ESP8266/ESP32

The ESP32 and its derivatives such as the ESP32-S2 have a built-in sine/cosine waveform generator for the built-in 8-bit DAC.

Using it requires ESP-IDF v5.1+ (see the official example). Using it with Arduino is slightly harder, since the stable version of the arduino-esp32 framework at the time of writing this post is based on ESP-IDF v4.4 which does not provide the DAC cosine generator API.

Therefore, we have to explicitly specify the arduino-espressif32 version (git commit) in platformio.ini:

[env:esp32dev]
platform = espressif32
# Commit f9cddfde697b659b9e818ec514f1505d2bd4a8ae is branch esp-idf-v5.1-libs @2022-02-01
platform_packages = framework-arduinoespressif32 @ https://github.com/espressif/arduino-esp32.git#f9cddfde697b659b9e818ec514f1505d2bd4a8ae
board = esp32dev
framework = arduino

The example main source code is pretty simple:

#include <Arduino.h>
#include <driver/dac_cosine.h>

void setup() {
    dac_cosine_handle_t chan0_handle;
    dac_cosine_config_t cos0_cfg = {
        .chan_id = DAC_CHAN_1, // GPIO26
        .freq_hz = 1000,
        .clk_src = DAC_COSINE_CLK_SRC_DEFAULT,
        .atten = DAC_COSINE_ATTEN_DEFAULT,  
        .phase = DAC_COSINE_PHASE_0,  
        .offset = 0,
        //.flags.force_set_freq = false,
    };
    ESP_ERROR_CHECK(dac_cosine_new_channel(&cos0_cfg, &chan0_handle));
    ESP_ERROR_CHECK(dac_cosine_start(chan0_handle));
}

void loop() {
  // put your main code here, to run repeatedly:
  delay(1000);
}

If you want to see how the generated waveform looks on an oscilloscope, see How does the ESP32 DAC cosine generator waveform look on an Oscilloscope?

On the ESP32, you can use heap_caps_print_heap_info() to print information to the serial port about how much memory is free on the heap (plus other details such as the largest free block).

#include <esp_heap_caps.h>

void setup() {
}

void loop() {
  heap_caps_print_heap_info(MALLOC_CAP_8BIT);
}

Example output

Heap summary for capabilities 0x00000004:
  At 0x3ffb8000 len 6688 free 0 allocated 4404 min_free 0
    largest_free_block 0 alloc_blocks 8 free_blocks 0 total_blocks 8
  At 0x3ffb0000 len 25480 free 0 allocated 22204 min_free 0
    largest_free_block 0 alloc_blocks 70 free_blocks 0 total_blocks 70
  At 0x3ffae6e0 len 6192 free 8 allocated 3860 min_free 8
    largest_free_block 0 alloc_blocks 10 free_blocks 1 total_blocks 11
  At 0x3ffb6388 len 7288 free 0 allocated 4524 min_free 0
    largest_free_block 0 alloc_blocks 38 free_blocks 0 total_blocks 38
  At 0x3ffb9a20 len 16648 free 8 allocated 13964 min_free 0
    largest_free_block 0 alloc_blocks 32 free_blocks 1 total_blocks 33
  At 0x3ffcc5d0 len 80432 free 8 allocated 73140 min_free 8
    largest_free_block 0 alloc_blocks 320 free_blocks 1 total_blocks 321
  At 0x3ffe0440 len 15072 free 0 allocated 12260 min_free 0
    largest_free_block 0 alloc_blocks 41 free_blocks 0 total_blocks 41
  At 0x3ffe4350 len 113840 free 18440 allocated 90724 min_free 2560
    largest_free_block 7796 alloc_blocks 157 free_blocks 12 total_blocks 169
  Totals:
    free 18464 allocated 225080 min_free 2576 largest_free_block 7796