO, 1);pStrip_a->clear(pStrip_a, 50);static int led_colors[][4] = {{0, 32, 0, 0},  // red{0, 0, 32, 0},  // green{0, 0, 0, 32},  // blue{0, 32, 0, 16}, // violet{0, 0, 32, 32}  // cyan};static uint NUM_COLORS = sizeof(led_colors)/sizeof(led_colors[0]);// Stay in an endless loop. Don't return from this task.//while(true) {for( int color_select = 0; color_select < NUM_COLORS; ++color_select ) {// Set NeoPixel LED to a color using RGB from 0 (0%) to 255 (100%)// for each color.//pStrip_a->set_pixel(pStrip_a, led_colors[color_select][0],  led_colors[color_select][1],  led_colors[color_select][2],  led_colors[color_select][3]);// Refresh the strip to send data//pStrip_a->refresh(pStrip_a, 100);vTaskDelay(500 / portTICK_PERIOD_MS);// Set NeoPixel LED dark by clearing all its pixels.pStrip_a->clear(pStrip_a, 50);vTaskDelay(500 / portTICK_PERIOD_MS);}}}// Task 2.//static void task_blink_led(void * pvParameters) {#define BLINK_GPIO46_LED 46gpio_reset_pin(BLINK_GPIO46_LED);// Set the GPIO as a push/pull outputgpio_set_direction(BLINK_GPIO46_LED, GPIO_MODE_OUTPUT);// Stay in an endless loop. Don't return from this task.//while (true) {gpio_set_level(BLINK_GPIO46_LED, true);   // LED onvTaskDelay(100 / portTICK_PERIOD_MS);gpio_set_level(BLINK_GPIO46_LED, false);  // LED offvTaskDelay(100 / portTICK_PERIOD_MS);gpio_set_level(BLINK_GPIO46_LED, true);   // LED onvTaskDelay(100 / portTICK_PERIOD_MS);gpio_set_level(BLINK_GPIO46_LED, false);  // LED offvTaskDelay(2700 / portTICK_PERIOD_MS);}}void app_main(void) {static const char *TAG = "DUAL_BLINK";int core = xPortGetCoreID();ESP_LOGI(TAG, "app_main running on core %i", core);ESP_LOGI(TAG, "CONFIG_BLINK_GPIO %i", CONFIG_BLINK_GPIO);// Create task 1.//TaskHandle_t xHandle1 = NULL;static uint8_t ucParameterToPass1 = 1;xTaskCreate(task_blink_neo_pixel,"BlinkNeoPixel",// human readable task name.2048,   // stack size in bytes.&ucParameterToPass1,tskIDLE_PRIORITY,&xHandle1);configASSERT(xHandle1);// Create task 2.//TaskHandle_t xHandle2 = NULL;static uint8_t ucParameterToPass2 = 1;xTaskCreate(task_blink_led,"BlinkLED", // human-readable task name.2048,   // stack size in bytes.&ucParameterToPass2,tskIDLE_PRIORITY,&xHandle2);configASSERT(xHandle2);// Stay in an endless loop. Don't return from this task.//while (true) {vTaskDelay(1000 / portTICK_PERIOD_MS);}}