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[RF] Fix CC1101 on Arduino core 3.x: bump SmartRC to V3.0.2 + init before probe - #2353

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fix/2348-cc1101-core3
Aug 15, 2026
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Description:

On the platform we ship (pioarduino 55.03.39 / arduino-esp32 3.3.9) the pinned SmartRC-CC1101-Driver-Lib v2.5.7 does not work with the CC1101 at all. Core 3.x's peripheral manager owns SCK/MISO/MOSI once SPI.begin() has run, so the driver's digitalWrite() calls on those pins become silent no-ops, and it starts and stops the SPI bus around every single register access (LSatan/SmartRC-CC1101-Driver-Lib#176).

Bench result on an ESP32 DevKit + CC1101 running esp32dev-pilight-cc1101: setup hangs in the driver's unbounded while(digitalRead(MISO_PIN)); before any C1101 log line is emitted, and TG1WDT reboots the board in a loop. The same build on espressif32@6.8.1 (core 2.0.17) initialises normally, so this is the core, not the wiring. Every ZradioCC1101 ESP32 environment is affected: Pilight, RF, RF2 and Somfy. The RTL_433 CC1101 path goes through RadioLib and is unaffected.

V3.0.x re-engineered the SPI core for ESP32: gpio_get_level() with a timeout instead of the unbounded digitalRead() wait, SPI.begin() once instead of per transaction, and no digitalWrite() on peripheral-owned pins. It also moved SPI.begin() out of getCC1101() and into Init(), so the connection probe has to run after Init() rather than before it — reported in #2348.

Both changes are needed together: the reorder alone does not help on core 3.x, and V3 cannot work without it.

Verified on the bench, core 3.3.9, esp32dev-pilight-cc1101:
N: C1101 SPI connection OK on attempt 1
N: C1101 tuned RX to 433.92 MHz
plus a live round trip — an arctech_switch frame published to MQTTtoPilight was transmitted and decoded back by the board's own receiver on PilighttoMQTT.

Checklist:

  • The pull request is done against the latest development branch
  • Only one feature/fix was added per PR and the code change compiles without warnings
  • I accept the DCO.

…fore probe

On the platform we ship (pioarduino 55.03.39 / arduino-esp32 3.3.9) the pinned
SmartRC-CC1101-Driver-Lib v2.5.7 does not work with the CC1101 at all. Core 3.x's
peripheral manager owns SCK/MISO/MOSI once SPI.begin() has run, so the driver's
digitalWrite() calls on those pins become silent no-ops, and it starts and stops
the SPI bus around every single register access (LSatan/SmartRC-CC1101-Driver-Lib#176).

Bench result on an ESP32 DevKit + CC1101 running esp32dev-pilight-cc1101: setup
hangs in the driver's unbounded `while(digitalRead(MISO_PIN));` before any C1101
log line is emitted, and TG1WDT reboots the board in a loop. The same build on
espressif32@6.8.1 (core 2.0.17) initialises normally, so this is the core, not
the wiring. Every ZradioCC1101 ESP32 environment is affected: Pilight, RF, RF2
and Somfy. The RTL_433 CC1101 path goes through RadioLib and is unaffected.

V3.0.x re-engineered the SPI core for ESP32: gpio_get_level() with a timeout
instead of the unbounded digitalRead() wait, SPI.begin() once instead of per
transaction, and no digitalWrite() on peripheral-owned pins. It also moved
SPI.begin() out of getCC1101() and into Init(), so the connection probe has to
run after Init() rather than before it — reported in #2348.

Both changes are needed together: the reorder alone does not help on core 3.x,
and V3 cannot work without it.

Verified on the bench, core 3.3.9, esp32dev-pilight-cc1101:
  N: C1101 SPI connection OK on attempt 1
  N: C1101 tuned RX to 433.92 MHz
plus a live round trip — an arctech_switch frame published to MQTTtoPilight was
transmitted and decoded back by the board's own receiver on PilighttoMQTT.

Note for review: this bumps the pin for the ESP8266 CC1101 environments too.
They are not affected by the core 3.x breakage and V3 is untested there, so the
pin may be worth splitting per environment before this lands.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
@1technophile
1technophile merged commit 5fdadda into development Aug 15, 2026
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1technophile deleted the fix/2348-cc1101-core3 branch August 15, 2026 19:10
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