ESP32 IDF with Blynk without Arduino

Hardware and Blynk Libraries
1

Hello,

I’m using ESP32-IDF (Espressif SDK based on FreeRTOS) with Eclipse-IDE, because I’m used to work in C and don’t like the Arduino coding style. But now I want to use Blynk in my project still without Arduino. I’m not very familiarize with C++ and I don’t know which interface I have to implement by myself. I tried a little but always ending at arduino.h, which I don’t have in my project :wink:

Can anyone help me or give me some hints where I can find more information about the blynk class design and interfaces?

Thank you very much…
Bastian

2

Blynk is very portable, the same C++ source code can be used.
You’ll have to (mostly):

  • Remove Arduino-related stuff like headers and direct pin operations. Similar to what BLYNK_NO_BUILTIN flag does.
  • Implement the connectivity transport adapter. See example in src/Adapters/BlynkSerial.h
  • Implement main include header, like src/BlynkSimpleStream.h
  • Implement utility/debug functions: src/Blynk/BlynkDebug.h, src/utility/utility.cpp
1 Like
3

Hey Bastian,

I’m also interested in doing the same thing for the very same reasons :wink: I was wondering if you have been able to do it.

Thanks

4

Hey guys, I am also very interested in using the ESP-IDF directly without Arduino. Would it be possible for the Blynk team to create a ESP-IDF example? I think it would be super helpful to many users! There was this other post where someone wrote a lightweight native C library for Blynk that looks really easy to use, but I am slightly concerned that it is not supported by the Blynk team directly and hasn’t been updated in 5 years:

@vshymanskyy mentioned that he would be interested in doing an official port of the C++ library to the ESP-IDF and supporting it. Is that still a possibility? I would be a strong advocate and would really appreciate it!

5

Also - I would have to say that I prefer C code as well, not C++ for embedded applications. That said, if there is a functional example project that shows how to properly mix a c++ library like this with an existing application written in C then I’d be happy!

6

Hey guys, any update on this? Really curious if everyone on here is using Arduino. I can’t imagine that the products that use Blynk all use Arduino… right?

7

I think it’s fair to say that most people use either ESP8266 or ESP32 based hardware with C++

Pete.

8

Ok gotcha. So I guess I’m wondering why there are tons of examples of use with Arduino but not with ESP-IDF if that’s what most people are using? Why have everyone write their own “Adapter” header to link up the ESP functions with the Blynk library?

9

Hey guys, any advice out there for how to develop on ESP32 using ESP-IDF with Blynk? Has someone ported it and have an example project running? I would be highly appreciative! Also, there are like a million ways to develop with esp-idf it seems. There’s the raw command line method, visual studio code, visual studio with visual gdb, eclipse, etc. What do people use on real commercial projects?

10

Hello again - update - I have managed to get the Blynk Libraries working with ESP-IDF based projects using the Visual GDB IDE and toolchain. The key is to make new transport classes in place of the WIFI Client ones used for Arduino. I wrote a custom one using the ESP-IDF sockets api. Seemed to work pretty well!

That said, I am still thinking of using Arduino in my product since so much work is already done for that platform, such as over the air updates, wifi based provisioning, etc.

Also - for the C only devs out there - brushing up on your C++ is recommended. It’s not to hard to join cpp and c code in a project. Just make sure to use the following to enclose C code when blending with C++:
#ifdef __cplusplus
extern “C” {
#endif

and at end:
#ifdef __cplusplus
}
#endif

Best of luck to others out there!