multiple `pinmode` calls to the same Pin disable the pin completely

[vladtepesch]

Board

ESP Wroom 32 38 Pin Dev Board (ESP Node MCU)

Device Description

ESP Wroom 32 - 38 Pin Dev Board (ESP Node MCU)
Nothing special

Hardware Configuration

only RGB LED to pins 5,4,0

Version

v3.2.0

IDE Name

VS Code PlatformIO

Operating System

Win 11

Flash frequency

OTA

PSRAM enabled

yes

Upload speed

does not matter

Description

when calling pinMode a second time after a call of analogWrite the pin seems not to work anymore. Any further analogWrite do not seem to do anything.

It seems that this is a change to previous versions, because the same code worked a couple of years ago

platformio uses get the following packages:

PLATFORM: Espressif 32 (5.3.0) > uPesy ESP32 Wroom DevKit
HARDWARE: ESP32 240MHz, 320KB RAM, 4MB Flash
DEBUG: Current (cmsis-dap) External (cmsis-dap, esp-bridge, esp-prog, iot-bus-jtag, jlink, minimodule, olimex-arm-usb-ocd, olimex-arm-usb-ocd-h, olimex-arm-usb-tiny-h, olimex-jtag-tiny, tumpa)
PACKAGES:
 - framework-arduinoespressif32 @ 3.20006.221224 (2.0.6)
 - tool-esptoolpy @ 1.40400.0 (4.4.0)
 - toolchain-xtensa-esp32 @ 8.4.0+2021r2-patch5

Sketch

#define LED_R 5

void setup(){
  pinMode(LED_R, OUTPUT);
  analogWrite(LED_R, 100); // if this line is removed - it works
  pinMode(LED_R, OUTPUT);
}
void loop(){
  static int val = 0;
  delay(2000);
  analogWrite(LED_R, val);
  val += 20; 
  if(val > 200) {
    val = 0;
  }
}

Debug Message

no thing to post

Other Steps to Reproduce

No response

I have checked existing issues, online documentation and the Troubleshooting Guide

• I confirm I have checked existing issues, online documentation and Troubleshooting guide.

[lbernstone]

That looks a lot more like v2.0.6 than v3.2. Try with pioarduino as your platform. If you are running v3.x, and set debugging to verbose, you should get clear information about the pin transitions. If you still have the problem with v3, then post that verbose log for us.

[me-no-dev]

pinMode sets the pin as GPIO, analogWrite sets it as LEDC. When you call pinMode again after analogWrite, you switch the pin from LEDC to GPIO and that turns the PWM off. This is not a bug, you are just switching the mode of the pin from one peripheral to another. This might work fine on AVR Arduino, but that is a very different architecture and does not translate to ESP32

[vladtepesch]

pinMode sets the pin as GPIO, analogWrite sets it as LEDC. When you call pinMode again after analogWrite, you switch the pin from LEDC to GPIO and that turns the PWM off. This is not a bug, you are just switching the mode of the pin from one peripheral to another. This might work fine on AVR Arduino, but that is a very different architecture and does not translate to ESP32

@me-no-dev thank you for that explanation. this makes some sense.
But Iam still a bit confused. The code was original written to an esp8266 and it worked. I later also adapted it to the esp32 node mcu and I think it ran in past. I now pulled the old code and build it with a new vscode/platformIO installation.

This is not a bug, you are just switching the mode of the pin from one peripheral to another

but shouldn't then the mode be switched back on the next analogWrite?

[vladtepesch]

That looks a lot more like v2.0.6 than v3.2.

I was confused by the 3.20006.221224, but also wonder why platformio uses such an old version.

Try with pioarduino as your platform.

I will try this tomorrow

[me-no-dev]

ESP8266 does not have a PWM peripheral, like ESP32, so it basically uses a timer to toggle the GPIO pin, therefore the pin is not switched from one peripheral to another. In reality, you do not need to call pinMode at all if you will be using the pin with analogWrite. Calling only analogWrite is enough