LED not working on LilyGo T-Dongle S3 (esp32-s3)

[rbeede]

I've tried the current micropython firmware (1.27.0 for ESP32-S3 Espressif ESP32-S3) and the firmware from Xinyuan-LilyGO without any luck. I even tried probing every LED port.

import machine
import neopixel
import time

for pin_number in range(1, 64):
  print(pin_number)
  try:
    pin = machine.Pin(pin_number, machine.Pin.OUT)
    np = neopixel.NeoPixel(pin, 1)  
    np[0] = (255, 255, 255)
    np.write()
    time.sleep(1)
  except Exception:
    pass

Anyone have success with this hardware and micropython to control LED?

[mattytrentini]

I don't have a T-Dongle S3 handy but the LilyGo docs list the LED as an APA102, a form of programmable RGB LED (different to Neopixels). You may know APA102s by their other name, Dotstars.

MicroPython has support for APA102's so the code to control it should look something like:

import machine, apa102
rgb = apa102.APA102(machine.Pin(39), machine.Pin(40), 1)
rgb[0] = (255, 0, 0, 31) # set to red, full brightness
rgb.write()

[rbeede]

I tried that, but I get this error:

ImportError: no module named 'apa102'

I tried the lilygo firmware.bin and the latest 1.27.0 micropython with the same result.

[rbeede]

No luck here either: https://docs.micropython.org/en/v1.26.0/esp8266/quickref.html#apa102-driver

import esp
esp.apa102_write(clock_pin, data_pin, rgbi_buf)

AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'apa102_write'

[rbeede]

apa102 may not be available in any release firmwares: Xinyuan-LilyGO/T-Dongle-S3#3

[rbeede]

Using the generic_dotstar.py from the above issue I was able to activate the LED.