PineBuds Pro — ANC Analysis & Open Firmware

PineBuds Pro — ANC Analysis & Open Firmware

Factory firmware ANC coefficients extracted and integrated into OpenPineBuds (2026-04-08).

Hardware

SoC: BES2300YP (dual Cortex-M4F @ 300MHz)
ANC: Hardware-accelerated in codec silicon (not software DSP)
Paths: Feedforward (FF), Feedback (FB), Talk-Through (TT), Music Cancel (MC)
Flashing: USB-UART via charging case (WCH CH342, vendor 1a86)
Tool: bestool (Ralim, Rust) — cargo install –git https://github.com/Ralim/bestool

Flash Layout (4 MB)

Region	Address	Size	Content
Bootloader	0x000000-0x014000	80 KB	BES boot ROM, identical L/R
Gap	0x014000-0x018000	16 KB	Erased
Firmware	0x018000-0x140000	1184 KB	Main firmware, identical L/R, matches factory AC08
Unused	0x140000-0x3EC000	2736 KB	Fully erased
NV Records	0x3EC000-0x3FE000	72 KB	BT pairing, config, 116 bytes differ L/R
Erased	0x3FE000-0x3FF000	4 KB
Factory Cal	0x3FF000-0x400000	4 KB	“PineBuds Pro” string, BT MAC, 17 bytes differ L/R

ANC Audio Section (0x3EE000)

Stored in flash at 0x3EE000. Header: magic=0xDAD1, version=1.

Extracted ANC Coefficients (factory firmware):

Path	Gain (48k)	Gain (44.1k)	Biquads	Status
Feedforward L	512	660	8	Active — full IIR chain
Feedforward R	0	0	1 (unity)	Passthrough
Feedback L	512	512	6	Active — full IIR chain
Feedback R	0	0	1 (unity)	Passthrough
Talk-Through	0	0	1 (bypass=1)	Passthrough
Music Cancel	0	0	0	Not used

Key findings:

L = R identical — zero per-unit calibration from factory
Mono ANC — only left channel has real filters, right is passthrough
ADC gain offset: -6 dB on all active paths (prevents mic clipping)
44.1 kHz FF gain is 660 vs 512 at 48 kHz — compensates for different spectral resolution
IIR coefficients are Q27 format (unity = 134217728 = 0x8000000)

Community ANC Status (as of 2026-04)

OpenPineBuds main branch: ANC listed as “non-functional, WIP”
anc-testing branch (2023): one tester got “pretty good” results with tuned gains
Merge blocked by CMake migration that never happened
anc-tuning branch: last commit Jan 2026, no merge
Root cause of bad ANC: empty coefficient arrays in open firmware
Our fix: extracted factory coefficients, integrated into config/open_source/tgt_hardware.c

Tools

anc_extract.py

Extracts ANC IIR coefficients from a bestool flash dump:

# Human-readable summary
python3 anc_extract.py backup_left.bin

# C header for OpenPineBuds integration
python3 anc_extract.py backup_left.bin --c-header > anc_coefs.h

Located in dev_tools/anc_extract.py in our OpenPineBuds fork.

bestool

# Backup firmware (CRITICAL — do this first!)
bestool read-image --port /dev/ttyACM0 backup_right.bin
bestool read-image --port /dev/ttyACM1 backup_left.bin

# Flash new firmware
bestool write-image out/open_source/open_source.bin --port /dev/ttyACM0

# Serial monitor (2 Mbaud)
bestool serial-monitor /dev/ttyACM0 --baud-rate 2000000

Repos

Our fork: marfrit/openpinebuds (with factory ANC coefficients)
Upstream: pine64/OpenPineBuds
Flash tool: Ralim/bestool
Factory firmware: https://files.pine64.org/os/PineBudsPro/AC08_20221102.bin

Build Environment

VM 120 pinebuds on data (192.168.88.44):

Debian 11, 4 cores, 4 GB RAM, 64 GB ZFS
ARM GCC 9-2019-q4-major at ~/gcc-arm-none-eabi-9-2019-q4-major/
bestool (Ralim) via cargo
Docker available but native build preferred (12 sec)
SPICE USB passthrough for CH342 charging case (vendor 1a86)
lmcp on port 8080

export PATH="$HOME/gcc-arm-none-eabi-9-2019-q4-major/bin:$PATH"
cd ~/OpenPineBuds
make -j4 T=open_source DEBUG=1
# Output: out/open_source/open_source.bin (883 KB)

Backups

Factory flash dumps stored on: hertz, data, boltzmann, pinebuds VM.

backup_left.bin — md5: 05c0200d73e99633d41d8e757dfc4d6c
backup_right.bin — md5: 0cf360d3a92fcddb39c3f9bf53f3b9fc
factory_AC08.bin — md5: 4d2810bdb6fc32ccea3a034538b3fbf7 (Pine64 download, code only)

Status

Phase: Firmware built with factory ANC coefficients. Awaiting flash test on actual hardware.

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