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PCA9685

Component/Hub

Section titled “Component/Hub”

The PCA9685 component represents a PCA9685 12-bit PWM driver (datasheet, adafruit) in ESPHome. It uses I²C Bus for communication.

To use the channels of this components, you first need to setup the global pca9685 hub and give it an id, and then define the individual output channels.

# Example configuration entry
pca9685:
  - id: pca9685_hub1
    frequency: 500


# Individual outputs
output:
  - platform: pca9685
    pca9685_id: 'pca9685_hub1'
    channel: 0
# Example configuration entry with external clock enable and clock source from ESP32
pca9685:
  - id: pca9685_hub1
    external_clock_input: true


# Individual outputs
output:
    # generate PWM from ESP32 ledc
  - platform: ledc
    pin: GPIOXX
    id: extclk
    min_power: 1
    frequency: 40MHz


  - platform: pca9685
    pca9685_id: 'pca9685_hub1'
    channel: 0
# Example configuration entry with disabled phase_balancer
pca9685:
  - id: pca9685_hub1
    phase_balancer: none


# Individual outputs
output:
  - platform: pca9685
    pca9685_id: 'pca9685_hub1'
    channel: 0
  - platform: pca9685
    pca9685_id: 'pca9685_hub1'
    channel: 1

Configuration variables

Section titled “Configuration variables”

  • frequency (Optional, frequency): The frequency to let the component drive all PWM outputs at. Must be in range from 23.84Hz to 1525.88Hz. Defaults to 1kHz.

  • external_clock_input (Optional, bool): Enable external clock input. PRE_SCALE register will by set to 3. Default to false.

  • address (Optional, int): The I²C address of the driver. Defaults to 0x40.

  • id (Optional, ID): The id to use for this pca9685 component. Use this if you have multiple PCA9685s connected at the same time

  • phase_balancer (Optional, string): The phase balancer algorithm to use. See Phase Balancer below.

Phase Balancer

Section titled “Phase Balancer”

The PCA9685 allows setting different phase angles on each output. The following algorithms can be used to set the phase angle of each output:

  • linear (default): The phase angle is set by distributing all defined outputs equally among 360°. So with 3 outputs the first would have 0°, the second 120° and the last 240°. This algorithm can cause flickering when animating the light, because the PCA9685 chip will need an additional frame where no PWM is generated if the start angle is higher than the stop angle.
  • none: The phase angle is always 0°. This is the safer option if you control LED lights.

PCA9685 Output

Section titled “PCA9685 Output”

The PCA9685 output component exposes a PCA9685 PWM channel of a global PCA9685 hub as a float output.

PCA9685 16-Channel PWM Driver. 
# Example configuration entry
pca9685:
  - frequency: 500


# Individual outputs
output:
  - platform: pca9685
    id: 'pca9685_output1'
    channel: 0

Configuration variables

Section titled “Configuration variables”

  • id (Required, ID): The id to use for this output component.

  • channel (Required, int): Choose the channel of the PCA9685 of this output component. Must be in range from 0 to 15.

  • pca9685_id (Optional, ID): Manually specify the ID of the PCA9685 hub. Use this if you have multiple PCA9685s you want to use at the same time.

  • All other options from Output.

Examples

Section titled “Examples”

This output can be used for different PWM functions. E.g. output for light, fan etc.

pca9685:
  frequency: 500


output:
  - platform: pca9685
    channel: 0
    id: pwm01


light:
  - platform: monochromatic
    name: 'main light'
    output: pwm01

See Also

Section titled “See Also”