Updated Sendspin configs for ESP32 devices

Small update on the ESPHome configs for Sendspin media players.

Until now, existing configs worked relatively well on the ESP32-S3-based devices – I guess Sendspin developers used them mainly, so it was working quite well from the start, and recent releases had nothing to wish for – they just work flawlessly. It was a different story for classic ESP32 – quite a lot of stutter from the playback start and drops during playback, never mind occasional reboots. Apparently, extra PSRAM working at a higher speed made a difference.

In the recent code changes, they’ve made a set of optimisations for ESP32, though, optimising memory utilisation, buffers, and a bunch of other small things. Although it is only available in version 2026.5.0, which has not been released at this moment, it shows great progress and works really well.

In my short tests, there were no crashes (good start!), no drops during playback, and almost no stutter from the start. People report some codec incompatibility, so more improvements will follow, but it is very much usable now.

Another appraent change – it no longer uses PR versions for the components, all necessities right now pulled directly from ESPHome – good sign that Sendspin maturity is growing. Also, probably more people will join the beta-testing now

I’ve updated all sendspin configs, both for ESP32-Audio and Esparagus boards, so feel free to give it a try. If you build in the HA, you’ll need to install the ESPHome (dev) addon, but in a couple of weeks, it will be available in the standard ESPHome