fal.h is missing FAL header include issues

[Mekanikalistik]

Hey folks! I'm banging my head against the wall trying to get FlashDB working with ESP32-S3 in PlatformIO VSCODE. Been at this for days and keep hitting include errors. Any help would be awesome!

My setup:

• ESP32-S3 board: Heltec WiFi LoRa 32 V3
• Using PlatformIO with VSCode
• ESP-IDF framework (5.5.0)
• FlashDB 2024.12.30 from PlatformIO registry
• Windows 11

What I'm building:
A touch sensor logger that:

• Uses the ESP32's built-in capacitive touch sensors (GPIO 4-10)
• Logs touch events to FlashDB TSDB
• Serves up a web interface over WiFi so I can see the data
• Eventually wanna add Unity testing directly on the hardware
• And USB debugging with breakpoints and stuff

The problem:
Build fails with:

fatal error: fal.h: No such file or directory

This happens when I include flashdb.h in main.c, which tries to pull in fal.h.

Stuff I've tried:

1. Just adding FlashDB to lib_deps in platformio.ini - seemed too easy, didn't work
2. Making it an ESP-IDF component by creating components/FlashDB/ with CMakeLists.txt
3. Adding every include path I could think of to platformio.ini
4. Created CMakeLists.txt in the FlashDB lib directory to register it as a component
5. Set up custom partition table with flashdb partition

Current structure:

flashDB_example/
├── platformio.ini  
├── partitions.csv
├── src/
│   ├── main.c
│   ├── fal_cfg.h
│   └── fdb_cfg.h
└── .pio/libdeps/heltec_wifi_lora_32_V3/FlashDB/
    ├── CMakeLists.txt (I made this)
    ├── inc/ (flashdb.h etc)
    ├── port/fal/ (fal headers and sources)
    └── src/ (fdb_*.c files)

Questions:

• What's the proper way to integrate FlashDB with ESP32-S3 in PlatformIO?
• PlatformIO library or ESP-IDF component approach?
• How do I get the FAL headers to be found?
• Got any working examples for ESP32-S3 + FlashDB + PlatformIO?
• For the Unity testing and USB debugging I wanna do later, any gotchas?

My current config:
platformio.ini:

[env:heltec_wifi_lora_32_V3]
platform = espressif32
board = heltec_wifi_lora_32_V3
framework = espidf
lib_deps = kuba2k2/FlashDB@^2024.12.30
build_flags = 
    -I .pio/libdeps/heltec_wifi_lora_32_V3/FlashDB/port/fal/inc
    -I .pio/libdeps/heltec_wifi_lora_32_V3/FlashDB/inc
board_build.partitions = partitions.csv
monitor_speed = 115200

CMakeLists.txt I added to FlashDB lib:

idf_component_register(
    SRCS
        "src/fdb.c"
        "src/fdb_kvdb.c" 
        "src/fdb_tsdb.c"
        "src/fdb_utils.c"
        "src/fdb_file.c"
        "port/fal/src/fal.c"
        "port/fal/src/fal_flash.c"
        "port/fal/src/fal_partition.c"
        "port/fal/src/fal_rtt.c"
        "../../../../src/fal_flash_esp32_port.c"
    INCLUDE_DIRS
        "inc"
        "port/fal/inc"
        "../../../../src"
    REQUIRES
        "esp_partition"
        "esp_common"
)

I'm pretty stuck here and could really use some guidance. Happy to share more details about what I've tried!

[armink]

hi @Mekanikalistik. Here's an example https://github.com/armink/FlashDB/tree/master/demos/esp32_spi_flash .have you tried it?

[Mekanikalistik]

hi @Mekanikalistik. Here's an example https://github.com/armink/FlashDB/tree/master/demos/esp32_spi_flash .have you tried it?

Hi Armink,
Thank you for your work on this library..
i am quite new into this and trying to make my tutorial project using platformIO , ESP IDF framework..

I have no idea how to try this demo on my environment using platformio
My project is here,
https://github.com/Mekanikalistik/IOTLOGGER

is the demo for esp32 fully compatible with Heltec Wireless stick lite V3 ?

It would be great to have a tutorial using this method
https://registry.platformio.org/libraries/kuba2k2/FlashDB/installation
and we can reference this repo to other people who are inexperienced like me so they can use PIO registry to install it easily to their project.

no idea how to do this instruction from the demo app
''
built with ESP IDF version 4.4.1 (v4.4.1-64-g4b2098bc58) using cmake.

run idf.py build in this directory and then flash with idf.py flash and monitor the output with idf.py monitor.

A custom partition table is required so that a partition can be created for the FlashDB. The size in the demo is set to 32K, see file partitions.csv. Custom partitions are enabled by default in sdkconfig.defaults.

The file sdkconfig.defaults contains by default all values required for the demo to work, i.e. the custom partitions are configured. By default the SPI flash is configured to be 4MB.
''

[armink]

Hi bro. Unfortunately, I haven't actually used PIO before. I think you could troubleshoot this by checking the build system. For example, print out the compilation parameters for main.c to see what the -I parameter includes. Check if the header file path for fal.h is included.

[Mekanikalistik]

Hi bro. Unfortunately, I haven't actually used PIO before. I think you could troubleshoot this by checking the build system. For example, print out the compilation parameters for main.c to see what the -I parameter includes. Check if the header file path for fal.h is included.

can i use the port and cfg files directly from the esp32 example with the relevant edits based on my board and my partition size ?