ESP32 D1 Mini: Issue with serial connection to DFplayer

Projects Networking, Protocols, and Devices
11

We prep things differently. I've used this successfully, many times and many pin combinations.
Serial,prints go to SerialMon; Serial1 is a separate UART.
Unnecessary SerialMon activity can bung things up.
There could be a FastLED - DFPlayer incompatibility. It would be a pain to cut out all that stuff to find out.
(Serial2, anyone?)

#include "HardwareSerial.h"
#include "DFRobotDFPlayerMini.h"

//
const byte RXD2 = 6;
const byte TXD2 = 7; 

HardwareSerial dfSD(1); // Use UART channel 1
DFRobotDFPlayerMini player;
   
void setup() 
{
  Serial.begin(19200);
  dfSD.begin(9600, SERIAL_8N1, RXD2, TXD2);  // D6,D7
  delay(5000);

  if (player.begin(dfSD)) 
  {
    Serial.println("OK");
    // Set volume to maximum (0 to 30).
    player.volume(22); //30 is very loud
  } 
  else 
  {
    Serial.println("Connecting to DFPlayer Mini failed!");
  }
  Serial.println("player go");
}

void loop() 
{
  Serial.println("Playing #1");
  player.play(1);
  Serial.println("play start");
  delay(10000);
  Serial.println("played");
  delay(1000);

  Serial.println("Playing #2");
  player.play(2);
  Serial.println("play start");
  delay(10000);
  Serial.println("played");
  delay(1000);
}

I guess the include for HardwareSerial.h is a legacy thing that's no longer necessary. (It can be hard to keep up, but it's really not the ESP forum. Yattahay.)